banglore trip 2

In the darkness of the night I wasn’t feeling sleepy so I was just looking out side the window of the seat of the side berth. (The seat was empty for the time being.) It was an eerie feeling watching the stations of the suburbs where the train passed as if they didn’t exist. Those stations mostly had just a couple of benches and not more than 5 lamp-posts. It seemed deserted as if no one ever visited these platforms (though you can not imagine the rush that one can see here at dawn). The train drove past the villages but I would have easily taken them to be forests but for a couple of electric bulbs that peeped out of the thatched roofs of a couple of houses. There are long thin lanes which have a lamp-post at either ends. I see a motor bike riding through a road between long trees and there is no light except for that of the motorbike. In that darkness driving through such a path is like being off to the Himalayas and meditating (I don’t think I would ever be sitting on that bike and riding through that darkness). It is bewildering to witness such a scene as I am used to seeing the intoxicated night life of cities and this does strike me at once. But not all the world is asleep. Suddenly after a few stations I find a fair going on and that brightens up the whole place with the marry-go-around, giant wheels, load music and extensive lightings. In India everyday and night is celebrated by some community or the other for some reason often superstitious or religious in nature.

When traveling by train I seldom carry a book as generally I get to talk to someone or the other. Also there is so much to see and observe. The day starts with the caterers shouting chai and coffee. It makes sense to get up early and get down from the upper berth. Coz as I witnessed there would so many of these short trip travelers who find it convenient to get into the long distance trains instead of getting into a passenger train and of course they expect us the reserved travelers to make their journeys pleasant and make space for them. wont mind if there is a couple of them but there are so many of them that this train also becomes as crowded as a passenger train. And the agony never ends actually. I mean if someone gets down at some station then there are others who broad the train to go to some other station.

During the day I see a different type of marketing going on out there. A sentimental blackmail by the handicapped beggars. How many deformities they have and they show it in the most pathetic ways. Most of the people opt not to look at them and just at the other side to pretend that they didn’t see anything. Even I used to do that sometimes but now I don’t. I don’t know the reason, but even if I don’t give them alms I don’t ignore their presence. I don’t have an explanation for that, but I don’t do it. One girl I particularly noticed was what disturbed me. You know there are some deformities that you can attribute to diseases and malnutrition and things like that. But some are examples of human cruelties and that is something I never understand. How a person can be that cruel to another. This girl draped in green cloth from top to bottom just extended a hand with just a couple of fingers on it. Also from what could be seen, her skin below her chin was completely burnt. Something just told me that it was a brunt taken out on a girl by some insensitive group of people. I wonder if anyone can commit a crime grievous enough to deserve such things. It is just how some lives are wasted. Ok moving ahead removing that picture out of my mind. Also later in the day can be seen a group of girls (possibly muslim, don’t know what gives me that feeling) that come out selling pens and light emitting toys. People just stop and look at those things but never buy them. Also sometimes I see few energetic pre-teens boys that come on selling those things.

Banglore part 1

It was a great trip to Bangalore. Short and exciting never the less. I have been to that place before. It is pretty metropolitan not in the sense that it is very populated but also in terms of the way people live there. About half of the white collared job-holders population is migrants from other state. Though there are people from everywhere, a majority of them from the eastern and north-eastern part of India. Most of them have made it their home owing to lack of job opportunities in their hometowns. The city is well maintained and growing. There is a decent civil sense that prevails. Best thing is that due so many migrants this city is multi-linguistic. I can go around speaking Hindi or English. Mostly everyone understands English.

