Its been four days out here. And I have been re-orienting myself. No that's not the word I am looking for. Not re-orienting, but re-'soaking' myself in things that I love about this place.
1. Travelling by locals trains to Gare de l'est, Paris. This 30 minute ride is one of my favourites. The big glass windows look out at the the most wonderful pastoral scenes. What I call 'Tin-tin country'. Scenes that I had, growing up as a child in India saw in Tintin comics. Its exactly like that.
A pointed out how fast the local trains go.
"Tomar India tey erom jorey jai"? Do they go so fast in your India? (He knows that anything said about my India, gets my goat).
"Jai, Rajdhani". (referring tot the rajdhani express between major metros and the capital).
"Can't compare that with local trains. You should compare it with TGV. OK"?
"Hmpf".
Nevertheless, its beautiful. Beautiful shades of green, brown and yellow, placid water bodies, clumps of red tiled houses, a solitary barn. Oof.
Incidentally, I was amazed, as I grew up, to learn that Tintin was not English! But Belge. And is actually Tan-tan and not tin tin as we pronounce his name in English. Snowy is Milou, Cuthbert Calculus is Professor Tournesol (sunflower), the priceless twins are Dupont and Dumont. Only Capitaine Haddock remains unchanged. Incidentally, Herge based Marlinspike on a chateau in France called Cheverny (Not to be confused with Giverny, home of Impressionist Claude Monet). I visited it some years back and was simply amazed! It was EXACTLY as in the comic book. The current owners live on the top most floor (lucky lucky). I expected a dazed Calculus to come tripping down the staircase at any moment! (If you have time to spare, do check it out. Its in the suburbs of Paris and can be seen within half a day).
2. The undeniable style! Everyone, but everyone, I am sure is aware of how stylish the French are. But I am constantly surprised by it! I saw an old lady, bent with age, walking slowly with the help of a cane....She had the most fantastic hairstyle. The kind one sees on pouting young models in glossies...One that looks so good when the coiffeur messes about with your hair, but collapses the moment you are home and looks like a mop. Needless to say, her hair didn't look like a mop! (I once saw an really old couple in an expensive lingerie shop, checking out various gorgeous, flimsy and expensive lingerie)!!!!!!
(The parisienne from my flight, remarked quite a few times on the Italian men at the airport in Rome. "Mmmmm", I said dreamily. "Actually I was referring about their great style", she added. For me, style had nothing to do with it. Oof the Italian men, I could wander around for hours in Rome and not be bothered about my next flight. No wonder I always manage the grunge look no matter how much I try otherwise)!
3. Vegetarians, please skip this one! Navarin d'agneau (a lamb curry with herbs), Sausisson fumé à l'ail (garlic flavoured smoked sausages), chorizo (spicy sausages), pâté de campagne brettone (country pate), sauté de veau avec champignons (veal sauteed with mushrooms) avec gratin (a crusty brick of potatoes and cheese baked in layers)...We are having a ball each day, living from meal to meal and spending the time in between wondering and planning on our next meal!!
4. Endless cups of strong black coffee. One does so get used to it. I remember, visiting my friend in Delhi and asking for some black sugar less coffee. The office peon listened in disbelief and asked "Kis khushi mein?" literally "in what happiness" meaning - why in the world? My friend had to firmly tell him not to put heaps of sugar and loads of milk!!
5. Paperwork. We had heaps of beaureaucratic things to do...one simply drowns in paperwork out here. Believe me, its a regular chore. But despite it all, how fast and efficiently we could wrap it all up...3 different offices visited in the same day! That I sorely miss, in India.
I could go on and on...but alas, my stomach grumbles...lunch beckons!
**********
Back from lunch to note two more points.
6.Flowers everywhere. Our town is a "ville fleurie" or a city of flowers, so to speak. Flowers everywhere. Over flowing from pots suspended from lamp posts, careful arrangements on road dividers, at various intersections, planted mind you and not growing there by themselves. These arrangements are replaced at frequent intervals to suit the season or ocassion. Very nice. Imagine a bunch of people who has to simply go around planting, potting and replanting and repotting flora!
7. Conversations with locals. Funnily enough, mostly they are with immigrants to France. The first one is ofcourse with the french-algerian owners of our favourite restaurant "La Moulin". The owner has been here for 45 years but still speaks with a slight accent. He and his progeny serve really nice homecooked french fare but the chief attraction is the algerian "Couscous Royale" - served with no less than 5 different cuts of meat!
Then we met the really nice Thai who has been since quite sometime, struggling to learn written French. She was at one time, A's classmate. She continues in the same class though A has graduated long back. "I am 46", she says; "difficult to learn anything new, let alone french"! "Even aide-menagere(household domestics) requires a diplome, nowadays". There are many like her. No chance of their ever returning to their homes and yet stuck here ever in search of a better life. Well best of luck.
