Friday 25 July 2008
Friday 11 July 2008
Travel Travails on Indian Trails: Chapter 06
Recent View of Ajmer Railway Station
So back to the road, or rather rail track, this time – and that too of the meter gauge kind!
Meter gauge rail tracks were yet another left-over from the British era we still had to live with for decades after the Independence.
In the eighties of the twentieth century, the only direct train between Ajmer and Hyderabad ran on a meter gauge track. It went by the name of Kachiguda Express – a misnomer since it crawled rather than ran on a circuitous route in such a leisurely fashion I grew a healthy beard by the time I reached Hyderabad from Ajmer!
On the hot summer morning of May 3, 1980, I boarded the Kachiguda Express at Ajmer railway station. My wife and kids (I had only two then; the score went up to four by the time I completed my research) came to the station to bid me farewell.
It was a futile gesture of goodwill, anyway. Boarding a train in India is an ordeal that leaves no room for farewell kisses and parting hugs. Collective India takes over the moment you step inside a railway station, making you a member of the cosmic family also known as Vasudhev Kuttumbakum, in Sanskrit.
Although Ajmer was the starting point of the Kachiguda Express and we had reached the station nearly two hours before its scheduled departure, the Vasudhev Kuttumbakum was already in place. The platform milled with people and all the benches were taken.
The sleeper compartment I had been allocated was already so jam-packed it took me nearly half an hour to reach in the vicinity of my “reserved” berth.
Under the circumstances, it would be foolish of me to elbow my way out again to receive farewell kisses and parting hugs from my family.
Sweat-soaked, dishevelled and breathless, I somehow found a tiny ledge on a berth and fitted myself into it, hugging my suitcase.
My family in the meanwhile had visualized my predicament and drawn closer to the window with the intent of waving their hands at me and then going home.
I was not exactly at the window seat, so all they could probably see of me inside the compartment was my chin resting on my suitcase.
Conversely, all I could see of them on the platform was my wife’s left hand resting on the rump of my younger one sleeping on her shoulder.
I guess my wife had already waved farewell at me before surrendering her space at the window to some other face.
That face was now pressed into the window bars. The level of noise on the platform was so high I could see only the lips moving in communication with someone inside.
~
Assuming my family must have gone home, I now decided to assert my place in the Vasudhev Kuttumbakum I was going to travel with all the way to Hyderabad.
To achieve that end, some immediate action was called for about my suitcase so heavy with books it was crushing me to death. In addition, buffeted by the traffic inside the compartment, it had bashed my face time and again like an Indian school teacher dealing with a lazy student.
I stood up with a jerk and pushed my way in the general direction of my “reserved” berth, using the suitcase as a battering ram. Indifferent to the yells and shrieks from crushed toes and battered limbs, I finally reached my destination.
To place my suitcase under the berth, I lowered it to the floor. Then I pushed with all my might. I could hear some shin bones crackling in the process but I did not care. Curses and cries erupted around me but I did not care. Someone pummeled my back with clenched fists but I did not care.
Finding my suitcase not going anywhere under the seat, I bent down and peeped into the space. It was already crammed with suitcases, tin-trunks and bags.
‘Arre kyon tan-gay torr raha hai, come-bakht?' (‘Why are you breaking our legs, you ill-timed progeny?’) A female voice squeaked above my head. ‘Apne bucksay par baith jaw na! Sit on your box!’
Deflated, I did her bidding.
~
Legs surround me on all sides. Presently one pair of them stands up.
‘Where are you going, bhaiyya?’ Mr. Standingpairoflegs addresses me from above like the voice of God in a mythological Indian TV serial.
I’m under no obligation to answer that question, but I do.
‘Hyderabad,’ I say without looking up.
It is so crowded inside the compartment I can’t look up even if I want to.
Mr. Standingpairoflegs bends down to grab me by the shoulders and pull me upright. I see a swarthy middle-aged face inches away from mine. I have seen it before but can’t figure out where. Ajmer is a small place but not all that small either.
‘You sit here,’ he grabs me by the shoulders again and jams me into the narrow slit he has created on the bench by standing up.
On my left is a shrunken old crone in a white cotton sari. Probably she is the one who had pummeled my back with clenched fists or suggested I sit on my suitcase.
On my right is a thin, anemic-looking boy of about ten, deeply involved in digging his nose with an index finger.
‘My mother too is going to Hyderabad,’ Mr. Standingpairoflegs informs me from above. ‘And this is my boy Manohar travelling with her. Since you are travelling to Hyderabad, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind taking care of my mother and son.’
I nod my head nonchalantly. It happens all the time in the Indian trains -- especially if you are travelling third class.
‘Okay, then, I’ll make a move, amma,’ Mr. SPOL yells at the old crone, stretching a hand as far as it can go in a symbolic gesture of touching her feet. ‘Don’t hesitate to ask babuji if you need anything.’
