18. New Habits

Fig. 18-1: "He's not dead Son, he's just sleeping"
I'm always up for something new, and ever since I bought a new mechanical pencil in Calcutta, my new hobby appears to be drawing sleeping people on overnight trains. I know that this might seem like kind of a weird thing to do, but nowhere on my ticket does it say that I cannot draw my fellow train occupants¹, and people who aren't sleeping tend to be so much more inquisitive about what you're doing than the sleeping kind. I have to admit, though, that my conscience does edge in when I think about what it would be like to wake up and find yourself the unwitting subject of one of these portraits.

On second thought, maybe drawing people on trains is a creepy thing to do.


Fig. 18-2: Woman on Train (Not Sleeping)
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1. Even if there was a rule against this, I've always been one to follow the examples set for me by authority figures, and apparently Indian Railways employees can selectively choose which rules they adhere to, as we learned last night on the overnight train from Darjeeling to Varanasai, where the conductor saw fit to charge us full fare for two seats that we had already reserved and paid for once, on account of the fact that we weren't able to pick up the ticket from the travel agent in time, although the rules outline a 25% surcharge for a lost ticket. Oh well.