One of the places where I have enjoyed the most enjoyable of snoozes was in the mosque attached to a Middle Eastern airport which shall remain unnamed. The airport is a comparatively small one and has long outgrown its passenger handling capacity. But the airline that uses it as its hub is a good one and has good and cheap flights and so I use it. I found the mosque a couple of trips ago while looking around a couple of trips ago.
I had never been in a mosque before, in an airport or elsewhere and so peeped in with some trepidation only to see that inside the small room, there seemed to be more people sleeping than praying and the people inside were dressed pretty much as I was – in a crumpled shirt and jeans with their hand baggage clutched like some out of shape teddy bear.
I removed my shoes and crept in, initially wondering if some one would come in and interrogate me on my faith, in which case I would flunk it and be back in the crowded airport. Luckily no one did and when I finally woke up to catch my next plane, I was rather intrigued to see in the early morning hours, the mosque resembled pretty much an Indian railway station waiting room and the few devout who actually wanted to use the mosque to pray where having to navigate through a mass of bodies snorting, snoring and grunting in rather an unseemly melody.
Coming to Indian railway stations, I remember the time I had to sleep on the platform of the Patna railway station some years ago. I was coming from some where and was to board a train to Howrah but when I went to check at the enquiry window, I was told that the train was indefinitely late. That could mean any thing, – the train might be six, ten, twelve or more hours of delay and the station couldn’t give me any further information because they didn’t have any. Left with no option but to wait it out for at least some time, I looked for an empty corner on a some what deserted platform and got ready to spread out my lungi.
The Indian lungi was designed with the peripatetic wanderer in mind. Its size is such that it can wrap itself around a portly waist, or it can be spread out on the floor and is just adequate in length to accommodate a fully grown man. It can also be and has been (by me at least) adapted as a bed sheet hastily covering up the mess below or even as a towel in case you have forgotten to pack one.
And I suppose, suitably draped, it can serve as the poor man’s Angavastram too. The lungi marked out my territory on the platform. As the night progressed, the once deserted platform came alive and people stretched out on all sides of me. Babies bawled, women took out their rotis and achaar, men took out their packs of cards and argued about who was cheating more. The noise and the buzz had its own rhythm and I slept nice and good till the clang of lathis and people scattering helter skelter woke me up.
The Railway Protection Force constables were on their rounds clearing the platforms of crowds and they were using their batons to make their point. Hurriedly, I gathered up my bags, tossed my lungi over my shoulder draping it like a cassock and ran towards the waiting room, just about saving my butt from the baton’s hit.
Airports and Railway Stations are great places to sleep as also seedy backpackers’ hostels (that is a separate posting by itself) but my favorite place to sleep is the grassy neighborhood park on a warm winter afternoon with a book to keep me company and no watch to tell the time. No winter is ever complete without this blessed nap and doze and as I observe the nip in the air every evening and early morning, I step back and wonder- if autumn is here, can winter be far behind!
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