A week after two Calcutta schoolboys were allegedly pushed off a train taken over by ticketless travellers, Tamaghna Banerjee boarded the same Bagh Express in Bihar’s Chhapra.

What he saw was predictable yet painful — a railway official going out of his way to make the intruders comfortable, a lone guard pleading helplessness and legitimate travellers, some of whom had booked their berths months in advance, being shoved into corners.

Welcome to Incredible India.

5pm: S2 is about one-and-a-half-times full when the train rolls out of Chhapra station. People are playing cards across the aisles and are sprawled on the floors.

“Excuse me, I believe this seat belongs to me,” a young man tells a group of card players occupying berth 17 after dribbling through scores of people.

“Tohhh? Dikhta nahin hum log baithe hain. Jaa, udhar thora jagah hain, baith jaa (So what? Can’t you see that we are seated. There’s some space that side, go and sit there),” comes the reply.

The young man finds himself surrounded by a gang as he presses his point. An elderly passenger pulls him away and offers him a corner next to him to sit.

The hordes who have swamped the coach have got up from Basti, Gorakhpur or Chhapra. They will get off at Kiul, fill buckets with water from the Ganga at nearby Sultanganj and walk 105km to the Shiv temple at Baidyanath Dham. En route, passengers with overrun seats must suffer their taandav.

Incredible India!

7pm: The train pulls into Sonepur and more people rush in. There is a bigger commotion a few coaches away. Some of the pilgrims — known as kanwarias in these parts — want a ride on an AC coach, but its doors are bolted from inside.

The sleeper coaches don’t have that privilege. The doors are ajar for all, courtesy Indian Railways.

Sangram Bose of Burdwan is standing near a door of S2. “Me and my mother have reserved tickets on middle and upper berths. However, two men are sleeping on our upper berth and the middle berth can’t be pulled up as many people are seated on the lower berth. I have somehow arranged a place for my mother to sit,” he says.

A game of bridge goes on under him.

Incredible India!

8.15pm: The ticket checker arrives and Bose is the first to plead for his rightful place.

The checker listens to him and heads to the kanwarias on his seat. One of them walks a few paces with the checker and they return smiling and shaking hands.

“Why didn’t you ask them to vacate my seat?” Bose asks, exasperated.

“They would get down after a few hours... let them sit... you will also earn some of the lord’s blessings,” says the black coat.

The compartment with 72 berths has double the number of passengers by now.

Metro asks one of the kanwarias about the trick. “Bas, panchso rupaiya de diya…. Aisa to chalta hi hain…. Yeh sab hamare jaan pehchaan ke hain... hamara bahaut izzat karta hain (we simply paid Rs 500 to the checker…. These things keep happening…. This man is known to us, he respects us a lot),” Rajesh Singh of Gorakhpur says with a wry grin.

Incredible India!

8.30pm: Dinner time.

“Bhaisaab, mujhe zara bathroom jaana tha,” a passenger says from the upper berth, which he has been forced to share with another passenger with a ticket.

No response. The pickle is being spread on the chapattis.

“Let me go to the toilet, please,” the passenger repeats.

“Dikhta nahin ke hum log kha rahe hain.… Baithe rahiye (Can’t you see we are eating….),” says a thickset man in his mid-30s.

The other man on the upper berth is wiser because he travels frequently on the route. “These people don’t listen,” he whispers.

This is around the time Sreejit Karmakar and Shamik Debnath, students of El-Bethel School in Thakurpukur, were said to have been pushed off the train on August 6, when they had gone to the washroom.

Their school authorities, who had taken them on an excursion, had alleged that the compartment was so crowded that they had no clue about what was happening a few cubicles away. Sreejit died. Shamik was left with an amputated hand.

Incredible India!

10.30pm: The compartment resembles a garbage dump with food packets, newspaper wraps, plates and paan remnants all over.

The train crosses Samastipur. For some, it is time to sleep. For others, it is time to party. Bhojpuri and Bollywood tracks blare from cellphones.

Some of the kanwarias start smoking. They tap on their palms and blow the khaini in the air. “Bhaisaab, thora volume kam karenge (Will you lower the volume, please)?” pleads a man in his mid-50s.

“This train isn’t your private property… keep shut.” The pilgrims are swaying to “Ankhiyo se goli maare….”

The smoke and a wafting smell of liquor make the air suffocating. “I had to make an urgent call and my phone is out of battery but they refused to let me charge my phone,” says Tanmay Chatterjee, a PhD scholar from Calcutta.

Incredible India!

Midnight: A gun-toting Railway Protection Force (RPF) jawan walks through the compartment.

When Metro catches up with the man from Haryana, he says it is pointless to take on the intruders. “Earlier this month, one of our officers was beaten up for asking them to behave,” he says.

1.30am: The train rolls into Kiul junction. A collective sigh of relief runs through the coach. Sangram Bose, who runs a business in Burdwan, gets back his seat. His mother gets to lie down. The passengers share their tales of agony.

2am: The lights are off and there’s someone snoring. To travel by train through a large part of India, it is better to master the art of grin and bear.

Incredible India!

Who do you blame for the trauma on tracks? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com