The Art of Seeing People Off

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I distinctly remember when I was in school we studied an excerpt from Max Beerbohm’s, Seeing People Off. It was an exceptionally amusing extract about the apprehension and anxiety that the author had to face whenever he had to see someone off and how he had even considered taking classes in the art, so that he could become adept at it like some people were and not come across either like a blithering idiot or a tongue tied schoolgirl.

In India, however people do not seem to have any such qualms. One has to only visit any railway station to see hordes of people on the platform and wonder how many are going to travel on that particular train. But as the train departs the station and most of them get off, one can only heave a sigh of relief that you do not have to share your narrow berth with two strangers.

Have you ever been privy to those send off …well, I can only call them, ceremonies? Most Indians are used to them and usually do not look put off with all the advice being doled out to them, unless maybe they are under 20  and then anyway every teenager feels his parents only purpose on Earth is to embarrass him. Do not accept food from strangers, buy only bottled water, eat the chicken masala at Hyderabad station, do not eat the soup from the railway pantry….it goes on unceasingly and pours forth in a steady stream. The traveler is also treated like as if he is stepping into no man’s land and is plied with magazines, food, fruit…everything that he could buy for himself on the train journey. I have also been at the receiving end of all that profuse generosity and have even enjoyed it at times. Okay, I admit it, at most times.

I remember once overhearing someone telling this young man to be wary of shoe thieves. The boy smiled in a patronizing manner at his fretful friend and climbed up to his berth in the night, leaving his fashionable, brown, patent leather shoes in plain sight for all passersby to admire. In the morning his shoes had vanished and shamefacedly he bought himself a pair of cheap rubber slippers from the next station. The predicament that one can get into when one ignores galling, unwanted counsel.

I do not know how many people have been fortunate enough to witness any newly wed defense officer and his bride being seen off or received by his fellow officers and men. When our train left Mumbai, this officer had what looked like his whole baraat to see him off. The compartment was filled with the perfume of crushed rose petals and incense and ribald jokes about the wedding night. The discomfited couple quickly retreated behind the curtains of their berth and we thought that was the end of it. Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, the train pulled up at some godforsaken station in the middle of nowhere and everyone was woken up to the sound of an army band playing some Bollywood songs. Then came a blitz of a whole lot of young army officers who barged into the compartment, garlanded the couple…and ignoring the blushing bride’s protests that she could walk on her own two feet, they were carried off the train. Firecrackers went off and I am sure there must have been plenty more bonhomie which we weren’t privy to, since our train pulled out.

I wonder if they had a white horse waiting for the groom or who knows maybe even a tank.