By babuji, he means me.
With that, he turns around to elbow his way out of the compartment.
By the time the Kachiguda Express starts chugging its way out of Ajmer town, I am fairly well assimilated into my cosmic family.
~
Indians are a resilient lot, especially when they are travelling third class and that too without booking a berth or a seat.
By the time the train reaches Bhilwara, all the members of my cosmic family are settled comfortably -- in the passage, on the three-tiered sleeping berths and even inside baggage racks.
If you feel the urge, you can hop your way to the toilet over the squatters on the floor. Nobody minds being hopped over or even stepped on during a train journey in a third class sleeper compartment in India.
The Express trundles along the whole day, first through Rajasthan and then through part of western Madhya Pradesh, stopping at all stations big and small. By the time it reaches Indore, it is quite late in the evening.
To my great relief, most of the members of my cosmic family occupying the compartment floor, toilet vestibule and luggage racks have taken their leave at some station or the other and I am now the proud possessor of my first-tier “reserved” berth.
And so are the old crone and her grandson on the opposite first and second tier berths.
~
The Kachiguda Express takes such a long halt at Indore one can easily take a city tour, eat dinner in a good restaurant and be back on it well before its unknown departure time.
Daly College Indore: A School Like Mayo College Ajmer
However, I am a coward by nature when it comes to abandoning the Kachiguda Express at Indore station and going out for a sight-seeing tour of the city and then having dinner in a good restaurant.
So the best I could do during the indefinite halt at Indore was to act the unpaid personal attendant to the old crone.
Her first order was to fetch dinner for her and her grandson Manohar who lay on his back on his second-tier berth above his grandmother and continued digging his nose with the concentration of a Yogi.
Mrs. Old Crone gave me a five rupees note and ordered me to bring two Poori-bhajis from a catering stall on the platform. Fortunately, there was one just outside our compartment. I waited until the pooris were deep fried and placed on a leaf plate alongside a leaf bowl filled with bhaji. I paid eight rupees, adding three from my own pocket. Then I carried the two meals balanced precariously on my palms and delivered them to Mrs. Old Crone.
Before starting her dinner, Mrs. Old Crone extracted a brass lota (pitcher) from her copious handbag and ordered me to fetch cold water from one of the water coolers on the platform. It was located at quite a distance from our compartment. While I was filling it up with cold water, our train moved a little bit.
With half-filled lota, I sprinted back to my compartment at a speed Sardar Milkha Singh (the only Indian to win an individual Gold Medal in the Olympics so far) would have been quite proud of.
Obviously, I was scared. This train had no scheduled departure time, after all, and I don’t fall in the league of those expert Indian train travellers who step into moving trains carrying suitcases in both hands.
Anyway, it was a false start. Why the train had moved, I had no clue.
Maybe it was the wind!
Mrs. Old Crone was a little upset about the half filled lota.
‘Hey, lad, why is the pitcher half full? This is not enough even for my grandson. Do you want us to die of thirst?”
(The above is a rough translation from Hindi.)
Guiltily, I made another trip to the water cooler, mainly to atone for my cowardice.
By the time I had delivered the full lota to Mrs. Old Crone, she and her grandson had finished their dinner.
“Now go get me a sweet paan (beetle leaf mouth freshener). Zarda kumm.”
I didn't have the heart to tell her I had spent three rupees from my own pocket to fetch her dinner.
After all, what difference would it make to spend another fifty paise from the handsome travelling allowance the Government of USA was paying me for going to American Studies Research Center at Hyderabad?
Those were the days when there was no ban on smoking in the public places and paan and cigarettes were sold on the platform itself.
The kiosk of paan-cigarette was so over-crowded with customers I had to wait fifteen minutes for my turn.
We Indians can go hungry for days, if need be or if the circumstances dictate, but we cannot do without paan, cigarette or beedi at regular intervals.
Fortunately, the Kachiguda Express did not make even a single false move during that time.
~
“Keep an eye on my grandson, lad. Don’t let him wander off,” Mrs. Old Crone admonished me as she dragged her old feet laboriously to go to the lavatory, chewing her sweet paan.
Grandson Manohar seemed to be least interested in going anywhere.
He had resumed his nasal mining with a greater degree of concentration after dinner.
~
The rest of the journey to Hyderabad turned out to be the repeat performance of my debut as the Personal Attendant to Mrs. Old Crone.
During the halt at Akola station, I brought her a cup of tea and two samosas.
She ate one and saved one for Manohar who had fallen into deep sleep with his index finger deep inside one of his nostrils.
At Nanded station, I filled her lota with cold water for the seventeenth time.
At Hyderabad, I carried her tin trunk all the way to the Tanga stand outside the station.
By way of terminating my services as her temporary Personal Attendant, she said only three words: “Keep the change”.
