The First Trillionaire

Train to Mumbai

The distinct chatter and din that announces the arrival of any station had died down and the train had resumed its slow rocking movement towards its destination of Mumbai. Shail, who had lost interest in looking out of the train window after a while, lay still in her berth with a bed-sheet covering her from head to toe. Inside, her eyes were wide open and unable to keep herself still, she turned over to her left in the upper berth and pushing aside the bedcover, looked at her surroundings. Her neighbour on the upper berth, a burly guy who was the only co-passenger who had remained in this seat from the time she started her journey, usual had his eyes glued on to his almost-oversize mobile phone. She had not seen him do anything else. She looked down onto the lower berths and found that the old couple who had got into the train with her at Bhagalpur was gone. Seeing two heavy-set men engrossed in some political discussion of the state, Shail decided that she was not going to get down unless she needed to go to the toilet urgently. Making herself comfortable in her berth, she caught the eye of her young neighbour.

"Do you know the name of the last station we left?"

She was confident that the answer would be a 'No' as she had got familiar with his uninterested attitude towards his surroundings in the last few hours that they had been together in the coach.

"No, I don't know."

"I found you awake for the most part of the night. What were you doing with your mobile the whole night?"

"I was chatting with my friends on Facebook. You know how engrossing Facebook can be," he rolled his eyes.

He found her questions a bit nosy and may be too direct. He thought, "If I could be so rustic and direct like you then maybe I could say that your long fishtail braid hanging from the berth last night looked more interesting than your face."

Her voice broke his thoughts. "Well, umm...I have been hearing about this Facebook thing for some time but I really don't know anything about it. Do you mind telling me?"

He thought she was making fun of his Facebook addiction but when he looked at her, she looked really serious and had a child-like look about her face.

"It's very simple actually. You can connect with your friends and virtually anyone in the world through Facebook. You only need to register and open an account."

"I don't have many people to connect with but I'd love to open an account anyway."

For the next hour, Shail and the guy were leaning forward from their berths, their heads almost bumping together, learning the basics of Facebook. He had her open an account and a selfie is taken from her phone found its way to her profile picture.

Shail liked the friend-making aspect of Facebook the most. He said, "If you want to accept an only specific type of friend requests then you should first view their profile then think about accepting or rejecting or blocking them. Here, I am sending you a request and you can accept if you like."

Shail saw that a Gaurav Kumar had sent her a friend request and proceeded to check his profile.

"Hey, are you working as Probationary Officer (P.O) in East India Bank, Bandra-Kurla? I am going for the training in the staff training college of the same bank for one month."

"I think we are going to be batch-mates there and I just thought to update my profile so that people will know what I am up to."

She also learned about making a group page and at his insistence, made a Bhramarpur Durga temple group and uploaded a photo of Maa Durga in it. She thought to make her profile more personal and uploaded a selfie with her best companion, her mother.