I had a free evening during a business trip, and decided to employ it by taking a walk along Chandni Chowk, which, as you might know, has been variously described as ‘quaint’, ‘right out of the 18th century’ and having ‘awesome food’. Though I'd been there a few years ago, there was much curiosity to experience it all over again.
Chandni Chowk is the road perpendicular to the Red Fort’s Lahori Gate. It is the main street, therefore the central market of the walled city of Old Delhi, which was established in 1639.
Around me, the Saturday evening traffic inches past the entrance to Chandni Chowk. Sweaty pedestrians zigzag through the maze of stuck vehicles, making no distinction between the road and the sidewalk.
The Lal Jain Mandir at the entrance to Chandni Chowk has a porch packed with feeding pigeons, with an empty verandah separating the gate from the sanctum. The sense of spaciousness is relative – the temple looked like an oasis in contrast with the choked road.
The crowd looks like it will spill over into the Gurudwara Sis Ganj that stands at the edge of the road, from where I can see a part of its inner hall. Its clean floors hold no props or furniture, only devotees occupied in their private prayers, covered heads bowed in reverence. Pigeons flutter atop the Gurudwara’s golden coloured dome that is splashed with a rich yellow cover by the rays of the waning sun.
Matchbox-like shops huddle together. Ancient houses with spacious, shady verandahs hide behind them. Most buildings in Chandni Chowk are grey, unpainted, nameless. Some are clumsily boarded up, hiding frantic attempts at bandaging ruptured surfaces. Crumbling, doddering are the words that come to mind – not historic, monumental.
Here, even the new and the modern dons a sober garb. The Cafe Coffee Day is on the ground floor of a wrinkled yellow building that looks like a seedy lodge. State Bank of India’s branch is situated in a town-hall like building, complete with wide staircase and tall pillars by the entrance. The golden arch of McDonald’s fronts a dull red house with fading paint, the grey underneath showing in places like a badly patched dress.
Chandni Chowk is dusty, old fashioned. Yet people throng in their multitudes, in expensive cars, autos and buses alike; its streetside shops are patronised alike by hip teens and tentative young women in cotton salwars.
Families came for an evening outing; young couples came to court; groups of collegians hung out. Shirtless daily wage workers push brimming hand carts past the shoppers.
Food is Chandni Chowk’s chief occupation -- some might say preoccupation. Purani Jalebiwala, whose board reads ‘Old Famous Jalebiwala’, serves up glistening jalebis dripping with ghee and replete with a wholesome taste I had never experienced before. The pea samosas that followed would have been great their own right, but they paled in the bountiful presence of the jalebis.
Parathewali Gali is a narrow, twisting lane full of low-roofed eateries, each proclaiming its pedigree. One was founded in 1890, another was active for 6 generations, yet another had a six word name. All announced matter of factly that they use ‘shudh desi ghee’.
The ‘parathas’ here are uncharacteristic – more like stuffed pooris or bhaturas than the more traditional flat version. These are thick, oily, rich - the greasiness drowning the taste of the stuffed vegetable and spices. There is no nuance, none of the subtleties of taste I had anticipated from a street named after them.
Across the road is yet another narrow lane, just wide enough to allow two or three people to walk abreast. People throng the entrance of the lane, and gradually trickle within. Natraj Dahi Bhalle, the alu tikki guy who had been recommended to me, is right at the entrance to the lane.
The alu tikkis look crisp, with a sharpness on their surface, but turn out to be soft and succulent as I dug into them. I mentally lament that alu tikkis are largely absent in South India, and have only a poor cousin in the form of ragda patties in West India.
There is more food all along the road – chaats, samosas, lassis, and even a government-run liquor shop sandwiched in there.
I abandoned my linear trek along Chandni Chowk to explore the streets and bylanes, tempted in part by their lyrical, wistful names – I walked along the Gali Ghantewali, Dariba Kalan ('Street of the Incomparable Pearl') and ‘favvara’ (fountain), among other places. The name Chandni Chowk itself comes from the moonlight reflecting from a canal that used to flow through the center of what is now the main road.
For all the poetry in the names, the buildings the streets house are greying, fragile. Delhi Public Library has piles of debris within. The Old Delhi railway station has carefully designed arches and precisely made metal pillars, if you can see through the cobwebs, the grime and the neglect. And everywhere, there is destitution, poverty: often, you sidestep vagrants as you progress through the narrow lanes.
Most people who frequent Chandni Chowk insist that its charms come from its antiquity. But in practice, the romance of the ancient is masked, obscured, by grime and the all pervasive squalor. The charms of the past can be endured only in small doses – you long, thus, for a speedy return to the comfortable cocoon of swankier locales.
No sooner wished, than done - only a long, largely deserted flight of steps separates grimy Chandni Chowk from the antiseptic cleanliness of the underground Metro station. Seated in air conditioned comfort in one of its shiny cars, I leave the old world behind and head, with a sense of relief, into the comfortable familiarity of 21st century New Delhi.
(This perhaps is a good point to say thanks to the good friend who gave recommendations.)
¶ 4:30 PM 2 Comments
I was on a journey that’d let me see all of Kerala in the rain. I wanted to see the South West monsoons at their most bountiful, draping what is perhaps their favourite region in India. I hoped to view India’s most popular tourist state from a vantage point that it’s not been seen from too often – the train footboard.
As the train sped southwards in the darkness and persistent rain, name boards on wayside stations switched from Kannada to Malayalam. Hoardings for Hoorulyn brand burqas and New Age brand dhothies appeared by the trackside. Silhouettes of the first coconut trees surfaced from the shadows, dwarfing and sheltering all other vegetation.
What remained unchanged were the inundated fields and gushing water bodies. Unchanged too was the violence of even the smaller streams that furiously tossed about branches and other remnants of vegetation.
The Parasuram express is named after the man who, according to legend, carved out Kerala by hurling his axe into the sea. Even though it plies a distance of 634km from Mangalore to Trivandrum, it is practically a series of short distance trains. People hopped in and out of it every hour or two – with hardly anyone traveling more than 3 or 4 hours.
Nearly all the somnambulists from Mangalore got off at Kasargode, 46km away. Folks who replaced them would alight in another two hours at Cannanore, 86km further downstream. Purposeful office goers boarding there would go an hour or two till Telicherry or Calicut, only to be replaced by college students and work delegations headed to Trichur. This relay would go on until the last cohort of office returnees alighted in Trivandrum, 14-odd hours from the faraway mists of 4:15am.
Around Bekal, 65km from Mangalore, tearing streams occasionally revealed just a little glimpse of the open sea. Just as the train put on a burst of speed, the green of the coconut groves abruptly gave way to a vast openness. Just a few hundred metres away was the open sea, its greenish-blue stretches merging into the inky twilight sky far, far away. The two or three minutes of this proximity seemed to last forever. Inevitably, the train swerved inland and moved on, ruthlessly pushing back the view until it was a mere memory.
