Apparantly my husband can give the gujjars Scheduled Tribe status. Especially if his train reaches Mumbai 8 hours late and arrives at 6 in the evening instead of 10 in the morning. Or at least, the gujjars and meenas seem to think so.
What else would explain their ripping off a part of the tracks that the Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani runs on and therefore forcing this super fast express to divert via Bhopal and then reach Mumbai Central? The people whom we consider to be decision makers and powers-that-be, in our dubious democratic structure, will never travel that route, never face that inconvenience and never get impacted by this novel form of protest.
Oh. Their conscience is meant to get pricked because my husband's day has just gotten wasted. Yup. Righto. I can see that happening.
My husband, on the other hand, DOES get hugely impacted by this loss of a precious Monday. He's traveling to Mumbai to pick up a duplicate of his high school certificate from his alma mater, since he's misplaced the original. And the reason he decided to go by train is, firstly, to control expenses and secondly, to avoid rain related interminable flight delays and diversions. Ever since we heard about that infamous Jet Airways flight that took off from Delhi at 8:30 in the evening and arrived in Mumbai 5:30 the next morning, none of us really want to see the inside of an aircraft.
However, all this clever budget management and pre planning didn't really help. Because the gujjars believe that if my husband gets disgustingly delayed in picking up his high school certificate, somehow they will get their scheduled tribe status.
An obscure bit of logic that escapes me. But then, I must be dense.
