T. I. I., This Is India
Yup. I'm still in Delhi. Still writing. I spent a chunk of September traveling. First stop was in the eastern state of Orissa, a state rich in mineral-ore and yet the most indebted region in the country.Then stopped in Calcutta (Kolkata) before going to the Sundarbans, a delta system in the Bay of Bengal that is sinking due to rising sea levels. More on these visits soon.
In the mean time, a story from a previous trip to Gwalior, a city in India's central state of Madyha Pradesh:
Stepping onto a Shatabdi train is a drastic contrast to the mayhem of India's railway stations. The stations are busy, smelly, dirty. Touts grab your bags insisting you need help carrying your luggage. In my case, a very small back pack. They would probably offer to carry you if they thought you'd give a good tip. Children with legs as thin as people's thumbs tug on your shirt for money, while homeless men dressed in the holy color of bright orange, as if they were sadhus from the mountains, brush their teeth while squatting on the side of the platform and then 'petooo'...they spit onto the track.
But when you board the Shatabdi, you escape into a bubble where in a rare instance, everything is fast, clean and polite.
Ah, the Shatabdi. Reclining chairs next to wide windows placed at optimum height for countryside viewing and air you don't mind breathing welcome you. The florescent lighting isn't a highlight, but the food is pretty good. Trays of veg or non-veg meals are included with every ticket. Full course meals. Dessert too. And no one, not even fresh-off-the-plane tourists have gotten sick from it. Shatabdis are the express trains that zip travellers from Delhi to some of the bigger cities in the north. Amritstr in six hours; Jaipur in five; Agra and the Taj Mahal in two.
But when I went to Gwalior on a Shatabdi, a city about about two hours south of Agra, I saw the chaotic India I've come to know. To be honest, I've sort of developed a soft spot for the craziness too.
Gwalior is just a short stop on the express train between Delhi and Bhopal, the Madhya Pradesh capital. No one knows how long the train will stay at the Gwalior station. A fact I didn't know. I figured there would be enough time for everyone to get on and everyone to get off. So when the train pulled in I lined up with fellow passengers to descend. But the passengers waiting to board had crowded around the doors and started pushing us back. Major gridlock and panic ensued in the teeny tiny train door, right next to the teeny tiny smelly train bathroom. All of the train exits were crammed with people trying to move through each other. Somehow in the middle of pushing, shoving, grabbing and Hindi jabbering, perhaps cursing, I found a hole between someone's leg and someone else's arm and made my move.Once on the platform I let out a nervous laugh and turned back to look at the pack of people — more like a rugby scrum — forcing its way into an opening meant for one.
When it came to make my return trip to Delhi I was prepared. The train pulled into Gwalior and people on the platform crowded the train cars. I put my pack in front of my head and rammed through the crowd. Push, nudge, force, grab, scratch, scream, shove. When I landed in the train a women in front of me was nursing her wrist that had been mangled while trying to keep her suitcase from leaving her side. She smiled and sat down in the seat next to me. We then waited a good 10 minutes before the train pulled away. Clearly enough time for people to calmly get on and off.
The logical thing would be to make the front of every train car an entrance, and reserve the back for descending. But then it wouldn't be India. It wouldn't be organized chaos. I don't know how, but somehow it all works here. Perhaps inefficiently and with a vigilante mentality, but people get done whatever it is that they need to get done.
Click here to see what I was doing in Gwalior
Views from Gwalior
Comments