Cannanore, 130km from home, came at 7am. The folks who entered were already the fourth set of people on the train. Calicut, best known because it was Vasco da Gama’s port of call, came by at 8:35am, 221km into the journey. The day was just beginning for the folks coming in freshly bathed and breakfasted. I was already a long way into my day, as I tucked into the thankful warmth of upma and watery tea.
Past Calicut, there was water everywhere. Lakes and water bodies had encroached into flooded fields. Often, there was just a continuum of water punctuated by stubbles of grass within. The rivers swelled, lapping up bridge spans. The Thootha and the Bharathapuzha had water rushing almost right under my feet.
Yet, there was no despair around. In Bihar two monsoons ago, I saw refugees from the rain shivering in shacks by the trackside. There was none of that here. Houses stood steady. Schoolkids waved happily to the train. Women unmindfully waded through water-logged verandahs. Everywhere along the route, groups of men crouched under umbrellas, intent in games of cards.
The railway was never alone. Often, coconut groves cocooned the track tightly on either side. Houses had the railway tracks for their front yards. Hillocks loomed alongside the tracks after Shoranur, 307km into the ride. The infrequent clearings, water bodies and fields felt like an opening up, a relief from being accompanied all the time.
Lunch came by at 1:30pm in Ernakulam, lesser half of the better known Cochin. I had the hobson’s choice of any dish as long as it was badly-cooked biriyani. As Parasuram lurched out of the city limits, the sun came out briefly. Waterlogged rice fields stretched out in the fuzzy light. Their silver surfaces carried imperfect reflections within them.
Pepper and rubber trees surfaced. Town names grew longer. Attempts to register Tripunithura’s name made me nearly miss the sight of the pagoda-like station building that stood in proud isolation in the downpour. At Mulagunnathukavu, I didn’t stand a chance of noticing any detail of the station.
Kottayam came at 3pm, and looked like a forest-town. Passengers, of course, continued their in-and-out-of-the-train medley. Soon, the Parasuram express entered Alleppey district, which has most of the backwaters that Kerala is known for. Most backwaters are canals that branch out from Vembanad and Ashtamudi lakes. I’d see the latter lake shortly, which gets its name from its octopus-shape.
Dirty grey clouds loomed above. The Pampa river was an unassuming, modest stream, but as full and overflowing as the other water bodies. In two weeks it would host the famous boat races at Alleppey.
Thick threads of rainwater sheeted down, forming a near-opaque curtain in front of me. Canals and rivulets surged ahead with vehemence, with none of the languidness suggested by the word ‘backwater’. Metres away from the deluge, I gratefully held the hot tea in my chilly hands at Kayankulam at 4pm. It was 529km into the day by now.
The train skirted the Ashtamudi lake, which, perhaps by its enormity, gave the impression of placidity, even in the furious rain. The contours of the lake curved away tantalisingly. But the train persisted in bestowing its attentions on it. After perhaps two kilometres or so of this futile courtship, the Parasuram express impatiently swung away. It clearly had no intention of following the footsteps of the Island Express, which had plunged into this lake in 1988.
This rejection, of course, wasn’t the end of the world for Parasuram. It cavorted with the Kilimukkam lake, rendered wetter by the pouring rain, and caught a glimpse of the lake dissolving into the immensity of the sea. This lake too, of course, turned out to be unattainable for Parasuram.
After another stroll amid coconut groves, the inevitable happened. The grey that had filled the sky all day turned just a shade deeper – a foreboding of the arrival of evening twilight. Thatched roofs, copses and rivulets gave way to concrete buildings, shops and traffic filled roads. Trivandrum, the end of the journey was nigh. Fourteen odd hours by greenery, in the rain didn’t quite seem enough.
The Parasuram express squeaked into the solemn, majestic stone buildings of Trivandrum Central. The square, clean-cut edifice seemed to have come too soon, as it rounded off a day spent in the abundance of unspoilt, newly washed stretches.
**
Arrival # last-but-one was at Pune. The first sight there was the rear of platform 1. Cement-grey backdrop. Never been painted. Looked like it never deserved to be. Only a few bored, listless porters and tramps. Great ambience for a godown, but not exactly red carpet material.
More bleakness when I stepped out of the station. 8am, and the sun didn’t look like it’d ever come out.
Hotel Kundan Palace gave me a heavily carpeted and cushioned room. Tried way too hard for a red carpet. Much heaviness, stuffiness in the room.
10am. Skies diffused from mere sunless-ness to near-darkness. Dampness and dankness seeped through the gloom, I could only helplessly watch as they did so. The inevitable finally happened. Rain began to belt down, it was not to stop for two days.
Essentials such as local-food sampling had to wait. Relative luxuries such as cell and internet connections didn’t stand a chance. Vehement bursts puncutuated lulls in the rain, dissuading me from any attempts at going out.
The watery, lukewarm tea matched the weather just fine. Pathetic attempts at continental cuisine fit the mood just right. The cook even managed to make bad curd rice.
It was only slightly warm under a blanket. The wetness outside sucked the coziness out of any warmth there was within.
There was only so much peering-at-rain-outside-window that you could do.
**
The last arrival was on a bike. I was out of Mysore in the chill of early morning. Cold shafts of air rushed into my crouched upper body. Twas an invigorating coolness, though. The shivers it caused were those of alertness, not fright. Perhaps what coolness does to you depends only on what you feel like letting it do.
At 7, the coolness had slowly condensed into the chirpy warmth of morning. By 8, it was a bright sunniness amid which I was coasting away. Smooth, straight, steady, amidst equanimity. The bike was a near-noiseless purr of effortlessness.
I got out of the hotel at Kalpetta after a late breakfast. The world was a different one now. A grey smokiness had come out of nowhere and flung itself across the clear blue skies of the morning. There was rumbling in the distance. There was a hint of hesitation, a teeny bit of trepidation as I left the last house behind, exit the town limits, and go into the arms of the approaching thunderstorm.
The first refuge was under a tree. The precipitation gave no time to seek out man made shelter. A brave attempt at driving through didn’t succeed. I impatiently waited, twiddling fingers.
The storm subsided just a bit, I droned through the shower that remained.
Every piece of clothing on me was dripping. There was still 80km to go. The rain didn’t look like it’d stop all day. The morning’s sun was a distant memory.
Still amid the deluge, I descended the Wayanad ghats. Through the water curtain, I stared disbelievingly at the valley below, as the bike noiselessly glides down the 15km long downward slope. The only sound was that of wheels cutting through water on the road amid the tapping of raindrops. I was so wet, I wasnt feeling the clothes clinging to me any longer.
A renewed burst of rain forced another stop. By now, there was no fear of the rain. There was no exasperation in the inevitable wait. There was no helplessness in knowing that it was not going to stop anyway, or in knowing that I was going to have to drive through it anyway.