The other has been with the owner of our hotel. A Parsee. Not from India, but directly from Iran. We spent an ejoyable evening with him and another Irani friend of his talking about various things including our shared past. Both of them spoke really apologetically about Nadir Shah and the peacock throne and the diamond Dariya-e-noor (the sibling of Koh-i-noor). Interestingly, the other Irani, whom I met in Paris couple of years back too seemed really apologetic about Nadir Shah! Brits are you listening?! Perhaps its natural for them to ignore it all otherwise they would have to spend most of their lives apologising and to many. (Oops did I make a politically incorrect statement, there?).
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
In transit
This is a long one....
"Biman Bangladesh? You poor thing", said a fat classmate at Alliance Française, Kolkata, on my choice of airlines to Paris, couple of years back (she was flying on a hideously expensive direct flight to somewhere and had loads of sympathy to spare for me); It indeed was for pecuniary reasons that I had first chosen to fly Biman. But now, I find myself opting for Biman for more than one reason. Most importantly, Dhaka is just just half an hour from dear Kolkata and chez parents!) I quite enjoy it, as much as one can enjoy a long haul flight while travelling cattle class (economy). Never a dull moment on this flight.
The flight from Kolkata to Dhaka is shorter than it takes me to go Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport (previously DumDum airport). Ma and R came to see me off. In fact they were dressed and waiting impatiently for me to finish packing to set off for the airport. They travel considerably less than me and never miss a chance to drop/receive me from airports and train stations, like this time, even though they hung around only for the short duration it took me to check in and then waved goodbye as I walked into immigrations.
The half an hour flight to Dhaka was completely full. I had a 5 hour wait in Dhaka along with 4 others from my flight. We got pally during the dinner. Actually, the officials announced dinner for passengers to London and Rome. Nothing about passengers to France although Rome and Paris was the same flight! There was a geologist who now does something entirely different and mundane in Canada. She and her husband, some years back took (she rued) the decision to live somewhere abroad.
There was a young lady from Milan who spent two months with "Mother Teresa" (and not Missionaries of Charity) as a volunteer. Perhaps her English wasn't too good or she really meant it when she told me with a wide-eyed kind of innocence, "Sister Nirmala is very kind: She always wished us goodnight"! After dinner, the geologist left for her flight and I was left with the skinny chap from kolkata. When I cautioned him about not leaving his hand baggage around, he confessed this was his first flight ever and he was clueless about the proceedings. He was a folk artist and was invited to play with an Italian fusion group in Milan. The chief sponsor, an Italian lady had asked him for some nilgiri tea and he had spent an enormous amount of time in between getting his visa, looking for this elusive tea.Finally a small shop sold him some, which it claimed, was authentic Nilgiri tea. The two other ladies - one Milanese and the other parisienne dozed their heads off and woke only when I shook them awake to board their flight!
Aboard, I sat next to the dozing parisienne while Ms. Milan slept all the way next to the folk artist in the row just ahead of us. I sleep badly while travelling. For one my knees start hurting in the tiny leg space (I am tall) and I have to shift pretty often and secondly, my eye lids don't meet all the way when I close my eyes, the whites of my eyes show even when I am in deep sleep causing alarm in others who take me to be dead or dying or having some epileptic fit! And the usually chirpy bangladeshi passengers keep me awake with their constant problem with their seats, babies or general chatting up with co-passengers. Everyone seems to know everyone else. Cries of 'Bhabi', 'apa' or 'bhai' rend the air. The stewardess are always pleasantly plump and rather taciturn with the endless seating problems. Only once did I encounter two really svelte beauties aboard a Biman flight and I remarked so to A and was overheard by one of the two. Boy did we get some real good service that time! They even offered A second helpings of meals, who had to alas, decline since Biman keeps feeding the passengers! This time too, we were fed 3 meals, all different from the other and not the salad and hard bun meals as on most European flights, in the 6 hours between Dhaka and Riyadh. The steward even woke us up to make sure we were properly fed. When I picked up the coffee cup and returned the entire tray back to the steward, he clucked like a mother hen and returned couple of buns and jam and butter back to me!
The terminal in Riyadh is wonderful. It looks like some futuristic building from afar and an artists idea of abstract palm trees from near, beautiful either way. , Here, we halted for an hour and watched dawn break. The parisienne started stirring and making conversation. I was amazed to find her speaking English not only fluently, more importantly, willingly! Just try to find a French person willingly speaking English. (A lady who accidentally stepped on my foot in Dhaka, turned around and said "Excuse-moi" instead of a sorry)!
