Why I Love My Bag

Most of you already know how I have the worst experiences when it comes to travel. I have come across some messed up shit. Like this one time, I was trying to complete an assignment in the train. And this guy sleeping on the upper berth(I was on the lower berth) climbed down and sat on my berth. He started an intensive Q & A regarding Computer Science and all its wondrous sub-areas. He also threw in bonus information regarding his God-levelness in Networking and how even though I was an NITT-ian, I would never...(pause for effect)...ever be as good as him. After an hour he asked me if I would get up early to wake him up. I snorted. He got the point. He left. And he woke me up to say bye. Puke!

I have many more murky travel-related stories. And in all of them, all I do is stare really intensely at the person irritating me hoping against hope that the person gets the point. They usually do leave me alone once my one-word responses regress to curt nods. I recently came across an exception. Last weekend, I flew to Bombay. And I had an experience I can never forget.

I opted for an aisle seat as always. And sitting next to me was an extremely dirty "gawaar" guy. He looked like an Orkutiya...need I say more? And here's the kicker...his elbow was permanently in contact with my hand. Being a gawaar, he just could not grasp the fact that I wanted him to move his hand even though I kept adjusting my bag, and in the process, pushing away his hand. After about 20 minutes of relentless adjusting, I decided to just tell him to move. And for a minute there, he did.

I was so proud of myself. I was a daring female of the 21st century. I spoke my mind. Bollywood will make movies on me. I was...oh wait...his elbow was kneading my hand again. I had two options:

A. I could tell him to move his hand again.
B. I could just bear with it for another hour or so.

Being the fearless female that I am, I decided to go with option A. Sadly, option A was always followed by a minute of respite and then aforementioned hand kneading activity. This continued for a while and then finally the pilot (bless him) announced that the plane was going to land. However, my happiness was short lived as epic What-the-fuck-ness was about to ensue. The gawaar taps me on the hand and asks me if he can lean on my shoulder and sleep. I mustered the most disgusted expression I could, channeling the smell of good-curd-gone-bad, and said "Obviously Not!".

And then he actually leaned on my shoulder disregarding my response(and in addition grabbed my knee while landing). What happened next isn't an exaggeration or an imaginary event. In a split second, I grabbed my bag and beat the man. Not once, not twice, but eight times.

As soon as the plane landed I got up and ran to the flight attendant(who was quite cute by the way :P) who stood with me till the gawaar deplaned. And after my conversation with the flight attendant, I realized that I should have actually picked secret option C - Stop being a fearless female and just complain to the flight attendant. Bah.