From: paulchem@tigger.cs.Colorado.EDU (Icarus)
Subject: Trains - II.
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 02:27:41 GMT


1] This is a write up about train travel in India.
   If you dont like writeups about train travel hit "n" now.



2] 
    Sometimes I wonder if it was just my fading memory or whether the
  train from hubli to sholapur really ran so slow. We would have the last
  compartment to ourselves, as passengers using it as a link for a longer
  journey for which we had reservations. The ticket collector would tell 
  us to keep the doors closed so the villagers would not get in. You had
  to pay two rupees for the reservation of those hard wooden benches.
  And the village people from bagalkot, gadag, bijapur and the countless
  other small stations that dot that line could not pay even that much.

   Ironic it seems now, the train ran so slowly and stopped so often and 
  the fields that surrounded us in the summer that I remember were so 
  beautiful with the thousands of sunflower radars that tracked the sun 
  changing the brown dry drought stricken land into a short lived dream 
  of fertility, that we would jump off the train and run a few metres ahead,
  place a 1 rupee coin on the rail and watch the ruthless steel wheels
  flatten it into foil, the lions of saranath embossed on the coins now
  turned into parodies of elephants.

   We sat on the steps careless and lazy, the early monsoon showers so
  welcome they felt like mist. 

   When I travelled from madras to bokaro to work for the steel authority
 of India, I took the steel city express. It touched rourkela, vizag,
 jamshedpur, bokaro and  passed close to durgapur and bhilai. All the
 steel plants connected together in a epic rail route that went through
 tamil nadu, andhra pradesh, orissa and bihar. Travelling first class
 thanks to the generosity of the government I had a compartment all to 
 myself. I spent the time reading up on steel and heavy industry in 
 India. Around vizag the door to my cabin came off in my hands. It was
 a largish door and I had to exert myself trying to put it back in its
 groove. I tried for about a hour before giving up and storing the door
 under my berth. It felt good to look out of the cabin on both sides with
 out any obstruction whatsoever. An attendant managed to warn me about
 the no-door cabin bandits who specialize in this kind of thing. 

 I got a railway official at a intervening station to do the needful.
 He called in a muscleman at a chai stall who lifted the door on to 
 the supporting mechanism in one swift movement, as if he did it all
 the time, which I think he did.     I left the door open and fell
 asleep and did not wake up till late into the night when all hell broke
 loose outside. I ran to the window where I saw fat red faced people 
 making desparate faces at me through the glass window and gesticulating
 in an alarming manner. I opened the door and a marwadi family of 9 
 along with a maid servant and followed by the ticket collector crowded
 into my cabin.  I listened impassively while an middle aged man explained
 to the ticket collector that they were the recieving commitee for the
 national football team playing at Rourkela. The ticket collector expressed
 mild surprise about all the commitee members looking alike. And anyway
 what was a 6 year old girl doing in this commitee. 

  There was a flash of a wallet and a handshake. The man and the t.c. 
 suddenly became very friendly. As the family settled into their 
 pieces of wooden seat, I waited with baited breath for them to 
 try to close the door.
 And soon enough I heard the man tell his teenaged son:

           " Pappu, ja ke zara darwaaza band kar de beta."
              ---"Son, please close the door for us."

 And I heard footsteps moving to the door as I listened with my face
 turned toward the wall on the upper berth. There was a sliding sound
 and a huge crash. As I struggled not to give away my helpless laughter
 by pretending to fall into a coughing fit, I heard the man say:

           "Arre, yeh toone kya kiya, itne jor se kheenchna tha ?"

              --- "What have you done now ! you had to pull that hard 
            didnt you ?"

   Then there was a prolonged discussion, with the maid servant pitching
 in with her bit of advice as the family coped with this new crisis.
 I could barely hold myself still as I heard them advise the son to place
 the door against the wall and pretend nothing had happened.

   The next day morning I asked them in all innocence why the door was
 next to the wall instead of being in the usual place. I dont remember
 what they said,  anymore.

   I arrived in howrah on another trip so tired I could barely pronounce
 my name, after nearly four days of traveling. It was raining and the 
 whole eastern power grid had failed. Howrah, after 24 hours of trains
 not moving is like the city of bombay squeezed into a subway. Escape
 is the only way you can remain sane in howrah on a rainy day with
 a one day log-jam of trains. I bought Alan Sealy's trotternama and
 read half of it sitting on my suitcase. All around me the pressure of
 the crowds was immense. The homeless poor shared the floor of that 
 giant station with the bhadralok, the upper caste educated elite of
 bengal. I have always wondered about the luminous strength in the 
 eyes of the hungry. Somewhere I have read that prolonged hunger triggered
 off some animal urge to procreate as some kind of defense against death.
 Their women would meet your eyes frankly without any trace of affected
 modesty, probably it has ceased to matter anyway, they live at a level
 where what others think has shrunk to an infinitesimal dot hidden behind
 their daily needs. I like honesty.

  When the train to rourkela finally rolled in, I fought and pushed like
 the rest of them and managed to squeeze into a place by the window. People
 shoved their nieghbhours and blew smoke in their eyes from the countless
 beedis that they smoked. I thought about the first trotter from Sealy's book.

 "Listen, Good adept, how a window seat in a train to rourkela from howrah
 is obtained. First, you buy a ticket valid for that day and trip. This
 can be easily done at the Reservation counter by standing in line for
 six hours. Once the train comes in you close your ears to all the soul
 damning abuse that the other adepts are throwing freely at each other.
 When the coaches roll by you run to a compartment that you know is first 
 class and wait till the crowd follows you and wait till they get into the 
 coach, then you run back to the unreserved coaches and jerk the door open and 
 make a dash for a seat. You must then, good adept take the handkerchief 
 which has been placed on the seat you desire as reservation by some one
 else , and place it on the floor. You then climb into place and pretend
 you understand no hindi, bengali, english or tamil or anything spoken by
 the adepts around you. This then is how a seat is obtained in a train
 from howrah to rourkela, without prior reservation. This is what I wished
 to show."

  What always amazed me is the cordiality that permeated the compartment
once the train left the station and we had our places. The we were ready
to talk and complain about the electricity and about children and about wives
and about the government.

3] Stay Cool.

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.    ~ ~                                                                     .
.    o o      signito ergo sum.              paul chemmanoor.                .
.     |    i sign therefore i am.            Computer Science department.    .
.     =                                      Univ. of Colorado, Boulder.     .
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