Then she boarded her Tanga and was gone.
So back to the road, or rather rail track, this time – and that too of the meter gauge kind!
Meter gauge rail tracks were yet another left-over from the British era we still had to live with for decades after the Independence.
In the eighties of the twentieth century, the only direct train between Ajmer and Hyderabad ran on a meter gauge track. It went by the name of Kachiguda Express – a misnomer since it crawled rather than ran on a circuitous route in such a leisurely fashion I grew a healthy beard by the time I reached Hyderabad from Ajmer!
On the hot summer morning of May 3, 1980, I boarded the Kachiguda Express at Ajmer railway station. My wife and kids (I had only two then; the score went up to four by the time I completed my research) came to the station to bid me farewell.
It was a futile gesture of goodwill, anyway. Boarding a train in India is an ordeal that leaves no room for farewell kisses and parting hugs. Collective India takes over the moment you step inside a railway station, making you a member of the cosmic family also known as Vasudhev Kuttumbakum, in Sanskrit.
Although Ajmer was the starting point of the Kachiguda Express and we had reached the station nearly two hours before its scheduled departure, the Vasudhev Kuttumbakum was already in place. The platform milled with people and all the benches were taken.
The sleeper compartment I had been allocated was already so jam-packed it took me nearly half an hour to reach in the vicinity of my “reserved” berth.
Under the circumstances, it would be foolish of me to elbow my way out again to receive farewell kisses and parting hugs from my family.
Sweat-soaked, dishevelled and breathless, I somehow found a tiny ledge on a berth and fitted myself into it, hugging my suitcase.
My family in the meanwhile had visualized my predicament and drawn closer to the window with the intent of waving their hands at me and then going home.
I was not exactly at the window seat, so all they could probably see of me inside the compartment was my chin resting on my suitcase.
Conversely, all I could see of them on the platform was my wife’s left hand resting on the rump of my younger one sleeping on her shoulder.
I guess my wife had already waved farewell at me before surrendering her space at the window to some other face.
That face was now pressed into the window bars. The level of noise on the platform was so high I could see only the lips moving in communication with someone inside.
~
Assuming my family must have gone home, I now decided to assert my place in the Vasudhev Kuttumbakum I was going to travel with all the way to Hyderabad.
To achieve that end, some immediate action was called for about my suitcase so heavy with books it was crushing me to death. In addition, buffeted by the traffic inside the compartment, it had bashed my face time and again like an Indian school teacher dealing with a lazy student.
I stood up with a jerk and pushed my way in the general direction of my “reserved” berth, using the suitcase as a battering ram. Indifferent to the yells and shrieks from crushed toes and battered limbs, I finally reached my destination.
To place my suitcase under the berth, I lowered it to the floor. Then I pushed with all my might. I could hear some shin bones crackling in the process but I did not care. Curses and cries erupted around me but I did not care. Someone pummeled my back with clenched fists but I did not care.
Finding my suitcase not going anywhere under the seat, I bent down and peeped into the space. It was already crammed with suitcases, tin-trunks and bags.
‘Arre kyon tan-gay torr raha hai, come-bakht?' (‘Why are you breaking our legs, you ill-timed progeny?’) A female voice squeaked above my head. ‘Apne bucksay par baith jaw na! Sit on your box!’
Deflated, I did her bidding.
~
Legs surround me on all sides. Presently one pair of them stands up.
‘Where are you going, bhaiyya?’ Mr. Standingpairoflegs addresses me from above like the voice of God in a mythological Indian TV serial.
I’m under no obligation to answer that question, but I do.
‘Hyderabad,’ I say without looking up.
It is so crowded inside the compartment I can’t look up even if I want to.
Mr. Standingpairoflegs bends down to grab me by the shoulders and pull me upright. I see a swarthy middle-aged face inches away from mine. I have seen it before but can’t figure out where. Ajmer is a small place but not all that small either.
‘You sit here,’ he grabs me by the shoulders again and jams me into the narrow slit he has created on the bench by standing up.
On my left is a shrunken old crone in a white cotton sari. Probably she is the one who had pummeled my back with clenched fists or suggested I sit on my suitcase.
On my right is a thin, anemic-looking boy of about ten, deeply involved in digging his nose with an index finger.
‘My mother too is going to Hyderabad,’ Mr. Standingpairoflegs informs me from above. ‘And this is my boy Manohar travelling with her. Since you are travelling to Hyderabad, I’m sure you wouldn’t mind taking care of my mother and son.’
I nod my head nonchalantly. It happens all the time in the Indian trains -- especially if you are travelling third class.
‘Okay, then, I’ll make a move, amma,’ Mr. SPOL yells at the old crone, stretching a hand as far as it can go in a symbolic gesture of touching her feet. ‘Don’t hesitate to ask babuji if you need anything.’