I left from Howdah station on 6th March. My train was scheduled to depart at 8.30 in the evening and thankfully it did. It is always a new experience to visit howdah as at every hour of the day and (most part of the night) there are people moving around. Just be there for one day and you will be amazed at the number of people that come into the city and go out of the city everyday. It is the gateway through which nearly a hundred trains carrying thousands of people and tones of goods come and leave. My coach was at the very end of the platform. Thankfully I wasn’t carrying too much of luggage. I was just standing in front of the coach and suddenly I heard a loud shriek of a lady. I turned back only to find that a thief had snatched the necklace of the lady and was running. The thief was well dressed (at least not rags as I just got a glimpse from a fair distance). There are pros and cons of escaping in a crowded place. Either you are not able to penetrate through the crowd or can get lost in the crowd. What happened to that guy is not known to me. Anyways, I got into the train and it was pretty much empty though I know it was fully reserved (It was full when I went to get the ticket). I got into the train and was waiting for someone from the pantry car to come and tell me that there was dinner available, because I hadn’t brought anything and I wouldn’t find a thing at the stations where the train would halt (at least not at this hour.) So after half an hour finally a couple of them did come up. Though, they didn’t bring anything for selling. But they said that they could get me vegetarian meals. Pantry car was far off (about 12 coaches) so it did take a lot of time. In the mean time I was chatting with one of the caterer guy. It was interesting to know about the life of these people. They are allotted a train for a season i.e. they will keep traveling on the same train for a period of about 3 or months. Their day begins at 3.30 am and ends at around 11 pm. The train leaves at 8.30 pm and they get in at around 6 pm and start preparing the food for dinner. Due to lack of berths to sleep they have to sleep on the floors on the pantry car and the passengers who get on the stations may have to cross the pantry car to reach their respective coaches so they can get to sleep at 12 midnight (after a particular station passes). Then they have to get up at 3.30 am and start the preparations for breakfast. They have to keep up with the schedule that they have to prepare about 6 or 7 items. They are done with the preparations for breakfast by 7 am. They start serving out things by 5 am as things get completed. Out of experience they have a decent assumption about the amount of the vegetarian food that they can expect to get ordered for. So they start preparing that by 7.30. They then send out caterers to get order for lunch. They have a decent enough idea about the order for non-vegetarian also but since it is more expensive so they better get orders beforehand so that there is no shortage of wastage. As the people are given breakfasts the orders are collected by 9 am by which time they are done with making the rice and vegetarian curry. Then as per the orders they make the rest of the food. This activity is over by 12 noon and they start packaging and dishing out the orders by 1 pm. Thereafter they eat whatever is left over or else they just boil some rice and eat that with curry. Within an hour of them having their lunch they start taking orders for dinner. They start making snacks for the evening till the order arrives and then while the snacks are being sold, they start making the dinner. They are done with the dinner by 7 pm and they dinner is distributed by 8 pm. Then they have their dinner eating the leftover and rice. They set up everything for the next day and then go to sleep by 11 pm and again get up by 4 am for the tea coffee that they serve the next day. The most interesting thing came at the end when he told me that they don’t work by clock but by the train station that comes along the way. For example they are supposed to finish the job A by the time the train reaches the station X. So they are always aware of which station has just passed and they can slow down a little when they know that the train is running late. What makes their job more tedious (though I would call it interesting and exciting) is the different kind of people that they need to serve. All kinds of people travel in the train and they get used to reading the nature of people and then accordingly talk to them. All in all I rate it as a very difficult job and frankly passenger who talk about them don’t quite consider them to be hard working and associate the same kind of lethargy they associate with the government employees. But these people are unfazed with that. They only know one thing and that is to sell as much food as they can and they work hard towards that. Of course they accomplish something that is not easy to think, preparing and serving food on train day in and day out on the largest railway network in the world. More so they meet the people of India in all their diversity.

banglored

I am going to be Bangalored. I will be visiting Bangalore over the next weekend.

visiting baba dham (contd...)

We woke up in the morning at around 4 and started to get ready. The water was really cold so we waited for the geyser to heat it up. Though the geyser didn’t seem to be working there, or may be not as effectively as we would have wanted. Anyways hot or cold we had to take the bath and be ready in an hour. So we all got ready and got into the car that we booked yesterday night. As we came out just out side the main gate was a chai- shop. So garam garam chai was really enjoyable in that chilling weather. Wonder what the condition here would be in the months of December and January when the winter is at its peak. Anyways it was Jharkhand and as we moved forward I saw the dhoni effect taking place with a gang of 6 or 7 girls, with tikka smeared on their foreheads and cricket bat and ball in hands gearing up for a battle on the pitch nearby, maybe. One thing that I really liked was the fact that the roads there were very well built. The driver said that they were built during the time when the state was born a decade back and this area of Jharkhand was well maintained, but also there is not much of heavy duty truck to do damage to the roads. It was early in the morning so the place was quiet but some people were to be seen near the small market place. We traveled for around an hour and half. Then we reached a small market-place where no shops except the tea shops were open. We left our slippers in the car and proceeded towards the temple. As we reached the gate we were flanked by four or five pundits who would want to take us through the temple. Basically the temple compound has 22 temples but we didn’t have to go through all of them. I often pity the lack of time when on a trip to some place. Anyways we went to the main temple (the temple of lord Shiva called the baba-dham). It was pretty crowded. We took the mugs containing a mixture of Ganga-jal, milk, sandalwood paste, bhaang etc. and entered the temple. It was a small door about seven foot high and the floor was very slippery because of the water that kept spilling on the floor with people finding it hard to balance themselves in the rush. That was the rush early in the morning; I wonder what would happen when the day grows. What people do inside the temple? Well there is the top of a huge Shiva-ling that is visible and the structure is not more than a foot tall. Thought they claim there is a huge Shiva-ling beneath. People pour the water, milk etc. on the ling. With such a jam-packed area the people are literally swarming over each other and most of the mortals are bathed in the holy mixture. The pundits who sit the closest to ling keep pleading and coaxing the devotees to put some money there and the pundits that bring people into the temple keep yelling at others to give space. Thankfully the enclosure is not really large and can accommodate not more than 30 people at a time. So we get out of that place and then we are guided to the Parvati temple just opposite the one we just visited. Here the idols are placed on a platform and there are stairs that lead to them. Though they are just three steps but they are each one foot high; again it is the same wet slippery floor. Thankfully it is coarse stones else people would certainly slip and hurt themselves. (Though that does seem to be a possibility is not a certainty). There is no sense to the climbing and descending of the stairs and that is what creates a chaos of sorts. On the high platform are a couple of idols carved out of the stones. The idols carved on the walls of the enclosure are bright orange (result of being smeared with the tikka for a long time now.) We come back and buy some pedas that this place is famous for. Then we make a move towards basukhi-nath (another temple of lord Shiva about 60 kms from baba-dham). It was pretty similar to this place except for the fact that it was smaller and had a lesser number of temples in the compound and the floor was covered with marble tiles and at the entry there was a person who was beating a big drum with some vigor. Wonder whether he can carry that enthusiasm though the day. We didn’t spend much time there either. We decided to make a move and reach the Jasidhi station where we had to catch a train at 11.30 am. We reached the station an hour before the scheduled departure. We had to get some food packed that we could have on the train. It was hard to believe that it was the same station that I came to last evening, with so much movement around. It was hard to recognize the place as it was pitch dark yesterday night. I moved around to different shops enquiring what they had to offer. Got the puri and sabzi packed and returned to the station to find that the train is running an hour late. We got a couple of seats in the waiting room. I went around the station just for some time pass. It was a pretty long station for a small town. Actually at the last track of the junction the goods carriage is lightened and loaded and thus to accommodate those long trains such a long platform had been built. Just as I was roaming about I found an assemblage near a shop. I wondered what it was all about. Then on closing in I found that there was a cricket match between India and Australia, final of a series and there was a television in the shop that was beaming it. Now that explained the occasional cheer that was to be heard. Finally the train arrived half an hour late than the delayed time. No need to complain at least it came.