There was only the liberating feeling of knowing that the rain couldnt get me any wetter, that it couldnt do a thing. Perhaps that’s how hope begins.
**
This arrival was in the morning. Not much sleep – perhaps there was too much of anticipation of the morning. The impatience for the arrival made me cut the morning run short.
I made up for the lack of exercise by lugging boxes of material possessions. Down to the auto, into the elevator and through into the new apartment.
In every new house, there’s the inviting vacancy, emptiness, a craving for things undone and thoughts unthought. Here, today, though, there was some preoccupation with things to be done. Even the blue of the Arabian sea stretching away forever couldn’t dislodge that.
But not for long. It was in the evening, after-office, amidst twilight, when all sank in. That was when I really saw the dim lamplike glow of the lights on the beach road. I gently tiptoed to my switchboard, turned off the lights, and stood watching the row of orange embers below.
There was the sheer immensity of possibility that lay in the eternity of the deep, deep blue sea outside my balcony, as it slowly faded to black. I stood listening to the faint hum of the waves crash into the shore.
On my first day in her company, the Arabian sea made me cry.
¶ 5:26 PM 3 Comments
The end of the platform at Zurich Brunau slopes down to merge with the highway’s service lane. A footpath fringes the highway up ahead. After a moment’s hesitation, I decide to cycle along the footpath, and see how far it goes. A short distance on, the highway acquires a cycling-lane - a one-metre-wide space at the far-right.
**
My slow, ungeared city-cycle ambles on. I’m naturally apprehensive at first, because there’s just a line-painted-on-the-ground separating the car lane and the cycle lane. A couple of minutes’ riding is some reassurance – cars stay put in their lanes, refusing to swerve an inch on either side. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Swiss cars never ever overtake. They’re fast alright, but they aren’t in a tearing hurry, there’s none of what Bill Aitken calls the ‘animal lust for speed’.
The ones who are possessed by the said lust are the few motorcyclists there are on the road. Heads down, clad in jackets and tracksuits and protective gear like you see on TV races, they rush by furiously. Bigger, faster European bikes do nothing to ease the feeling that these guys might careen out of control at any moment. The insistent whining of their engines isnt a reassurance either. Yet the roads are empty and unclogged, so motorcycling looks fairly easy.
**
The railway track and the river Sihl flow on the left. Deep green mountains tower on the right. High amid the mountains, metallic presences jut out, as cranes claw into vegetation. The Sihl narrows at one point to reveal a stone bed with picnicking families parked thereupon. The vegetation lying across the Sihl is much closer, more discrete – so you can make out its closely packed trees and shrubs.
A side road branches out from the highway and points towards Adliswil. I decide it’s perhaps a different experience to check out a small-town instead of keeping on the highway. I park the bicycle upon the overbridge and climb down to the railway platform. I take a walk along the open-air restaurant-lobby, past the couple of coffee-sippers lazing there in the sun.
Wooden cottages of a school look like fairy-tale huts in an orchard. There’s a white-flower-blanketed playground, beside a board with childrens’ drawings. Tis Sunday, so there’s an eerie, deserted look about the school. Under a playground-tree, two teenage girls gently hold each other as they kiss tenderly, unmindful of my passing-by.
“I was looking at something to eat, lunch perhaps.”
“Uh oh. I’m afraid I havent anything – there’re some old sandwiches, that’s all. I usually have no customers on Sundays, so I don’t really make anything. I’m really sorry.”
**
I walk beside a closed pizzeria and electronics shops on what’s one of the two main roads in town. A side street reveals a grand stone building that is another school. Cyclists occasionally disappear around a far corner, seemingly into a hillock lying across the town. I enter another side lane, and sit down on the steps outside the closed doors of the stately, serene stone structure of the town chapel. I take in the empty, open, tranquility of the place, as I sit unperturbed by any external stimuli, refusing to even consult my watch.
As I look at the deep, dark brown leaves of a nearby maple tree, a football flies across the street from a house down the road. Three kids run across the road amid an abrupt burst of chatter, which sight and sound puncture the uneventfulness around.
Tis evening. I lounge around the clean, almost-polished-looking lobby of the Youth Hostel. Most publications on display, tourist guides mainly, are in German. All else that is for sale, to my amazement, is out in the open and not in locked cases – chocolates, knives, souvenirs et al.
On the evening walk, I notice a wide, neat highway some way from the hostel, so am much reassured. Unfortunately, the youth hostel receptionist isn’t so sure – she tells me cyclists aren’t allowed on the highway. I give myself a ‘such-is-life’.
**
Still, when the morning arrives, I decide I’ll at least go see the highway and will loll around the railway station next to it. I deck the self up in formals-and-tie, having decided to get out of the city right after the said stroll.
**
When I’ve pushed the cycle up the incline, I reach the top of a small knoll. Down below are the plain-grey-sheets of the two empty railway platforms of Zurich Brunau. There are two halves of a highway that unroll themselves next to the station, split into smaller roads that go on to intertwine themselves into a series of flyovers that look like contorted octopi. The side of the hill facing the track has a bright splash of yellow across it. The hillside is smothered by yellow flowers that softly, gently move in the cool, sun-suffused morning breeze.
I wade my hands across the surface of the bowl at the base of a small fountain. The steely chill of the water vibrates across my hands. There’s the constant whizz of the highway cars in the background. The platform down below is vacant; the streets behind me atop the hillside aren’t awake either.
I steer the cycle onto the top of the railway overbridge. The pairs of metallic threads below me emerge from amid edifices, and swing outwards to curve around the side of the hill. I carry the bicycle downstairs, and cycle across the length of the platform.
There’s no one else on the platform. I sit down on a bench underneath an ad, with the cycle parked next to me. Around me is the steadiness of the highway and the stillness of the flame-hued, almost-alive hill; as the plain, bare tracks quietly snake past.
¶ 10:10 AM 2 Comments
**
The Toblerone arena that was being set up in the station foyer in the morning has much more action and bigger crowds by now. Screens show videos of the story of the founders of Toblerone, the history of the company, and the process of manufacturing chocolates. People help themselves to chocolates from bowls placed around the arena - I do too.
At one long table, people put their heads down and fill stenciled outlines of the words 'Toblerone' with colours. Many others huddle behind them to watch. 5-year olds happily spill colours outside the lines, sitting beside grandmothers who fill in slowly, easily; even as twenty-somethings rub the crayons back and forth in brisk, smooth motions. People who finish make way for other passers-by who start on another sheet. A bearded man is watching his wife and kid daughter bent over the table, immersed amid their crayons. He smiles at me, points at the '100-years-of-Toblerone' balloon, and exclaims 'Magnifique chocolate, monsieur'.
At another set of tables, people take opened-up-Toblerone-wrappers and fold-and-stick them into the characteristic triangular-prism-shape of Toblerone packs. A tower is being made of these prism-packs. A crowd cheers as it expectantly looks upwards at the tower-top where a volunteer atop a ladder adds new packs. An electronic counter reads 7571, indicating the number of prisms already in the paper-tower.
