Impressions of India
Created | Updated Aug 24, 2005
IMPRESSIONS OF INDIA – THE RAILWAYS
India challenges a visitor like no other country does. It is immensely vast, ancient and unbelievably diverse. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from the Kutchh to Assam, from the ephemeral first impressions to the deepening insights, it is indeed as the advertisements call it, an experience, in itself. A truly incomparable one at that.
One such uniquely Indian experience, is of the Indian Railways. A visitor should never leave India before embarking on at least one of those long journeys by train across the country.
It begins with buying the ticket, which is a daunting task in itself. You first buy a journey ticket. That’s the easy part. But a journey ticket is useless without a reservation ticket So you move to that queue and after endless queues, the Inquiry office, the Reservations Counter, three forms and lots of red tape you get to be 18th on the waiting list. Or you can travel two days later. If you opt for the latter, it’s back to the queue again. One, of course, in due course discovers the many short-cuts available. Eighteenth on the waiting list is not as hopeless as it sounds, or you could try to get in through the VIP quota. If even that doesn’t work, you could march confidently on the train without any ticket, a friendly TC might just find some accommodation.
To compensate for all that there is the romance of an exceptionally magical journey. Once you’ve settled down comfortably, the train lurches forward leaving behind the sights and sounds of the station and emerges into a completely different world. Concrete and asphalt give way to little green and golden-brown fields of paddy and wheat, bathed in the warm glow of the softening sun, spread across the landscape as far as the eye can reach. They are interjected by ponds with idly swimming buffaloes and sunflower fields that remind you of Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’. You pass little villages and industrious field workers busy with a plough, sickle or the cattle, huge telephone poles and zigzagged wires, tiny, colourful birds perched on them…inside there are chants of ‘chai, garam chai’ , ‘coff-ee coff-eeee…’ coupled with ‘waater-waater’ and ‘idli-wada-doosai’ which increase at every station.
These stations have a life of their own. Each is a depiction of its town. Though sometimes deserted, whole villages rise, eat, cook, sleep and even work to the rhythm of the trains’ comings and goings. Hyperactive, cheeky brown faces smile at you and run wildly along the train waving all the time until your train swiftly whistles away. Inside you get acquainted with your co-passengers most of whom are inevitably friendly. A newly-married couple still in their elaborate wedding things, a Bengali babu, lips red with chewing paan, a woman clad in a 9-yard sari with another in an ultra-modern business suit, a blustering pathan from Punjab, a Tamilian Aiyer complete with ashes on the forehead, a loner in a corner tapping away at his laptop or muttering into his handset. You can hear a group of Chinese tourists in the next compartment chattering excitedly in rapid Mandarin. There’s lots of talking, eating, singing, joking, laughing, complaining about corruption and mothers-in-law, discussions on the weather, debating about the economics of the new budget, whining about how the ‘rickshaw-wallah’ in so and so town cunningly cheated every client of his…entire life-stories are told away to complete strangers all bound by an equally strange kinship materializing out of the sole explanation of travelling together.
The pandemonium of voices abruptly halts when each person gazes wordlessly at the crimson ball of fire that descends from a sky shot with pink, gold and purple till it finally disappears in to the hills and darkness falls... The Sunset. With a sigh and a yawn everyone gets back to reality. Later they prepare to go to sleep. One by one the people nod off and as you close your eyes, the silence surrounds you, broken only by the snores of the babu and the train chugging away into the night…
India challenges a visitor like no other country does. It is immensely vast, ancient and unbelievably diverse. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from the Kutchh to Assam, from the ephemeral first impressions to the deepening insights, it is indeed as the advertisements call it, an experience, in itself. A truly incomparable one at that.
One such uniquely Indian experience, is of the Indian Railways. A visitor should never leave India before embarking on at least one of those long journeys by train across the country.
It begins with buying the ticket, which is a daunting task in itself. You first buy a journey ticket. That’s the easy part. But a journey ticket is useless without a reservation ticket So you move to that queue and after endless queues, the Inquiry office, the Reservations Counter, three forms and lots of red tape you get to be 18th on the waiting list. Or you can travel two days later. If you opt for the latter, it’s back to the queue again. One, of course, in due course discovers the many short-cuts available. Eighteenth on the waiting list is not as hopeless as it sounds, or you could try to get in through the VIP quota. If even that doesn’t work, you could march confidently on the train without any ticket, a friendly TC might just find some accommodation.
To compensate for all that there is the romance of an exceptionally magical journey. Once you’ve settled down comfortably, the train lurches forward leaving behind the sights and sounds of the station and emerges into a completely different world. Concrete and asphalt give way to little green and golden-brown fields of paddy and wheat, bathed in the warm glow of the softening sun, spread across the landscape as far as the eye can reach. They are interjected by ponds with idly swimming buffaloes and sunflower fields that remind you of Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’. You pass little villages and industrious field workers busy with a plough, sickle or the cattle, huge telephone poles and zigzagged wires, tiny, colourful birds perched on them…inside there are chants of ‘chai, garam chai’ , ‘coff-ee coff-eeee…’ coupled with ‘waater-waater’ and ‘idli-wada-doosai’ which increase at every station.
These stations have a life of their own. Each is a depiction of its town. Though sometimes deserted, whole villages rise, eat, cook, sleep and even work to the rhythm of the trains’ comings and goings. Hyperactive, cheeky brown faces smile at you and run wildly along the train waving all the time until your train swiftly whistles away. Inside you get acquainted with your co-passengers most of whom are inevitably friendly. A newly-married couple still in their elaborate wedding things, a Bengali babu, lips red with chewing paan, a woman clad in a 9-yard sari with another in an ultra-modern business suit, a blustering pathan from Punjab, a Tamilian Aiyer complete with ashes on the forehead, a loner in a corner tapping away at his laptop or muttering into his handset. You can hear a group of Chinese tourists in the next compartment chattering excitedly in rapid Mandarin. There’s lots of talking, eating, singing, joking, laughing, complaining about corruption and mothers-in-law, discussions on the weather, debating about the economics of the new budget, whining about how the ‘rickshaw-wallah’ in so and so town cunningly cheated every client of his…entire life-stories are told away to complete strangers all bound by an equally strange kinship materializing out of the sole explanation of travelling together.
The pandemonium of voices abruptly halts when each person gazes wordlessly at the crimson ball of fire that descends from a sky shot with pink, gold and purple till it finally disappears in to the hills and darkness falls... The Sunset. With a sigh and a yawn everyone gets back to reality. Later they prepare to go to sleep. One by one the people nod off and as you close your eyes, the silence surrounds you, broken only by the snores of the babu and the train chugging away into the night…
