All About a Red Bag!

I opened my eyes.

All I could see was the white ceiling very close to my face. Seconds later I realized that I was traveling in a train. I stared at the AC outlet trying to understand why I got up so suddenly from my deep slumber and why exactly was I traveling. I had been enjoying a lovely dream about a romantic adventure on Moon with my girl when the mysterious jolt woke me up and frankly, I preferred the dream over this forced introspection.

“Hi Venu” a voice boomed from two centimeters away scaring the living daylights off me.

It was Joydeep and he was the principle reason for the rude awakening.

By now, I was fully in my senses. I boarded the train the previous day after finishing up a two month training program in Pune. I had to report to my project leader in Bhubaneswar the very next day.

“What do you want?” I asked Joy, “Are we in Bhubaneswar?”. I knew the train had at least twelve more hours.

Joy didn’t say anything. He just wanted me to take a look at a particular lower birth in the compartment.

“Why don’t you just go to sleep? For Chrissakes man! Leave me alone” I told him in a hushed manner. I did not want to wake up the other souls in the compartment.

“I will explain. Just get down.” The seriousness was unmistakable. From my three months association with Joy, I knew at once that there really was something wrong. Joy was always jovial. In fact we were quite impressed by his parents’ decision to name him “Joy-deep”. Very aptly named.

I climbed down and realized that I could have had this conversation in full DTS sound. Most of the occupants of that compartment were wide awake and were staring silently at the lower birth in question. “You’ve woken up everyone in the compartment?” I asked Joy incredulously.

He did not answer my question. “Look at the red bag”.

That red bag, at the moment the object of complete and undivided attention, was a normal Reebok bag packed very tightly.

"Nice bag!" I exclaimed, "So?"

Joy shook his head. "The bag does look pretty nice and I don't intend to refute that fact. But I don't see why anyone should leave the bag on the berth unattended for a period of exactly," he paused and checked his watch, "four and a half hours."

If staring at the red bag with a raised diastolic blood pressure was the main criteria for joining the newly formed “Konark A1 Coach Passengers Welfare Association”, this disturbing sentence automatically got me enrolled into it.

"OK. I get the picture. What do we do now?" I asked him trying to hide my anxiety.

Joy didn't reply. He was too busy staring at the red bag. Manas and Debanjan were not seen at all. I rushed to the compartment door. There they were… standing near the door looking seriously at the ceiling of the compartment.

Suddenly Manas broke the silence, “Let us pull the chain; stop the train; and run as fast as possible in a perpendicular direction.”

That suggestion did not find many takers because it was the middle of the night; it was in the middle of nowhere and we had no idea how dangerous the threat level was.

I silently went to the vestibule and was considering the option of moving to the next bogie when the coach attendant rushed hurriedly into the scene.

"Kya hua?" He asked us suspiciously.

"Well, there's a red bag on berth number 12 there. The owner of that bag is missing." I told him as-a-matter-of-factly.

He was about to enter the compartment AC zone when I spoke these words. He immediately retreated. If I didn't block his way to the next compartment he would have vanished instantly.

"What we are supposed to do?" Manas asked him anxiously. "Kuch to Karona!"

The attendant looked at him crazily, "Mein Kya karoon?. Khammam lo police report idhdham"

(What can I do? Let us notify the railway police when we reach Khammam.)

I decided he was of no use to us. I came back to my berth and realized that the red bag was in the adjacent coupe.

I could feel my heart pounding. Joy was still staring at the bag. The others retracted to the far end of the bogie and we were the only two near that berth.

"That berth is booked till Vijayawada which is about 2 hours from this place." Joy paused, "And logically speaking, the bomb if any should go off before that."

I stared at him. "So standing near the door till we reach Vijayawada is the best option under the present circumstance?"

He didn't reply. He just stood up and walked away. I stayed there trying to guess what was there inside the bag. A few minutes passed and then Debanjan came in. "Practically speaking, they won't try to kill people just like that because there's no point in taking that risk for ordinary people." He told me in a cool manner. I tried to hide my restlessness and asked him, "Do you think it’s the right time to logically analyze the motive?"

He smiled, "I have a valid point." He said. "The point I am driving at is.. the red bag is not for us." He pointed to the next coupe. "Revenue Minister of the State is peacefully sleeping there undisturbed."

A few seconds later we were discussing what to do, in the vestibule of the bogie. "Let's find it out" I said, "let's open the bag."

"Are you mad?" shouted Manas, "What if the bag goes off? It is very dangerous. Don't do it!"

But Debanjan and Joy seemed quite pro to the idea. Finally we decided to investigate the situation. Just then the TTE entered the scene. When we told him about the bag on Berth Number 12, he just laughed. "You are overreacting." He said, "I personally checked his ticket at 7:30 this evening."

"And after that, he is not seen anywhere," Joy told seriously "and his red bag is all the time seen on his berth."

"And I have to sleep right next to it" I added. The TC shook his head.

Debanjan intervened this time. "Let's open the bag."

The TTE took two steps backwards. "I am not authorized to examine the passengers' luggage" he told us and hurriedly vanished into the next compartment.

A few minutes later we were gathered near the bag. My fingers were trembling. I slowly unzipped the bag and carefully looked inside. There were no bombs explicitly seen there. But there was a black parcel tightly packed which if filled with RDX could demolish the compartment in a fraction of a second.

The rest of our journey to Vijayawada was done in the corridor of the next compartment. At Vijayawada when we heard no RDX explosions, we crawled into the compartment again and berth number 12 was empty. The red bag was gone! And nobody knew who took it.

We searched the whole compartment in and out but couldn't find the bag. It was just gone! We stood there thinking for a while. Sleep, so far suppressed by fear returned with a vengeance. I took my upper birth with little hesitation, as I was sure there was no unclaimed red bag near me.

Soon everyone was fast asleep and the situation could not have been more normal. Joy, who occupied the other upper berth, was awake and he was probably thinking we had taken the matter too seriously.

"What are you thinking?" I asked him.

"Nothing in particular" he said and remained silent for sometime. Then he asked me, "What do you think about the incident?"

I jumped at the opportunity to put across my fundae. "We live in constant fear of terrorism and extremism. When a suspicious bag and the Revenue Minister of the state are in the same compartment, we have every reason to be alarmed. We are an integral part of the mob. And we are not any different from the general public. Only we are a bit more refined in being foolish!" I stopped suddenly as I realized Joy was fast asleep.

Bhubaneshwar was still miles to go… And there were still many miles to go before I could sleep again.