I watch at one of the tables as two women and an old man are intent in their folding-into-prisms act. One of them, a girl with flaming lipstick and pierced chin flashes a radiant smile and invites me - "Why dont you join in?". A young mother who's doing the folding-and-sticking while balancing her toddler adds - "Yes, please do." After much struggle with the cellotape and gum-stick, I wish I had a few more hands to keep the folds in place. I finish my first pack with an exultant sigh, in the time the young mother's done three. The old man at the table and gives me a "'Tis okay, you only need to get used to it". My second pack is much faster, though it looks like the folds will burst apart any moment.
**
Sometime later, as I exit the station, the mum-with-toddler-at-Toblerone passes by. She spots me amid the milling crowd , lets forth an exuberant smile and does a "Hello again. How've you been?". A couple of pleasantries later comes the "Have a nice day". It's fascinating to see the warmth and affability of the people I meet, and more so when it's put in the context of prim, formal localities I see everywhere.
After being in India, you dont quite expect uninvited greetings or good wishes - it's pleasantly surprising to be able to return compliments to people you hardly know. Even random people I strike up conversations with show an unprepossessing warmth I've hardly seen elsewhere. It's all the more surprising since most people, like their city, drape themselves in formal starched-plain exteriors that can make you feel underdressed.
**
I find a part of the city that doesnt look like it's dressed up in a suit-boot-tie. In a narrow lane behind the Limmat river, there's an open square that you could call the city's flea market. It's a counterweight to the culture of the rest of the city, even though it is very insignificant in size.
Here's everything that Zurich city would shudder at. Just outside the open-square quadrangle, there're cobblestoned pedestrian-only roads; there're Asian, Mexican and Turkish food stalls; there're cloth shops that have shelves packed with clothes, unlike the spacious designer-display-shops in the rest of Zurich. Inside the quadrangle, there're vendors in t-shirts, sombreros and long beards, people who look like they have no qualms about skipping a bath. There're also Ganesha statues, necklaces made of strange beads, jewelry made of feathers, stones that are a world apart from Zurich's primary-colour-identity. ¶ 2:48 PM 11 Comments
The restaurants and cafes lazily unroll themselves, spilling their tables-chairs-clientele onto the road on the banks of the Limmat. Behind these, a hill harbours a road that shoots upwards, along which a massive hoarding advertises Lindt chocolates.
I pass a movie-memorabilia shop, and stop to look at a wayside board listing theatre and opera performances in town. Almost all are in German, and none fits my budget or time.
There are a couple of buildings with flat, towering glass facades that stick out amid the prim, ancient looking residences elsewhere. They havent the subtlety that marks the rest of the city - no statuettes and decorative motifs, not too much careful attention to detail - just one monstrous sheet of glass that rises up and spreads sideways.
At a zebra crossing ahead, four cars line up one behind the other and wait for a young father to push a pram across the road.
**
I walk through residential areas, streets harbouring apartments. The houses, while neat and proper, offer hardly any sign of life. You see no people milling about, no one on the balconies leaning out of houses, hardly any clothes hung to dry, hardly any windows or doors open, no one out in the flowerbeds and gardens. There are no kids playing about, no teenagers roaming the streets. In commercial areas – Bahnhofstrasse and their ilk – crowds potter around, trudge gently, sit back as they populate the roadside chairs-tables of brasseries.
Life is unhurried, there’s no bustle or haste anywhere in the town.
**
At first, I tell myself the insulation really is some form of refinement – perhaps some variant of ‘I shant bother my neighbour’. But seeing this poster sprinkled all over Zurich city(including, ironically, the vicinity of the airport) makes me wonder if there is something deeper:
I was a tad surprised at the bluntness of the message, bespeaking some desperation. A little less paranoia perhaps could have led to a more tactful(not to mention more convincing) ad. The one below, incidentally, was another ad in the same campaign.
You’d think that a city with so much to enjoy, contemplate, appreciate would give its denizens nothing to worry about. Still skeptical, I told myself that surely this was not really representative of the entire populace’s opinion – maybe a far right fringe bunch(for the posters were a part of a poster-and-mass-media ad campaign
I think back, and realize I’ve hardly seen any non-whites in
A pub owner I meet a few days later, a Kosovar immigrant, mentions how impossibly difficult he was finding it to get a Swiss passport, even though he’d stayed here twenty or so years. The process is crazily drawn out – you’ve to take language tests, and in what looks an almost medieval practice, the residents in your town have to ‘approve’ of you by a vote.
**
Understandably, the ad campaign set off alarm bells in
The SVP, of course, has much to say in its defence. Ulrich Schueler, the man who created the sheep campaign said, "That's nonsense. It's not against race. It's against people who break laws. People are fed up." Another party member, Bruno Walliser had to say, “The black sheep is not any black sheep that doesn’t fit into the family. It’s the foreign criminal who doesn’t belong here, the one that doesn’t obey Swiss law. We don’t want him.”
Cyclists, skaters and walkers have begun to crowd the sides already – there are hardly any cars. The lanes that cut the Bahnhofstrasse are half occupied by chairs and tables of brasseries. These have begun to fill up with breakfasters poring over newspapers.
I need to figure out which of the stops I need to take my tram from. I ask an old man, who says he’s headed the same way. He walks me to the tram stop, and helps me with the electronic ticket dispenser. As he gets off the tram a couple of minutes later, he gives me a warm smile and a “have a nice day!”. During the course of the day, I get this pleasantly surprising greeting from the youth hostel staff, random neighbours on trams, shops where I merely browse but don’t buy - from pretty much everyone I come in contact with.
**
The first tram ride takes me through two impressive platz-es(squares, plazas) – Enge and Paradeplatz. Both are broad, open, with a couple of stalls in the centre and imposing castle-like buildings on the sides. Enge has a majestic railway station to one side and tables-chairs of cafes on another. The railway-station front has tall arches spread out in a semi-circular shape, with a teeny clock on top, almost like a white bindi.
Paradeplatz, no less ambitious, pulls off its special effects with a little help from palatial corporate offices - UBS, Credit Suisse and the rest. Both Enge and Paradeplatz still manage an air of being relaxed, let-hair-down hangouts, due to the by-now-ubiquitous roadside cafes and brasseries.
I need to make plans for the day. There are close to 40 museums in
I get myself a day pass. This will let me travel on any tram and bus in the city for an entire day. The plan, therefore, is to take random trams-buses-walks all day and explore the city.
**
I find
Each house in the city seems individually crafted, with a distinctiveness of its own, with no locality designed en masse. Yet the design is understated and anything but loud.
**
PS - None of the pics are my own. All are off the 'net.
The train is silent, glass-windowed, footboardless. As it does the short trip from the airport to the railway station, I try to get used to the novelty of the train, of the experience.