By babuji, he means me.
With that, he turns around to elbow his way out of the compartment.
By the time the Kachiguda Express starts chugging its way out of Ajmer town, I am fairly well assimilated into my cosmic family.
~
Indians are a resilient lot, especially when they are travelling third class and that too without booking a berth or a seat.
By the time the train reaches Bhilwara, all the members of my cosmic family are settled comfortably -- in the passage, on the three-tiered sleeping berths and even inside baggage racks.
If you feel the urge, you can hop your way to the toilet over the squatters on the floor. Nobody minds being hopped over or even stepped on during a train journey in a third class sleeper compartment in India.
The Express trundles along the whole day, first through Rajasthan and then through part of western Madhya Pradesh, stopping at all stations big and small. By the time it reaches Indore, it is quite late in the evening.
To my great relief, most of the members of my cosmic family occupying the compartment floor, toilet vestibule and luggage racks have taken their leave at some station or the other and I am now the proud possessor of my first-tier “reserved” berth.
And so are the old crone and her grandson on the opposite first and second tier berths.
~
The Kachiguda Express takes such a long halt at Indore one can easily take a city tour, eat dinner in a good restaurant and be back on it well before its unknown departure time.
Daly College Indore: A School Like Mayo College Ajmer
However, I am a coward by nature when it comes to abandoning the Kachiguda Express at Indore station and going out for a sight-seeing tour of the city and then having dinner in a good restaurant.
So the best I could do during the indefinite halt at Indore was to act the unpaid personal attendant to the old crone.
Her first order was to fetch dinner for her and her grandson Manohar who lay on his back on his second-tier berth above his grandmother and continued digging his nose with the concentration of a Yogi.
Mrs. Old Crone gave me a five rupees note and ordered me to bring two Poori-bhajis from a catering stall on the platform. Fortunately, there was one just outside our compartment. I waited until the pooris were deep fried and placed on a leaf plate alongside a leaf bowl filled with bhaji. I paid eight rupees, adding three from my own pocket. Then I carried the two meals balanced precariously on my palms and delivered them to Mrs. Old Crone.
Before starting her dinner, Mrs. Old Crone extracted a brass lota (pitcher) from her copious handbag and ordered me to fetch cold water from one of the water coolers on the platform. It was located at quite a distance from our compartment. While I was filling it up with cold water, our train moved a little bit.
With half-filled lota, I sprinted back to my compartment at a speed Sardar Milkha Singh (the only Indian to win an individual Gold Medal in the Olympics so far) would have been quite proud of.
Obviously, I was scared. This train had no scheduled departure time, after all, and I don’t fall in the league of those expert Indian train travellers who step into moving trains carrying suitcases in both hands.
Anyway, it was a false start. Why the train had moved, I had no clue.
Maybe it was the wind!
Mrs. Old Crone was a little upset about the half filled lota.
‘Hey, lad, why is the pitcher half full? This is not enough even for my grandson. Do you want us to die of thirst?”
(The above is a rough translation from Hindi.)
Guiltily, I made another trip to the water cooler, mainly to atone for my cowardice.
By the time I had delivered the full lota to Mrs. Old Crone, she and her grandson had finished their dinner.
“Now go get me a sweet paan (beetle leaf mouth freshener). Zarda kumm.”
I didn't have the heart to tell her I had spent three rupees from my own pocket to fetch her dinner.
After all, what difference would it make to spend another fifty paise from the handsome travelling allowance the Government of USA was paying me for going to American Studies Research Center at Hyderabad?
Those were the days when there was no ban on smoking in the public places and paan and cigarettes were sold on the platform itself.
The kiosk of paan-cigarette was so over-crowded with customers I had to wait fifteen minutes for my turn.
We Indians can go hungry for days, if need be or if the circumstances dictate, but we cannot do without paan, cigarette or beedi at regular intervals.
Fortunately, the Kachiguda Express did not make even a single false move during that time.
~
“Keep an eye on my grandson, lad. Don’t let him wander off,” Mrs. Old Crone admonished me as she dragged her old feet laboriously to go to the lavatory, chewing her sweet paan.
Grandson Manohar seemed to be least interested in going anywhere.
He had resumed his nasal mining with a greater degree of concentration after dinner.
~
The rest of the journey to Hyderabad turned out to be the repeat performance of my debut as the Personal Attendant to Mrs. Old Crone.
During the halt at Akola station, I brought her a cup of tea and two samosas.
She ate one and saved one for Manohar who had fallen into deep sleep with his index finger deep inside one of his nostrils.
At Nanded station, I filled her lota with cold water for the seventeenth time.
At Hyderabad, I carried her tin trunk all the way to the Tanga stand outside the station.
By way of terminating my services as her temporary Personal Attendant, she said only three words: “Keep the change”.
Then she boarded her Tanga and was gone.
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