This is an entry about heroin addiction, obviously. More homework, boys and girls; for those few of you who may not have seen the film Trainspotting I strongly urge that you do, not for any relevance it bears to this entry but for the cultural good of your souls 
Anyway, I don't think that the characters from that film would ever be allowed on the Indian rail network, even if they were real people. The ludicrously-heavily-armed guards would probably slot 'em as soon as they appeared.
We all probably know that many foreign countries tend to have armed guards hanging about places more freely than we do in dear old England; Italy is litered with them, for example, serving as intemperate receptionists for banks, hotels, and suspiciously large mansions all over; but seeing as I know a thing or two about all this firearms business (at least from obsessing over the plastic toy kind 
) then it seems a little over the top to have at least 3 specially-trained security personnel sporting, alongside slightly silly Texan hats and rather more elite uniforms, some excessively purposeful firepower hanging about on each and every platform at Bangalore train station.
The same rang true at Goa airport, a chiefly domestic place that sees very little international air traffic and not a great deal of traffic generally in the big scheme of things, where a guy nonchalantly (very nonchalantly, he looked a bit stoned) grasping a Kalashnikov was hanging about the entrance from 5:00 in the morning.
In most places where arms are cheerfully sported by security personnel and Mafia enforcers the weapons are usually small, pistols, revolvers and the like. The Ranger-look-alike guys at Bangalore station had slung across a shoulder an old British Army SLR, and a Galil. These names should mean nothing much to you because then you would be as nerdy an individual as I am, but to the keen-eyed and geeky it will be apparent that these are all large-calibre assault rifles, military weapons, not the domestic forces' pistols, or perhaps sometimes submachine guns that basically fire small, less harmful, arguably more friendly pistol rounds.
The distinction is a little bit important - as is that fact that the Galil and the Kalashnikov are fully automatic weapons capable of reducing the most determined crowd of peaceful protesters to just so much corned beef and claret - all in all it seems just a little but like, if you will pardon the tasteless joke, overkill.
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Anyhoo, the trip from Bangalore was extremely pleasant, and I wasn't even shot at once on the station, which was nice. Getting tickets threw light on more bizarre behaviour in this country, where the ticket desks each sold tickets for only one destination each. I can't even imagine why this should be, and it must keep changing at an inconveniently rapid rate because with only 16 or so desks and at least 10 times that many individual destinations on direct routes from Bangalore the numbers, they just don't quite add up. Call me Mr. Silly, but if everyone wanted to go to just a few destinations at certain times of day, as is very likely in a modernised, commuter-dependant city liie Bangalore, then a couple of poor sods at their desks will be working their arses off while their neighbours do sweet-F-A.
Once on the train, the best things in the Indian people shine through: everyone was extra friendly to Maria and I, and when it got crowded, extremely crowded I might add, and a seat became available then people, all sorts of people, would tap my arm and gesture as if I had some divine rigth to the only available seat for the next 100 kilometres and 45 minutes. Elderly women would cross the aisle, dodging chai-wielding maniacal stewards and three dozen irate commuters just to let me know that the seat was there, perhaps even losing their own seat in the process. I was touched, flattered, and not a little embarrassed; needless to say I declined, as it was I was loving the ride by the open door far too much anyway.
The roads are so universally dreadful it is a huge pleasure to ride the rails, and the scenery, the openness of the people and the openness of the carriage doors made for a wonderful journey, I can see now what Dad always says about riding the train; I always liked it, but there's nothing quite like some unique scenery and the wind rushing in your face.
Bring back the old roll-window, external-opening-only door-handled carriages on Britains railways, I say