Zurich Hauptbahnhof(or Zurich Main, if you please) looks eerily like
The first sunrays work their way past the pillars and outer walls of the hallway. Early morning commuters begin to trickle in – and not all on foot. A schoolgirl wades in on skates. A disheveled young man wheels a cycle in. Two electric scooters glide through. Two old men peer out of their jackets at the ticket vending machines.
In the middle of the foyer, a massive triangular balloon gets slowly inflated. The balloon reads “100 years of Toblerone”, and bears the said brand’s insignia. Young men and women in Toblerone t-shirts form a huddle, presumably to chalk out their plans for the day. Dispersing, they use Toblerone-yellow ribbons to demarcate the central part of the arena.
One coffee stall just beyond a platform’s dead-end has just opened; I glance at its menu and try to get the hang of Swiss Francs. I’m letting the calculations, the budgeting, the conversion into rupees distract me from taking in the vastness, the grandeur of the carefully carved stone atrium. Annoyed at self for said distraction, I take a deep breath and just look.
The parfumerie, the patisserie and the kebab stall on the outer margins of the foyer are still closed. The ticket counters and helpdesks are open, but there are only officials therein. A prim middle aged man unlocks the doors of a newspaper-and-book shop. A young, incredibly pretty woman dusts the exhibits of a flower shop. The brasserie looks appealing - it has chairs and tables placed outwards, right in the main lobby of the railway station. With some three rows of chairs-tables all facing the expanse of the hallway, it gives the impression of seats at a theatre or show.
There’s still a tang of cold in the air, as if to remind me of the winter that’s just past. It is, however, spring now - mild, golden sunlight weaves through passers-by and pours itself upon the largely empty foyer.
I order a breakfast of raspberry jam, uber-bitter coffee and soft, crumbling croissants. I occupy front row seats to look at still-fairly-sparse crowds of travelers walk across the atrium towards waiting trains and large schedule-boards.
¶ 1:20 PM 4 Comments
I have some four hours to spend at the
A posse of Kingfisher air hostesses arrives with their flaming-red baggage. They wait for their luggage to get stowed away - their duty hours are yet to begin. They confer in hushed whispers, sometimes letting occasional smiles and jokes break through their trained mannerisms. The occasional anxiety and frown peeps out from behind the pink make-up and powder. One of them twiddles the blue ribbon of an Indigo check in queue that reads - 'no red tape'. The counter at the end of the ribbons is closed.
**
The coffee day bar has deep red for backdrop, with an occasional glow of mild lighting. The three tables inside arent enough for the crowd, so people step outside under a yellow stained-glass like glass ceiling. People in the queue try and balance their baggage as they dig into their pockets.
**
You realize airports do not afford you as much space or variety of views as railway stations. All I had was a fairly big hall some 100 metres across. Most stations give me the choice of the length of a multitude of platforms, as well as space outside the station. Security threats and all that ensured that I couldnt exit this hall. If only for a change of scene, I check in my baggage and move inwards into another lounge.
The inner pre-boarding lounge has commerce aplenty too. Amid the self improvement books and fiction and HBR compendia, I cant help notice one book that claims to help overcome the influence of cults, written by 'America's best known intervention specialist'.
**
There's the vague feeling of boredom in the air. People know there's a late night commute-after-flight that stands between them and the weekend. Sleep is still a couple of hours distant. People chomp on sandwiches and biscuits and stare into nothingness. My flight is still one hour away. This isn’t quite a comfort zone.
Dibrugarh station is about as big as some of the double-track town-stations through which express trains whizz by without a second glance. The overbridge stands out, emphasised perhaps by the paucity of people on the platforms. The sun is up-and-shining by now, the 5:40am here is like the 9am of elsewhere. Still, the weather is beautiful and clear – no fog or rain, tis bright and cloudless.
Going past the mud-and-puddle filled front yard, I move out of the station, and walk towards the row of cycle rickshaws. I don’t quite know where to tell them to go. I think I should perhaps just walk around town. I’ve an hour here, and no idea how big the town is, so a rickshaw would be in order after all.
“Okay. Take me on a trip around town.”
“Uhh? Where do you want to go?”
“Well, I’ve an hour here, so I want to see the town.”
“Eh?”
I’ve seen that ‘you’re crazy’ look before, yesssir.
“Okay. Take me to the bus stand. How much is it?”
“10 bucks.”
En route, I tell him to chuck the bus stand and just show me what’s worth seeing in the town.
“But there’s nothing worth seeing here.”
“Well, the streets. The shops. The like.”
“It’s not even 6. Nothing’s going to be open now.”
Ahh. It’s warm, nearly getting hot, I forget that it’s effectively a different time zone.
“That’s okay. Let’s just go around the big streets of your town.”
The empty ‘big streets’ seem to have no other prominent attribute other than their width. The ‘big streets’ haven’t been claimed by commerce – they are residential just as well. They’re just uber-wide bylanes. There’s not too much of a concentration of signboards and shutters and hoardings around. Mostly homes and porches and parked cycles and bikes and coloured wooden doors opening out onto the street.
Once in a while, there’s a wide front lobby that my rickshaw-man points out as a ‘major shop’, but most places are closed, boarded up. I have to remind myself that it’s still 6am, even though it’s broad daylight. There’s one two-storied building with a glass façade that I’m told is a prominent hotel – would I like to stay here? For a fraction of a second, I’m tempted to agree.
**
“Perhaps you’d like to see the river?”
“There’s a river here?!”
“The Brahmaputra”
Augggh. Dammit. Brahms!? Why didn’t I know that before? Of course, because I refused to look up information online, because I thought that would be like skipping to the last chapter of a mystery novel. Because I thought it’d sour any element of surprise.
“Sure thing. Go right ahead.”, say I, camouflaging my excitement with a difficult, unstable calm.
We pass a private bus agency. To be precise, we pass the painted board above the closed office. I remember the milestone on the road just outside Dibrugarh telling me Jorhat is 145km away. Temptation wells up again, growing steadily until it threatens to overwhelm existing plans. Plan B seems tantalizingly possible. I know there is a Jorhat Guwahati train leaving around 2pm, and I tell myself I’ll comfortably catch the Dibrugarh-Amritsar Express in Guwahati. For a couple of hundred bucks, that’s great RoI, say I.
Practicality, unfortunately, arrives. Some consideration, and plan is shelved. Some more money, some more time on my hands and I wouldn’t mind the uncertainties of that unscheduled detour. Not today, alas.
Hindsight vindicates me – I find in the evening that the Jorhat train's arrival is half an hour after the Amritsar one’s departure. Still, I cant quite help a tinge of regret at missing out. Next time, I’m coming here without reservations.
**
From the main road, we enter an opening between buildings that’s supposed to be a path. Stones and hardened-mud lie ahead. The rickshaw guy tells me the river’s just beyond the end of this lane. The rickshaw struggles over the stones-and-hard-mud, so I just tell him I’ll walk – no point torturing his rickshaw on this monstrous path.
