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I moved carefully to the window of my compartment. I passed it once quickly and a fleeting glance showed me that Pappi was busy with his trunk. It was open on the berth opposite to which Rajit was sitting. I turned and trotted to the window again, and from the left corner, the one closer to Rajit, I waved my right hand while my left was engaged in putting a finger on my lips – a warning for Rajit: “Don’t react!” He was reading some book and noticed me after about five seconds. He was taken aback to see me in that avatar of an asylum runways – with my eyes wide open like a lunatic and my hand signaling frantically, like a lunatic, too
- trying to tell him to come out. He, no doubt, thought that a bout of epilepsy had come over me and was about to say something like, “Have you gone mad?” when, sensing that, I withdrew my waving right hand and employed it too in unison with the left. Probably two fingers were better than one on the lip, I thought, and it did the trick. He didn’t speak but kept staring at me mutely, probably wondering what his sister saw in this boy, who went on serene mornings, and who knows, on every morning! I signaled him again to come out of the train and having no other option, he did so.

“Have you gone nuts?” he asked surprised.
“No,” I said.
”Then why in God’s name were you behaving in that crazy manner?”
“I wanted to tell you to come out but I couldn’t speak!” “You are speaking well enough now…”
“I mean I couldn’t speak there.”
“Why?”
“All hell has broken loose…”
“What?”
“That man in there, in our compartment, on the seat below my berth above yours is that professors from IIT Delhi…” “A professor!” he said in excitement, happy as if a reunion of IITians was in progress.
“The professor…”
“What difference does that make? Strange that three IITians should be in one compartment, all by chance…” he would have no doubt added like Dr. Prabhakar – the ways of providence, ‘strange and wonderful’ – but I cut him short.
“If only you’d let me complete.”
“Go on.”
“He is the very professor.” I started explaining to him as my story had evidently slipped from his mind, “Professor Pappi, I told you about, who was soaked in soda by my friend and who tried everything to stop me from meeting your sister.”
And then it dawned on him. His eyes bore no more excitement but incredulity and horror. And then he spoke, spotting an anomaly, “But you said that he had been removed.”
“I wish I had removed him, from the world,” I said it just like that, “I forgot to mention that he too was going to Chennai to attend some marriage…”
“Yes, it’s this season, you know…”
“I don’t know all that, all I know is that he is right here, and of all the places, right under my berth, like a carefully planted time bomb!”
“So what to do?” he asked.

I had a plan. I was certainly learning to plot quickly. The journey had taught me to think on my feet; sharpen my acumen and all that. Thank you, I acknowledged inwardly and then shifted my attention to Rajit.

“I have a plan.”
“Say.”
“I have his purse,” I said with pride.
“Who’s purse?”
“The professor’s purse, of course! What a stupid question! How can other purses help us?” I said irritated.
“You have his purse,” my friend said calmly. But presently his ever changing eyes sported a look of disapproval. They had me confused.
“Yes, here it is.” I showed him.
“Bad!” he said shaking his head.
“I know, battered old purse, torn at place, leather is cracking and fading. Calls for a change. An ideal birthday gift…”
“I didn’t mean that the purse was bad.”
“Then?” I asked perplexed.
“I said that for you and your ways. Now you’ll steal purses too,” and at that he shook his head again, intensifying the disapproving look and wondering again, whether his sister ought to be allowed to continue her romance with a guy that has a habit of picking pockets at stations, and who knows, maybe everywhere!

I wondered at the insanity of the notion. I was getting worked up. “Do I look like a pickpocket?” I demanded indignantly, though fearing that he might say yes.

I described to him that scene of beauty. “Ah,” he said satisfied, relieved that I was not a thief. “Your ‘ah’ go to hell, jut listen to what needs to be done.” “Tell me.”
“You go into the compartment and somehow take the Prof. away from our berths. Best thing would be to take him to as far as the door on the right side. Meanwhile, I will sneak in from the door on the left and climb onto my berth, turn my head towards the other side, crouch and lie there. Then you can bring him back and he will not be able to see me.”
He listened intently but after I said this, saw something amiss. “How will that help you?”
“I cannot be seen, so he won’t know that I am there.” “You will stay on the top like a dead body throughout the journey?
Won’t you come down to eat, or got to toilet and how on earth will we plan?”
“I haven’t finished my friend; you are forgetting the purse,” I said waving it.
“Yes, what about it?”
“You know what is in it?”
“Probably his money.”
“And?”
“May be the photo of his wife and kids…”
“And?”
“Stoop fooling around. I know what a purse contains.” “But you are missing the nub of the story. What must be the purse of a train passenger contain?”
His eyes were now the eyes of an able conspirator. He saw it. he saw it all now.
“His ticket,” he said moving his head slowly up and down like one of those rebels, hatching a plan to bomb the president’s car. Only black overcoats, black gloves, black glasses were missing. “A ticket-less traveler!”
“You are right, comrade, but I meant, what does that make him in the yes of law?”
“A criminal,” he said, and I couldn’t have used a better word. “A criminal, a law-breaker, a person, comrade, who the law clearly states, can be sentenced to some good time in jail or imposed some good fine, amount of which I do not recall.” “Neither do i.”
“Immaterial, the nub again is that our criminal neither has the ticket not the money to save his good self.” My partner in crime looked at me with eyes of appreciation. Fit, he probably felt, is this boy for my sister. Has all the brains.
“So when the ticket-collector is about to arrest him for his offence, and send him off to an obscure prison in Honolulu to keep murderers and pickpockets company, I’ll save him the humiliation by descending down from my berth like God’s Messiah incarnate, telling the TC that the man he looks upon as a swine from behind his spectacles, is actually my respected Guru from IIT Delhi accompanying me on a technical project. I’ll then pay off his fine, thus becoming a…”
“Hero in his eyes…”
“Exactly, a hero, a God’s messenger, an angel of humanity, a whatnot! And then he’ll have no option but to be grateful to me and bury the past. Of course I’ll tell him that I was not involved the least in that shower incident and that I don’t even drink, and he will no doubt understand!”
“Genius!”
“I know! That I am,” I said accepting the compliment. “Hey, but will he not ask you, what are you doing on this train?” “He will.”
“What’ll you tell him?”
I opened the purse and showed him Pappi’s photo. “Don’t you think he is a nice man? Just look at his eyes!”
“Yes, he seems to be. I talked to him a little; seemed a pleasant fellow.”
“And a pleasant felloe he is! He was angry with me only because he thought I insulted him. But after I clear his doubts, he will be a darling again. Don’t you think such a man, touched by my act of deliverance, will understand my story?”
“May be.”
“I think he will. After all, a professor ceases to be a professor outside the four walls of his college. Just like a policeman ceases to be a policeman after his best beat is over. Society teaches us well to play these dual roles, my friend. A professor he might be, but when not delivering a lecture, when not making papers, he becomes just another human being – a father, a husband, and a friend. He is a normal human being now – a normal man who listens to music, reads novels, likes to joke; a man vulnerable to emotions, love, sympathy. Of course some men are brutes, but look at him. Does he look like on of those? I am sure he doesn’t. you get what I mean?”
“Best of luck!”
“So perhaps, I’ll tell him al, or may be not, but right now let us rush in; in the train has started to move. I’ll be standing at this door; you bait him to the other one.”
“Right away,” he said and we climbed the train. It had started moving again. Oh, how much I love running and climbing into moving trains!