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The deafening silence was shattered in a manner so majestic that it would have embarrassed the storm of the sea breaks the calm. It seemed that a herd of wild bulls had broken loose, after days of torture. The sound of their hooves increased more and more, till it threatened to demolish the entire mechanism of the ear. Remembering Doppler Effect, which spoke about the characters of the approaching and the receding sound waves, I derived that the present wave had to be the former, and, therefore, I stiffened a little more and lay still, waiting for the bulls to arrive.

The sounds kept their promise as a barrage of men, not bulls, as it had seemed, stormed into out bogey, and threatened to take it apart. They whizzed past me like a train, and only after they had gone past me completely, did I dare to look up and out of my berth.

I must clear a thing or two, here thought I think you’d have it figured our already. I never, at any time, believed in the ghost story. Which you can gather from my frivolity. I firmly believed my dadidma’s story. I remember saying ‘something was wrong’, when the train halted, but in the interval between the second explosion and the wild bull race, my mind had make up that it was nothing to be worried about. Perhaps, a nut or bolt in the train loosened, thus causing some part, vital to train’s motion, to creak and stop. Or, perhaps, a fat man, after all, had slipped down his berth, this time, with his trunk.

But what met the eye was not a good sight at all. I was right. There were no ghosts, no bulls either, but policeman, as lavishly decorated with guns as an Indian bride with jewellery. I craned my neck and saw that they were running after two short, bald men, whose oily heads shone in the dim light of the bogey. It was apparent that they were on the other side of law, but the fact that almost ten policemen chased them with so many guns and rifles made it all look a bit grim. And grim became my mood.

Hadn’t I passed enough exams, I asked God, that he had to spring up rouges and cops out of nowhere, to test my will this time? Weren’t professor enough? I was cross. It wouldn’t have surprised me, if a gunman was to emerge out of the dark, and take me as a hostage. Mr. Fate’s game was getting dirtier. Of all the million trains in this country with the second largest rail network in the world, the criminals had to choose this train! And why? Because, the one and only Tejas Narula was on this very one. Damn it all!

My mind was busy in cursing the latest development that threatened my reaching the destination, and calculating the zeroes after the decimal in the probability of this happening with an unbiased traveler (unbiased a mathematicians say in an unbiased coin). What if the entire train was blown up? My sistertrio’s comments came back to haunt me, and I heard several thuds and explosions. The explosions that had interrupted my siesta, I now understood, were sounds of firing. The present explosions came from outside the train, and I was relieved to realize that the battle scene had shifted to the open. I tried to resume my talk with her lower berth man, and manage a laugh in the trying times.

“I told you, there were no ghosts. Didn’t i?” I whispered. “Shhh… there were crooks and bullets…” he whispered. “Want to have a peep outside?” I joked.
“Are you mad?”
“They must be dead!”
“Still, why take a …”

He was about to say, no doubt, the word chance, but it so happened that the lights were switched on suddenly. I stiffened again and he crouched, as we waited for hell to break loose. A stick banged against metal and a gruff voice started shouting.

“Don’t worry, now,” it said in a Bihari accent, “All is safe. The bandits have been killed. The train will start soon…”
I stuck my head out, this time without any hesitation, and saw a policeman in khaki, rubbing thumb on his palm, evidently preparing snuff, as he spoke on coolly.