We walk between a row of huts, and then pass a board advertising a ferry service across the river. Temptation puffs up yet again. This time, it brings some regret along, perhaps knowing too well that the trip cant be done.
When we reach the river bank, I’m puzzled. This is a small water body – some 30-40 metres across, staid, calm, almost like a canal. Surely this isn’t the grand swirling mini-sea that I saw outside Guwahati? No, no, tells my rickshaw guy – what you see is just a mid-river island across the water. There’s a massive part of the river on the other side of the island – it’s bigger than you've imagined. If only you had the time, he adds with a tinge of infectious regret.
I fold my arms and brace myself, for there’re gusts of cold air, even as the sunlight beams down. There’re some 20-25 men and women in sweaters and scarves waiting on a bench for the morning’s ferry, whose services are advertised by another board. The ferry, my rickshaw guy says, is the only way to go across – there’s no land route.
Sigh. The few times you manage to resist temptation end up being the few times your best experiences loom ahead.
The chill in the air is suffused with the warmth of the sun that’s sprouted and fully come out. There’s a wall-less shack that exhibits glass-jars full of biscuits and rusks. We walk in, sit down on the raised-planks of wood.
“Two cups of tea.”
“Biscuits? Nashta?” asks our 10 year old waiter.
“Nahi. Phir kabhi lenge.” I so want to mean what I said. It’s 6:15am, and I so do want to come back here. Perhaps spend a couple of days, drive around town, go across river, explore roads and places in the vicinity of the place.
The tea is a sugarless, strong concoction with very little milk. I let the intense, almost-bitter-ness of the taste linger on my tongue. The heat of the glass-tumbler-with-vertical-rims passes through to my chilled hands.
**
I have to hurry the poor rickshaw-man on our way back to the station – he halts at the station gate with some 3 minutes left for the train’s departure. For a moment, I mull about how much to pay the guy. Quickly making my mind up, I thrust a 100-buck-note into his hands and go in.
The guard tells me there's five minutes left, so I manage pick up a couple of omlettes with some scrawny, thin bread. As I walk alongside the train, it jerks itself alive and into motion. I clutch the left railing, and balancing the food in my right hand and bag on my back, hoist myself into the now-inching-ahead bogie.
My bones feel squeaky, and produce occasional snapping noises like cracking knuckles. Muscles feel like they’ve decayed to a pulp, and seem to be in a squashed, rubbery, gooey state. When the only energy expenditure you’ve done in four days is walking-to-door-and-standing-there-and-return-to-seat, you understand why the body feels uncomfortably stifled, trapped within itself. Having eaten frugally over these days hasn’t helped ease the bodily rustiness.
The hour-long stop at Guwahati, then, is just what the doc ordered. One walk all the way up and down the platform, and the muscles and bones feel slightly better. That, even though there is this persistently uneasy feeling that the paunch is slowly expanding, growing – some tummy patting gives little consolation.
I’m now right in front of the engine, having walked across the tracks and come back. I think it’d be neat to be photographed on the track between the engine-with-torchlight-headlamp that’s on one side and the signal-post-with-red-light that glares out on the other.
And before I know it, the engine leaps out from where it parks, having decided that it is time to depart, for it was already running late. It is, you’ll realize, extremely unfunny when you’re some 20 metres away from a million tonne railway engine hauling a billion tonne train, and when the said engine-and-train abruptly decide they’re going make a lunge towards you.
Yes, so 20 metres are perhaps 20 metres too many. But there still is the small matter of registering the engine’s pounce, activating instinct-of-self-preservation, leaping off the track, panting, recovering, immediately recognizing the fact that you still have to get into the train, reactivating instincts-and-reflexes, commanding whiny legs to run back like crazy, braking at just the right moment, turn around in an instant, start running in the other direction and simultaneously leaping into the speeding train.
All ended well, as you’ll have guessed by now – the episode culminated in a new world record for the aforementioned series of actions.
**
I pry my eyes open, and push the white bedsheets away. There’s mild, slight light outside the window. The watch shows a quarter to 5. I mutter a ‘huh?’ to myself. The train’s stopped. I slowly, sleepily totter to the door.
Tis New Tinsukia, under an hour from destination. There’s a gentle, soft sunlight that’s spread on the clean platform that’s hardly peopled. The station clock confirms that it indeed is a quarter to 5. It takes a while to realize that I’m now so far east that the day begins and ends much sooner – it really should be in a different time zone.
The compartment, fully occupied from Delhi till yesterday night, is only one-third or so full now. Everyone around has gotten off at various points of time in the night. No matter how often you’ve travelled, how often you’ve seen the here-today-gone-the-next-station nature of train travellers, you can never really help feeling vacant, weird when you wake up to see empty berths and seats, vacant luggage-less aisles. This, even though the infinitesimal familiarity you have with your-fellow travellers is further diluted by your parking at the door most of the journey.
**
Dibrugarh arrives at5:35 am. Getting to the Easternmost point on the Indian Railways has an Everest-ish thrill while map-gazing, while fantasizing. Reaching Dibrugarh for real doesn’t have the adrenalin-and-excitement of the fantasies – there’s a calm, an understated peace about it that makes you feel content about all that’s come on the way. I look out from the door as the train squeals slowly through the suburbs of the town. I realize I don’t quite know what to expect from Dibrugarh Town. I mean, hey, so it’s the Easternmost point on the Indian Railway. But what’s an Easternmost-point-on-a-railway *supposed* to look like? And what is one supposed to do, having gotten to the Easternmost-point-on-a-railway?
Still, the anticipation, the expectation that has been building up all these days has been quite an experience. The build up is somewhat like the trip to Chamarajnagar station that I did when I was 8 or so. Chamarajnagar was(and is) the dead end before the Nilgiris thwart any attempts at railway line building. I remember the days before that trip, almost jumping in expectation of seeing a place where the tracks would just stop. They just wouldn’t go further, and I couldn’t imagine *how* that would be possible. I mean, hey, tracks are supposed to go on and on and on, right? How could they just *not* continue?
Very often, when you do give yourself a build-up, such an eager sense of expectation, it turns out that your destination is much more familiar-seeming, much more un-exotic than you thought. You go far away from where you are, and yet you find the land, the people, the crowds aren’t new, aren’t novel. Somehow, not seeing something radically new doesn’t disappoint you – it’s a reassurance, a comfort, a feeling of belonging. Perhaps that just means you’ve made your peace with the place.
**
So, what plans have I for Dibrugarh town? Scheduled arrival is 5am, and I’ve planned a fleeting, running view of the town before moving out by the Dibrugarh-Amritsar express that leaves 6:45am. That just so I can see the 567km Dibrugarh-to-Guwahati stretch in the daytime(the stretch that passed in the night while arriving). The 5:35am arrival leaves just around an hour to check out the town.
