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On the afternoon of day we were to leave, when I told my colleagues where I was
planning to go, they asked me how I was going. Then they created confusion
about why we were going via Coimbatore when the route over Mysore-Ooty was much
simpler, and started listing out all the options. I trusted that Jainy’s friend
knew what he was doing since he was a native of Coimbatore, and to a certain
extent ignored this confusion. After some time, I got influenced and called up
Jainy repeatedly to ask him about whether he was sure of how we were going.
Finally I realized my folly and gave up, and simply went home to pack my bag.
Premaunty was at home, and I said bye to her and left around 7 PM. I had my
doubts about whether it was really a good idea to go... I always feel this
uncertainty whenever leaving a place. It was so easy to just call up Jainy and
say I’m not going to make it, after all, there was nothing already booked or
reserved as far as I knew. But this time my mind had become a bit more evolved,
and I stuck to my decision and reached the railway station at around 1920. The
others had got stuck somewhere in a traffic jam, and came only at 1950. I met
Ashok, a black belt Karate champion, and Anindia Bakshi (whose name I forgot
atleast 11 times), also learning martial arts (Tai Chi). We then took the train
to Coimbatore.
The train was almost full, with just a little space left at the door. I began
reconsidering my plan of dropping out, but thought I might as well reconsider
while standing inside the train instead of out. The thought of traveling for
8.5 hours standing didn’t exactly sound like my idea of the start of a fun
vacation. I realized my trekking backpack was too bulky, and had to find some
place to keep it. I found a place next to the bathroom and kept it on some
sacks. It was extremely congested in the train, but I was happy that it
couldn’t get worse, because it was almost 2100, time for the train to leave.
But just then, another group of people came into the train, and among vehement
protests, somehow managed to squeeze in, soon there was hardly any place to
stand. I was hoping that the train would move in the direction away from the
toilet so that the air wouldn’t come from that direction, but when the train
finally left, it was towards it. Fortunately, there wasn’t too much of a smell
since nobody had used the bathroom. I resigned myself to the fact that I would
be standing for the rest of the night, and remembered the dialog by someone
“Life is hard, but compared to what?” when I saw that one of the passengers was
standing with a bag on his head because he had nowhere to put it. I then
spotted a place where I had kept my bag, and then relieved him of it by
balancing it there. The old lady sitting on the floor there along with two
small girls was very concerned that the bags might fall on her head.
Soon the train reached cantonment, and I was aghast to see that some more
people wanted to enter the train there. The passengers refused to open the door
saying that there was absolutely no space. There was one very assertive
individual outside who demanded that the door be open since he had paid for the
tickets. Atlast, those inside relented and opened it up, and half a dozen more
people started squeezing inside. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
The bold man who had shouted came inside and looked around to assess the
situation. Then he made his decision, he opened the toilet doors, and got the
people who had just entered to go in there. He said there was nothing else that
could be done, and people have to adjust. He actually had a very pleasant
smiling face, and was a remarkable linguist speaking equally fluently in
Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. I struck a conversation with him when he said he was
from Karnataka, and wasn’t it obvious that anyone born in Karnataka would learn
all the south Indian languages. I wondered how I had missed the boat... and he
asked if I was from Malleswaram or Rajajinagar... I said yes... he said
generally people from these areas are ‘officials’ and don’t know anything other
than Kannada and English. I didn’t ask his name, so I will refer to him as
Naren. I remained an observer as around three people stood in the toilet
keeping the door open, while an old man got into the other one and kept one of
the bags inside.
The train finally left, and compared to the current congestion, the earlier
situation was luxury. Bakshi was standing on one foot for quite some time since
he couldn’t find any place for the other. As the train tugged on... I felt
things couldn’t get worse than this. It did... there was a highly irritating
odor of tobacco... that too of a beedi. The old man in the right-hand side
toilet was the culprit and immediately put it off on my rather strong request.
