Odyssey- episode 1

Dear all

Thanks for all your appreciation and support, I know few of you had complains but as I say life is never fair and one must know the rule of the game. More so all my stories are fiction and they are never intended to hurt anyone its just a way of looking at life and laughing at it. I would request readers to not go too personal on that. So we had some discussion on journey of life, which brings to my mind another big story of Pal where he encountered a fabulous journey. Well if I say you know the bottom line pretty well it would not be wrong but before you make a judgement and stop reading this blog, let me tell you the author tends to bring something new in everything. So what’s new in this do let me know.

To begin with Pal always enjoyed travelling and while he was with BMW he use to fly back home every now and then, thus creating a lot of stories on a bus journey. The funny thing about bus journey is its overnight and by the time you get to see and know your co-passenger the journey is over. Now lets get back to point what if the journey becomes much longer than expected and off course not tiring. Well you might be wondering how this can happen? If so let me take you to a journey which Pal did. It was the month of July and Pal was trying to move in from Pune to Noida, a transit time for Pal. This means he had lots of stuff with him. Normally a journey from Pune to home town took maximum of 13hrs but this journey took 33hrs. The wonderful thing was none of the passengers were tiered. When I say this I mean it.

Journey begins in a usual fashion with a bus filled with 40 passengers boarding a bus on a pretty rainy day. The good thing about the bus was it was Air conditioned yet it was not manufactured by a foreign company named Volvo. The other feature of this bus was it was a sleeper coach bus. Now with these details the journey begun and the way it was raining in Pune the journey was expected to be prolonged, but none of them expected it to be prolonged by 20hrs. The unusual part of this journey was that there were less family people and more jolly bachelors. A rare thing to happen in journey, call it the luck of pal or the benefit that Bus Company was leveraging to its passenger. The gender distribution was pretty fair, and if there were 20-25 guys there were 15-20gals as well. So you can now imagine the crowd in the bus very well. The journey went slow and quiet well to begin with. Chit chat all around gals with gals and guys with guys, a pretty much enthusiastic crowd it was. Pal was sitting on a side upper berth, with very few interactions he was in his own world listening to songs suddenly some one shook him and asked him something as Pal had headphones on he could not hear anything so he removed the headphones to hear who said what to him. It was a gal who was at the side lower seat and she just had some complains (gals always have complains and they say it to conductor and conductor gives a damn of it, a usual thing that happens in bus journey) so the gal asked Pal if he can come to side lower seat as it was not straight and she could not sleep properly on it. (My question to all gals is would you please tell me why do gals expect guys to sleep on a seat which is not comfortable for sleeping and not another gal, the reason why I asked this was cause you always talk to gals only never to guys then how can you expect a stranger to make his journey uncomfortable to make yours comfortable?

Pal as you know never says NO to gals no matter how painful the situation may be, he moved down on side lower seat and was trying to settle down. All of sudden a loud noise came and the bus was tilted on one side a bit. We were just 40 Km away from Pune and we encountered a puncture that was the first sign that our fate gave us when we just took off. This was just the beginning of another series of delays that we would see all along this journey. It was rainy and the rear tyre on left hand side just got punctured and the worst part was it was not just one but two tyres that got punctured. When such things happen it gives a topic to passenger to buzz around and bitch about the quality of maintenance that Travels Company do. So it begun gals bitching around for how other travels company handled it and how good they were, guys as usual started to talk around how much delayed the bus got and how prolonged the journey was and how they went the extra mile to cut down the delay. With rain being heavy and pouring in the highway side it was hard to find a puncture shop but the driver and conductor managed it well to remove both tyres and change one of them and the driver took a lift in truck to get the other tyre repaired. The conductor stayed in the bus. Well the pair was not as bad as the passenger bitched about. In the mean time Pal felt thirsty and he realised that he has forgotten the water bottle in the shelf on upper berth and that’s when he got a chance to have a look at gal closely and he realised that the gal felt asleep and her hairs were resting on her cheeks, she was looking amazing, she had amazing eye and the red colour top was complimenting her fair complexion. Pal took the water bottle and started enjoying the music all of sudden he realised that guys sitting on neighbouring seat were asking something. A typical guy habit of asking how the gal is?? A typical Pal reply she is good and mind you all this happened without a word being spoken. The rain and humid weather was making it uncomfortable to sit in bus, the worst part you can’t also go out. It rained heavily and there was no sign that the weather would be pleasant ahead. The driver came back with all the repairs done and we gradually moved on.

So it was time for bus to stop of dinner break and as it was slippery and muddy the gal who was sitting above broke her footwear. But when you have Pal around you gals don’t need to worry. Let me tell you something honestly gals always want to wear the most stylish design available without wondering about the weather, my only suggestion to them would be adaptable and fashion is good but its only for parties not for day today routine. I know some of the female brand companies would definitely raise a tagline fashion for everyone, and new fashion everyday but they know how to make money, so to all gals do comment on that advice.

The gal somehow managed to reach the hotel by just tottering in the muddy ground. She was wet to a great extent, she had an ugly look on her face for the footwear and she was cursing the company for making such poor quality footwear. Pal was around there and had seen the complete scene and came close to gal and asked if he can help her out. To reader’s surprise this time it was Pal who started the conversation.
Pal: Excuse me… don’t know your name but do you think can I help you?
Gal: Excuse me, its none of your business
(No matter how big $!-!it the gals might be they wont give up their attitude)
Pal taken aback and was wondering did he do/say anything wrong?
Pal turned and was enjoying the music and the rain as he does not like to eat much while travelling. Gal did everything possible she could to make it work at least for time being once she was done she looked around the shops and all she could see was a dhaba and a petrol pump. She then turned back to see Pal nicely enjoying the music and in his own world. She said politely “Excuse me can you help” as Pal had headphone in his ears he did not pay attention. But this was a terrible mistake that Pal did, because you can’t ignore gals, the next moment, gal who was frustrated with rain and broken footwear grew red faced and was annoyed to see a guy ignoring her. So she threw the broken footwear and held her head with hand in despair. The footwear went straight and hit Pal, which annoyed Pal and furious he went straight to gal and said “What do you think smart gal? Do you think you can run away with this? What do you think you can throw around anything on pretty much anyone?

Gal already furious and frustrated in her own anger spilled her anger on Pal, she had to say ” Look gentleman you were the one who came to help me and I don’t like it, I can manage myself very well and if this footwear hit you its not my fault, its just a coincidence that you came in way of this footwear….!!

Pal wondering did he just hear the most stupid of argument and the ridiculous blame by a gal? He was surprised to see the argument that was built up to overcome the allegations that he made. Guys remember gals can present the most horrendous statement in the most “LOGICAL”(in gals terminology) fashion. With just 3 hours to this journey so much happened is this the sign of things to come?

With a fight to begin with how do you think the story would go ahead? What more delays you see in this journey ahead? Would Pal get a chance to be close with this gal? What more does fate has in store for them? What adventures do you foresee in this story? Do post in your comments and let me know how you think this story would proceed?