**
There's really no commerce, industry or activity intrinsic to these places, no crowds or overreaching urbaneness anywhere nearby. However, it is these towns' status as railheads gives them a supreme importance. What commerce there is revolves around the trains and transport.
New Jalpaiguri, then, is the archetypal frontier town. It seems designed more as a marker, a milestone than to actually harbour people. It really wants no role other than that of a junction. One grand, massive railway station, and seas of uninhabited nothingness along the tracks on either side. You walk up to the engine, and you can see the fields and emptiness right ahead. I keep thinking of Jolarpettai, and fond memories of one-evening-amid-the-sunset there pop up. I've only 20 minutes here now, but am reassured by the prospect of a 5 hour wait-for-train here while returning.
Among other passengers is a young lady with dad. Splits life between Delhi and her town in East Assam, where she's headed with Dad. Isnt that the town where there was a major shootout last week, I ask. Oh well, happens so often, we dont really notice it. Once again, I don’t quite feel like the 'we always imagine it all happens to someone else' line, so I shush. As if sensing what was left unsaid, she says - of course, it helps that nobody in your immediate life has been caught up in the violence so far.
So, where was I going? Umm, err, say I. Pleasure trip around the country, say I. Like all travelers, she isnt content, and asks for more information. Sighing, I give brief outline of intent.
"Some people have such a passion for travel", saith the lass.
"I've heard that one before. It means 'you're crazy'"
"No. Really. All I can say is wow. I wish I could do that sort of thing."
"Tis not too difficult. Sit at your comp, book a ticket, and you're on your way! For now, you could park at the door for starters. It's not dangerous. Really."
"Umm, yes. I'll say yes, but I'll lose interest when I think of actually making the plan. Reg. footboard, dad's around now. Maybe the next time, I'll travel alone."
As the train clangs over a bridge, I spot the name of the river. I ask the young lady if that indeed is the river she's been named after. She blushes and nods.
**
"So, you must've met interesing people while traveling."
"Oh yes, tis fun, that." say I. The man-at-door-near-Mathura comes readily to mind. Nopey, not that, I cant be saying that! I do, however, tell her about the young woman at Jhansi who'd read the Hitchhiker's in Hebrew. We'd spent half a night and early morning morning walking around in crazy cold, warming ourselves by the impromptu mini-bonfires that had sprung up on the sparse platform. And while leaving, decided we wouldnt trade numbers or email IDs, and would just disappear to each other. (That, by the way, was in the hours preceding that cult classic – the Gwalior Barauni Mail)
"Well, nobody you meet on a journey is a permanent presence. Everything is transient - here today, and when you wake up tomorrow morning - poof, they're gone. That way, tis a bit like a microcosm of life in general - you cant quite expect anything to last forever. Once a journey is done, the only place it really exists is in your head."
"I'll probably never see some of these places again. At any rate, I'll never stop over and stay at these places. Knowing that you’ll never own some things, that you’ll never be a permanent part of some things doesn’t stop from loving, enjoying, appreciating them. See, you and I will never meet again. We still talk, just for this moment".
She tries to sound somewhat offended at that suggestion. "I might just pay you a visit at your post-retirement-happily-ever-after-tea-estate-villa. I hope you'll remember me then.".
As Assam is entered, the towns, the roads look more leisurely, less frantic, with plenty of space for themselves. Late in the evening, just after darkness descends, the train slows down, and ponderously, steadily goes with a slow rattle across the Brahmaputra, which is wide enough to look like an arm of a sea. There're city lights of Guwahati twinkling in the darkness, there're the lit up hills that adjoin the said city, there're glimmers in the vast water stretch right underneath me.
The squeak-to-a-halt provides a good excuse for getting off. Barauni, the boards tell me. I immediately recollect the Gwalior-Barauni Mail of a few years ago. If your're the sort who'd like to sample the messiest, filthiest train ever, you'd need look no beyond the Gwalior Barauni Mail. Still, the platform at Barauni has no evidence of squalor-levels that would befit such a legendary train. There's a coat of mist all over as I peer out from the door over the length of the platform. The hot-water+tea-bags+milk-powder is being distributed, so, the 'tea' is slowly imbibed on a stroll on the chilled platform.
**
I'm on the Eastern-UP-and-Bihar belt now. Everything there is is drowned out, literally, by the floods. The entire landscape is a huge water body occasionally pockmarked by land patches. There're stretches of water in every direction. Houses, or parts thereof, peep out like gyroscopes. Huts, and parts thereof, float atop the water. Occasional temple spires stand out, as if to reassure people that there is, indeed, a steady divine presence in all this upheaval. The railway track looks terribly frail, perched as it is upon hardly-adequate-seeming ledges amid water on either side.
The towns, when they do come, are hardly reassuring. Washed-away houses are lumped together now. Decrepitude is wholesale here. What emphasises the direness of it all is the fact that you can see the human cost of the flood. Every railway platform is brimming over with refugees from the water. They're camped upon the railway platforms, they arent quite waiting to go off on the next train. They're waiting for they know not what - there're makeshift tents and huts, cramped, stuffed amid the limited space there is. The railway platform affords the advantage of being at a slight elevation compared to the rest of the town. However, those who are unfortunate to get pushed to the edges of the platform find themselves getting shoved closer and closer to water levels by the upstream crowds.
It's a bleak, foggy, sunless morning. The rains, thankfully, have ceased today. The mind's eye is dimmed by the sights around. The makeshift tents are just feet away from where I stand at the door. People line the tracks outside the stations, in the countryside just as well, in areas where the track but is a temporarily safe bank from the advancing waters. The track is a thin line, almost like a tightrope, with water all around it. The train almost seems to tiptoe on it, hoping to get it over and done with.
**
There are, as you may have imagined, fellow passengers around my hardly-occupied seat. There's a young Army jawan, hardly 22 or so, there's a young lady with her dad, and a couple of other middle aged men. The jawan asks if I've friends in adjoining compartments. No, I tell him, I dont park at my seat because I'm at the door, that's all.
So, does he get to actually fight, shoot people, I ask, with more than a hint of sarcasm that he doesnt quite catch. Oh yes, says he, he's headed to either Sudan or Afghanistan, right after the vacation for which he's headed home. The UN forces, he adds. I remember Heller writing something like - "Young men out there figting for what they've been told is their country". It just seems way too cynical to actually quote the same, so I desist.
So, has he killed any man so far? Nopes. But he's had plenty of target practise, and workout with guns. But does that prepare him to kill a flesh-and-blood human being? To exterminate a life? The instinct of self-preservation, he is sure, will take over, so what he does need do is have his reflexes and skills ready. When it's him-or-you, you'd rather it's you than him.
What if you get cold feet? Killing isnt easy, I suppose. Well, you can back out before you get sent. Once you're there, you have to go out and fight. If you back off on the battlefield, folks on your side have orders to shoot you. The fear of death can infuse great quantities of courage into you, he adds.