Time passed on slowly. Whenever I had told Amma who is generally pessimistic to
smile through her worries, she had said that I wouldn’t understand since only
the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. Now I was facing quite a hardship, and
was determined to maintain a calm mind throughout the journey, to put my own
words into practice. I tried some standing meditating and around two hours
passed. When somehow I had become comfortable, comfort being a highly relative
word, a bit of trouble started. Someone from the front wanted to go to the
bathroom. He could not think of walking through the crowd, and had crossed
above all the people’s heads by using the train’s upper berth seats, spider-man
style, and somehow managed to come here. Then he squeezed his way into the
bathroom. The old man had to come out, along with the bag, and he went in and
relieved himself. And he came out without flushing, and got blasted by Naren
and everybody else for his total lack of common sense. Though he went and
flushed immediately... the smell was still there... and made life difficult,
but I’m not sure if it finally abated or I got used to it. One of the two
little girls somehow moved to sleep in the right-side bathroom along with the
old man. As I saw this scene where we were all standing with no space between
us, with people standing in the bathrooms, my mind wandered to the ICE trains I
had traveled in Europe. ICE trains are Inter City Express trains, which are
high class extremely comfortable trains having luxurious chairs and restaurant
style tables. There is a detailed copy of the train’s itenary for each row of
seats. Each carriage has an LCD screen showing various statistics like the
current speed of the train, the time and distance to the next stop, temperature
outside, etc. One could keep a full cup of coffee on the table and it wouldn’t
spill even at 200 kmph which was the average speed of the train. However due to
some strange reason, most of the faces had some kind of forlorn expression,
when compared to the more peaceful faces around me now. I was brought back to
the present by another valiant man who was battling to reach the bathroom also
pulling along a lady. People continued on to the bathroom every now and then
and I finally had to move out of the “path” to a quieter place next to the wall
and discovered that it was a big luxury to stand leaning against the wall.
It was finally midnight, August 15th, and I was happy that I was celebrating
Independence Day with the poorest people, in the general class of the great
Indian railways... living for one night the life that probably what they go
through as routine life.
I was truly impressed that even in those conditions, some people were thinking
of others instead of themselves. Naren was helping out people whenever he
could. For e.g., he asked the old lady and kids to move away from the bags
since the bags kept falling on them, and then rearranged all the bags neatly so
that they could sit comfortably.
I tried to doze off leaning against the wall, and managed to rest for around 15
minutes. I began to feel a bit cramped and tried to change my position a bit.
When I opened my eyes, I found I couldn’t even move an inch, 15 minutes of
stillness had caused all the people around me to encroach into my small one
square foot of property. After a brief struggle I could recover my space and
rest again.
Hour after hour crawled by, with me experimenting with various styles of
standing. I was truly putting to practice the theory that I had learnt, the law
of impermanence, where I knew that this discomfort was not forever and over
time it would pass away. I had to admire Bakshi’s patience, because there was a
youth who kept dozing off on Bakshi’s shoulder putting his arms around him for
support, and Bakshi apparently didn’t seem to mind at all.
When I thought I was comfortable and I could get through this, there was
another difficulty in store. At some station in Tamil Nadu, a few more people
wanted to get in. One of the passengers inside the train kept showing his son
again and again saying look at the way even this small kid is standing; there
is no space at all. But one determined guy climbed on the staircase of the
train and didn’t get off at all even when the train started moving, and then
conveniently it was too late for him to get down, so he had to be allowed to
squeeze in. And this guy was really fat and generously contributed to the
density of people in the train. This was the last straw and I was truly being
crushed from all directions. After some time, my back became severely cramped
as I was standing in a crooked position, and had no chance in hell to
straighten it. I could only ask those around me to move a little, but they
looked back helplessly at me. This too will pass, I realized, and put up with
it. I was really surprised that my spirits were still up.
Finally around 0400 I could get out of the train at one stop, and do some
stretching, and because two people got off, I even got to sit on the staircase
i.e. door of the train when it started again. Sitting down was absolutely
heavenly. But it proved to be a bit dangerous since I kept dozing off. One of
the fellow passengers I had befriended tapped me on the shoulder and warned me
not to go to sleep, but I realized I wouldn’t be able to help it, and finally
got up and stood in the middle of the train again.
Finally at 0530 we arrived at Coimbatore, and we all uncompressed ourselves
happily on the platform. I was surprised to find myself still very energetic.
We then took a bus to Ashok’s home.
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