Trip to Deoghar

My uncle and aunt arrived from Mumbai in the morning and i went to pick them up at the airport. Well just as is possible only here the flight scheduled at 9.15 a.m landed at 8.50 and the one scheduled at 9 am arrived half an hour late.Anyways waiting inside a centrally air conditioned area doesn't hurt and also some paisa vasool on the Rs. 30 entry fee that they charge at there.
We got a pre paid taxi that took the longer route to my house as the driver wanted to drop the so called helper (or some relative of his as it could be). No qualms from us as the fare was already paid and the road was clear so not much waste for time. And the driver too would be least bothered of the fuel burnt as they charge premium price for pre-paid services.
We reach home and everyone freshens up and we are ready to leave for Deoghar. We leave the home in perfect condition as it is on its own (& we hope it remains that way) for the next 30hours. We reched the railway station one hour before the departure and the train arrived 40 min. before the departure. ( it was the source station)We all got in to the train and so did other passengers on that platform and believe me waiting on the platform is better than sitting in the train and waiting for it to move.
We were 5 of us and my ticket was for a berth in the cabin adjacent to that accommodating my uncle-aunt and my parents.We sat together and had lunch (food we brought from home). Then we decided to get some rest. I went back to my seat to find another person sleeping there. As it turned out to be the person was traveling on an unreserved ticket. Such things keep happening on trains running in these routes. This I figured out a couple of hours later when i woke up from sleep to find that the seat below the berth that is supposed to be reserved for 6 people was accommodating 9 persons and of course i was sleeping on the upper berth. It was a mix of bengalis and biharis, that was good ammunition for war of words. bengalis dont want to leave anything under the sun and have an opinion about everything whereas just keep quite and nod their head in affirmative. but then they have better ideas about the ground situations and thus have simple logic about everything. Bengalis do most of the talking till asansol and biharis after that. that is when the train moves out of bengal and enters bihar!!
There is no catering service on this train and so whatever we bought was from the local vendors and we can bargain like anything. However at the end of it the quantity of whatever they give is very less and so it is only loss for us but then we loose less. The train was running late and it was dark by the time we reached.We were anticipating the arrival of the train at the Jasidi station and just then the train stops. We thought it was waiting for the signal to enter the station. Just then the lights on the station turn on and we realize that the train has already halted beside the platform. Train doesn't stop here for long and so we grab our bags and dash for the gate.We move through the freshly lit station and move towards the exit.though it was dark there was a decent enough crowd there.As soon as we got out of the station we got plunged back into the darkness of the night. some how the auto-wallahs saw us and came to us with their own proposals to loot us.Then we started to move on the road. Just then a vehicle which in true term was like a jeep that was running on the engine of a tempo stop by us. After a bit of bargain it agreed to leave us at arogya bhavan. we reached there at 8 pm and checked in . My dad is very fond of the place . Arogya Bhavan in some sense is the original health resort concept of India. It is a lovely place and I wish that we could have spend a day or at least a morning there. It is full of well maintained gardens and it is residing as close to nature as is possible. Next day morning we are to leave for visiting the temples.