Death is an occupational hazard, aint it? Well, he's had only a modest education, and this, fighting is his only chance of being of any significance in life. This is the only way he can rise above himself, he adds. He is a big man in his town because he's a soldier. If people think wars arent necessary, well, too bad - someone's got to do the job.
Somehow, speaking of death in the specific seems strangely, eerily different from speaking of it in the abstract, armchair-expert way.
**
The train wades onward. The water slowly, agonisingly recedes, subsides. The trackside crowds steadily thin down. In an hour and a half or so, all that remains is the wetness in the air. There is impoverishment around, you see the villages and houses are still ramshackle - even railway stations have shriveled down to one-chamber shacks with single-track-no-platform. But it's almost a relief to see that this is the normal course of affairs, that it's not an abrupt fury of nature that has afflicted these lands. ¶ 8:27 PM 0 Comments
One meet-up happens late in the evening, over French-fries-dipped-in-honey and jasmine tea. The friend is good enough to offer shelter for the night in his room. The already small room, being packed with books and cutlery and cooking vessels, has just about enough of a clearing on the floor to harbour the two of us. The other meeting is pushed to the next morning, when a young lady has to be woken up to be reminded of the said meeting.
So, it is after a good couple of hours of agitated activity that New Delhi station is rushed into, minutes before the half-past-9 departure. Soon, I am hovering around the platform to stock up and try to fulfil the morning's nutrition needs. A sandwich, a cool drink and my bag all vie for the patronage of my hands.
**
There is, surprisingly, a diesel engine up front, as the train shrugs past Delhi's outskirts. These arent the high rise, prosperous locales. Small matchbox-houses in rows of Lego-blocks are packed in a tight fit. Most have red-and-grey exteriors of raw, unpainted walls. Occasionally, patches of agricultural fields pop up, sometimes chimneys jut out, bang in the midst of a sea of unpainted concrete.
Sometimes, the compact, packed rows of houses yawn, revealing clearings of black fluids in still lakes or flowing rivulets. Buffaloes look like rocks jutting out of the water. Green rotting vegetation blankets nearly the entire surface of the water. Soon, the sea of dusky black that is the Yamuna wallows beneath my feet.
There is this state of uncertain urbaneness throughout. Locales dont quite seem very sure as to who precisely they are. Must they live up to an image of posh, upmarket citizens of a capital city? Are they almost-slums, the stepchildren of a grand metropolis that really is a world away? UP-villages like they were a few decades ago? Sooty, intent industrial areas like those that fringe every city? Hinterlands like they were before Delhi began its monstrous growth?
Sahibabad, Ghaziabad and even far exterior towns like Hapur seem to harbour a confused mix of all these identities. The bare, rugged neighbourhoods look impoverished but not frail. There's the weariness and disarray of the greying, bare buildings, but there's also the ambition and wannabe-ness of occasional isles of swankiness. There're expanses of aspiring industries, there're flashy, pervasive billboards that annouce upward mobility to be.
**
There follows what what your high school textbooks would tell you is the 'fertile Gangetic plain'. Wispy blue-white skies up above, swaying sugarcane and paddy and tufts of green. Open horizons that stretch on, unblocked by edifices. Innumerable canals and clear water streams tempt you to dive right in, right out the train door. You try in vain to recollect the poem - all you manage is to weed out two lines - 'All in the golden afternoon, full leisurely we glide' and 'beneath such dreamy weather', which more than suffice to send you into a warm, contented tizzy, as you lean back against the door balustrade in a comfortable recline.
**
Most towns are tiny oases of habitation amid vastnesses of agricultural land. The green of the fields wades into some of the towns too. The black water bodies and buffaloes are ubiquitous in the towns. Most towns have houses sprinkled liberally, comfortably spaced. Moradabad, Shahjahanpur, Bareilly and their ilk know there's plenty of space to go around for the entire town and more.
At Shahjahanpur, there's an ancient, ornate, deep brown bogie, one that was exclusively used by the colonial masters in another era. This rusting bogie is in apparent disuse for decades, and is parking in a just-as-aged shed. There're families that have made this shed their home, with this relic of the British Raj grandeur for backdrop. Their cooking for the day goes on in the underbrush-clad ground nearby.
As the diesel engine squeezes through rising sugarcane fields on each side, it flits through an empty, unpeopled station - Kakori. I momentary expect so see something to signify the events of all those years ago. What was I expecting to see, anyway? I realize there really shouldnt be any expectations that I should be having of the place. The Shahjahanpur - Lucknow down train remains blissfully in 1925, knowing it doesnt quite have a need to pop up in public consciousness now.
Kakori lasts maybe a minute, with my train rushing on to make up for the one hour delay. There's the town railway gate, keeping out the raring-to-go autos and carts and rickshaws and ramshackle vans - the fields and open skies begin abruptly, right after the railway gate.
**
Most stations have a barrack-like stiff-upper-lip spareness and minimalism - nothing extraneous or extravagant in their structures. Collectorgunj flashes by, a tiny single-room-single-platform station that is a faint but sweet memory of all those years ago. It's not been too hot, the sun's been gentle all through. Still, the evening makes the slanting golden sunbeams quite pleasant. Lucknow station is profusely bathed in mild honey-orange sunrays when the train squeaks in.
Post Lucknow, more sugarcane fields, more farmlands, more open spaces. Only, the skies' shades of blue deepen. Slowly, imperceptibly, a blanket is spread over the sky upstairs. I come back to my seat - the white lights inside the bogie are slightly jarring after an entire day at the door. I stare away at the darkness through the cloudy, muddly glass window - content in having to do nothing whatsoever at all.
Dinner happens. Tis tempting to go sleep, though it's just 9 or so. I decide to get to the door to get some fresh night air. There's plenty of that, yessiree. "Bhai saab, yaha pe bahut stoning hoti hai" the TTE attempts to dissuade me from door-parking - I wave him away. I stare into the darkness and up at the white pinpricks that are the stars, taking deep breaths of the cold night air. Varanasi is a while away - that'd be a good place to sleep off.
There's a mild flash outside, like a cigarette lighter. Tis not the stars, I see. There's another flash outside, and yet another. Before I know it, there're tiny, glowing lamps all around me outside the door. No, there're no houses or human presences. I wonder if I'm dreaming, if I've been transported into a fairy tale.
I take deep breaths - I cant believe this - there're seas of fireflies flickering atop trees along the track! The row of trees, lit up in mild flourescent glows, stretches on either side of the two doors, like rows of glittering Christmas trees - tis a 10 minute long performance. This isnt a biting glare, but a gentle, warm flickering and twinkling. The momentary frenzied I-dont-believe-this excitement slowly gives way to a peace, a gratitude - an ah-I-m-lucky-to-have-seen-this feeling - that leaves me thankful to the universe for having served me this surprise. ¶ 7:23 PM 1 Comments
