To undertake a long distance train journey is a novel experience. Unlike a bus or an airplane, the train gives a lot more space to stretch and move around. It is a feeling of carrying your sitting area with you. In a tropical country like India, travelling with open windows does help create a more intimate feel to the scenery. The scenes do change causing one to reflect on life. Gazing at the distant horizon passing by adds thoughtfulness and curiosity. As a kid, train travel was a major recreational activity to our young minds. In the current travel, I am stuck inside a glass window. But I can see the land, people, trees, water and cows. Sometimes farmers stare at the train as it passes by, sometimes it goes through areas of green patch work. Rarely in the east coast the train goes through the deep forest, mountain tunnels or hilly crevices like other areas of the country. In the east we see big rivers, one following the other. Rivers are the life-blood of the country. The number and periodicity remind the traveler that the Nature is kind to human race. Rivers supply water and they help produce food. We were on the River Mahanadi. The river spans more than a mile in width. Monsoon had filled the river. It was in full swing. More water creates problem to the drainage and the current breaks the banks. The floods through Mahanadi is a frequent occurrence. Many smaller rivers drain to it over its journey in the hills. The river overflows during the rainy season. Rains in the coastal areas through cyclonic storms are another trouble. Overflowing river is apparently good for the crops since they fertilize the soil. People reconstruct the houses than leave the embankment. Human settlement over the hills at the origin of Mahanadi goes back to the paleolithic period before people settled at the Ganges. I could do the immersion ritual at any of the many holy shrines on the banks of the river Mahanadi, but I have chosen to go to Prayag. Besides it being a preferred place for the Hindus, I had connection to it through my childhood. My uncle did his graduate studies in Allahababd and I would accompany him and his friends to Prayag. It was a lovely experience to go on a boat with a full moon overhead in a summer night. I had in mind to visit the location and revisit my memory.
More rivers followed. They were not as big as Mahanadi, but fairly wide nevertheless. The coastal drainage area is totally flat. The river spreads easily. The bed fills up with silt and stone rolled from the mountains, and the river spreads in width. The width is the culmination of a dynamical balance. Most of the bed is dry in the summer. In the late rainy season, one sees water everywhere. I have done relief work for the flood-affected people in the area. My latest activity was during the rehabilitation efforts following the super-cyclone of 1999. Thousands of people perished through the devastation.
Open window train journey gives one access to myriads of vendors and hawkers who peddle food, drink and novelties to the train passengers. The passenger is a one-time buyer, one has to be careful in buying. Indian street food is manifold and diverse, the train journey helps one to sample it with the travel. Closed window blocks such access. With age we should not experiment with all material as intakes. Soumyaranjan occasionally haunts the platform in search of the goodies, but the halt period of two minutes at a station is too small to complete a transaction.
Rajdhani Express is not a good train to explore India's street cuisine. One has to be leisurely and make an effort to sample food. This train was equipped with a dining car. A train employee came around and asked for our food option like vegetarian or non-vegetarian. The food would be served at the seat. The ticket fare included the meals. It was a complete package. It appeared to be designed for business travel where sampling India has lower priority. Business products are peddled than created with a view to the needs of people.
The lunch showed up at noon. One is handed a tray with food in cups on it. There is some strange semi-fluid catered as "soup." India gets consulting help from world experts and not from her native nutritionists. There is some thinking that the "expert" should have a degree, it did not matter if the "expert" did not study the local food science. There is a large scale generalization attempted in food, dress, transport and housing. Through colonial process India was subjected to it. The free India has not found its head together. There is always a latent push to make a quick profit. The "soup" was stale and tasteless.
Development plans in India are hard. There is a camp of modern economists who read charts. They want to wipe out Indian villages, the rural economy and the native culture. Another group sticks to conservative India and would like to create Hindu nation based on old beliefs, superstitions and right of the center ideology. People following Gandhi and rationalism are lost in the middle. India's culture lives through this small pragmatic group and looks for the wholesome development of the human being. The mind is bigger than the heart and the heart is bigger than the stomach. I strongly believe that India has a message to the world through this small group. Humanity is more important than belief or food. India announced the humanity of man.
The food was low quality survival food. We had to move on. The train passed Khargapur, the big intersection where we turned westward. We had to go a few extra stops to Gaya and then change to another train. Dinner was served in similar style as lunch. We reached Gaya around 11 PM in the night. We deposited ourselves in a climate-controlled waiting hall to take rest and wait for our next train. Soumyaranjan volunteered to look for the train and wake us up in case we slept tight.
Napping at the airports or at the railway stations could be a risky adventure. Once I caught hold of a woman who pulled a suitcase below my chair at Chicago airport. She was walking away with it when I had dozed off, and just dropped it as I yelled. At Gaya, I was careful to my special bag where I carried the urns. I was told that anything left unattended can be picked up by someone. I kept my bags under my legs to give them a protective custody assuming that I would know if someone played mischief. I was lucky.
The train was in time. To find our particular compartment is always a technical matter. Various letters have to be read in dim light to achieve the objective. Porters are useful and we had a seasoned porter. A porter is seasoned when the person appeared intuitive than informed. The porter informed us that the compartment would land around a broad area. We sprinted with the porter to ride the train. Though it looked chaotic at 2 AM in the night, it was a relief to find one's name printed on an assigned sheet of paper.
We reached Allahabad at about 8 AM in the morning. I have heard that the trains in Japan respect time to the seconds. In India, the least count could be an hour. Occasionally a train could get a day late. Dynamic processes are too many. Lately terrorism and the related search have added to the process. Political protesters sometimes can block the train. But we had none of those. We slept through the early morning hours. We were nice and fresh.
