The Scale by Michael Castle (books to get back into reading txt) 📕

The Angriest I Have Ever Been
We arrived at the train station and seeing as Hannah was now the boss of getting train tickets, she smiled sweetly at the crowd and somehow managed to get the tickets in 10 seconds flat. I on the other hand tried my hardest to breathe, something which was still troubling me.
People milled around and bumped into me and got in the way which didn’t do much for my temper or my feeling any better. Hannah came back with tickets for India General Class travel. Now if you have ever heard of Indian General Class, you will know that this is what the poorest Indians do if they need to travel. It consists of wooden boards and 26,000 people in a single carriage.
We somehow managed to fit into this carriage and Hannah spotted this space about 15cm wide in the roof racks between a group of other Indians. She put our bags on the group of men’s legs and climbed up. I was now faced with the problem of what to do. Hannah was vainly pretending not to notice my cries of move over so I stood squashed between Indians for an hour before deciding to try and find somewhere more comfortable. The whole breathing and sweating and coughing thing didn’t give me the space I hoped for, not because people tried to avoid me, because they very much were trying to do that, but rather because they couldn’t move either.
Somehow I managed to get near the doorway and there was a little space to sit down. I pretty much collapsed and so spent the next few hours hunched up in front of the toilets. This was not doing much for the nausea, sweating, coughing and general feel of feeling really sick. I needed air badly so at one stage when we had stopped I went and sat hanging out the door and proceeded to have a rather marvelous 5 seconds with no one bothering me. However, apparently there was a big invitation sign on my back and I was granted the pleasure of the company of an Indian man who sat down next to me.
The first thing he did was breathe on me and I caught the smell of stale alcohol. He then regaled me with stories about being drunk and coming from London and good eating. I looked at the 10cm of the single door I was sitting in and checked to see if my ribs were still functioning in the act of keeping a heart which was dangerously close to stopping, from harm. I came to the conclusion that the 100kg man sitting next to me was quite right and he did indeed like good food. I turned my head to be polite and received some spit from the window in the eye. I frowned some and thought about how angry I was on the scale of 1 – 10. I put it down as a 9. No one had killed someone close to me lately so I didn’t think I was as angry as I could be, but it was close.
“So do you think you could move over a bit?” the fat drunk Indian said as he wiggled around and squeezed me closer into the door frame. The angry scale went up a notch and went straight to 9.5/10. A cup then flew out the window, half full of coffee and smacked me in the head. I went to 10.
“Woooo! See that cup come out the window! Lucky it hit something and missed us,” the fat drunk Indian exclaimed excitedly.
I then went up to 10.5. 10.5 went to 11 as a tirade of spit came out the window and hit me in the ear, nose, shoulder and lips.
“You know what? I think that cup of coffee hit the wall and is dripping on you.” Einstein observed.
I looked back at the floor space in front of the toilet and glanced up at the date of last cleaning which read 12/3/95 and decided that I was probably onto a winner with this door frame and coffee and spit and stayed put. A fat man came out of the toilets, tramping the residue of his visit over where I had planned to sit. The smell following him drifted over and added credence to the opinion that I was right in avoiding that option.
I received another cup of coffee in the head followed by a few more driblets of spit. I went up to 11.5. I didn’t know whether to be happy about the regular bouts of coffee as they seemed to wash off some of the spit. The man wiggled around some more and I considered going up to 12 on the scale but decided against it seeing as I think 11.5 is about as angry as anyone could ever be in their whole life and I was pretty much the angriest I have ever been in my whole life. After a few hours the man left and I went back down to 11 only for it to return to 11.5 when my foot smacked into the platform while we were going along, which really hurt.
The next 6 hours were marred only by regular hittings of the ankle on platforms, being almost pushed out of the moving train because it was so full and regular spit and coffee dousings. I alternated between 10.5 and 11.5 on the anger scale for the duration of the trip.
An eternity later we arrived at our stop and I gratefully fought my way to the bags. I was quite angry and having something to lash out was rather satisfying. Afterwards I pitied the poor Indians who got in the way of the raging tigers which were my elbows.
I called out to Hannah who was in the midst of some highly amusing tale and flapping her arms around animatedly with the other baggage rack Indians. I considered leaving her there but I was in so much pain and anger I doubted I could survive without some Panadol or Valium which I knew she had stuffed in one of her bags somewhere.
We finally got off the train after much huffing and puffing and elbows.
“Mika I don’t think they like you much on the train back there they are all giving you angry looks.”
I grunted.
“How was your trip?” Hannah asked innocently.
“Terrible.” I had just gone down to 10 on the anger scale seeing as I was off that cursed train.
“Well, I had the most marvellous time ever! I mean we ordered endless rounds of coffee and then we would see how far we could spit out the window and then all of us would throw our cups out the window to see how far they could go. We usually left coffee in them so they would go even further!”
I went straight to 12.

Publication Date: 11-24-2009

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