In between our 4th meal enroute to Rome, she told me about her two month trip to India and about places I had never been to (but I was not going to tell her that, was I and nodded very knowledgeably to everything she said) - Benares, Jodhpur, Udaipur and even Darjeeling (no I haven't been there yet)! She bought a perfume from the inflight duty free shop but ran short of 7E which I lent her. She said she'd take it out of an ATM at Fumicino, Rome. She didn't find a single ATM at Fumicino and while she rushed about looking for one, I found the folk artist walking around dazedly. The minute he saw me, he said "No one speaks any English out here", he said accusingly, "you said they did." (He had to catch a domestic flight to Milan and didn't know how to go about it). To appease him, I helped him make a phone call to his sponsors in Milan, and to my amazement, found the dial tone exactly like a busy tone elsewhere. He got through to his contact and I left him pouring his heart out to them. I do hope he is not still wandering around Fumicino with his bag full of folk instruments.
While waiting, I made another acquaintance, a bangladeshi gentleman also enroute to Paris, who politely pointed out plump Italian rats running amok in the transit lounge, oblivious to the 100's of feet. We became quite pally and he told me (in between our mutual moanings about visa problems) about his recent trip with his newly wedded bride to Darjeeling (not again) and his sighting of the snow clad Kanchenjunga. (Like the tigers of Ranthambore, only the very lucky get a proper glimpse of Kanchenjunga, which is mostly shrouded in mist). Two passengers on the same flight - one from Bangladesh and the other from France and both have been to Darjeeling and I, despite living in West Bengal for 12 years, have made it up to New Jalpaiguri (a night from Darj). Our 1 hour transit was stretched to 3 hours because of some passenger with some visa problems. Finally after an 18 hour flight and 5 meals (6 if you count the one in the transit lounge in Dhaka) and 2 crew changes later, at Orly!
I had planned a "joyous, leaping into each other's arm, riotous" sort of reunion with A, but that was alas, not to be. The girl ran at an incredible speed despite her tiny frame and motioned me to follow, searching for her father in the crowd, to give me the money. All I could manage was a cheery wave at A. And after she had left it was too late because an artist friend of ours had come for her suitcase that I had got from Kolkata.
Her brother had rung me up the night before to ask if I could carry a suitcase. When I got the suitcase next morning, I felt embarrassed at all the brouhaha about such a tiny, light, battered suitcase. I had hemmed and hawed about excess baggage, telling him repeatedly to keep it to about 5 or 6 kilos. He called me quite a few times first about its weight and then about it's missing keys .
I made baba weigh the suitcase before letting the gentleman who brought the suitcase go. I tried the key and opened the suitcase but not without difficulty. I suspect it was some other key and the suitcase was so old that the rusty locks had a mind of their own. Inside, I was very embarrassed to find a bunch of extremely odd stuff - a pair of slippers, a doll's china tea-set, a child's exercise book, some bed linen, old correspondence, a set of Gujarati horses strung in a row, a small jar of pan masala wrapped in silver foil.
Baba who was surveying the proceedings from behind, pounced on the jar. "What is this? WHAT IS THIS? No name, no brandmarks? You might not heed my advice but you might find yourself behind bars in France. And then don't say I didn't warn you".
Next, he turned to a table cloth. "What is this?"
Looks like a table cloth, said R.
"Hmpff", said baba (disappointed no doubt at so mundane and above suspicion a thing).
He picked up a row of tiny cloth horses, "What are these stuffed with, hmm"?
"Cocaine", said R.
"DON'T JOKE. You might not heed my advice but you might find yourself behind bars in France...."
"Shut the suitcase", ma mimed at us from behind baba and R snapped it shut, the pan masala being the only casualty of this inspection, as I left it behind on our dining table. (I do hope our artist friend wont be reading this). Anyhow, there she was clad in a madcap artistic way in a salwar kameez, a naga coat, a bandhni duppatta wound around her neck like a scarf, sneakers, socks and a purple bindi.
"Oh, my brother gave you a key? I never ever lock any of my suitcases and this one was lying with him for some years now. Wonder where he got the keys from?"
Phewww! That means, hopefully she wont miss the pan masala from 2 years back or did her brother put it in just now? Maybe, she'd come to know the minute she rang him or wont she?
My mind was awhirl with musings on pan masalas while my eyes took in, sort of unbelievingly, the spic, span and empty roads in our bus, wondering at the eerie silence after the cacophony back home.
I remember the geologist who after dinner, exchanged her neatly pleated saree for a more practical trouser and t-shirt. "So many people (elderly) come to see me off at kolkata, its easier wearing a saree". Yes I understand. Its not just a change of clothing. I find myself putting on my other persona, adjusting, fine tuning to suit the spic and span, quiet and efficient, sterile beauty of life in France.
(Actually, it was only momentary...this "stunned at the silence" thing. I have readjusted very well and in only 2 days managed to stuff myself with a lot of goodies that I missed back home...and its nice to be in a private world of one's own; This is just not possible back home, not only because of the population but also the culture...but about that I will elaborate in another blog).
"Biman Bangladesh? You poor thing", said a fat classmate at Alliance Française, Kolkata, on my choice of airlines to Paris, couple of years back (she was flying on a hideously expensive direct flight to somewhere and had loads of sympathy to spare for me); It indeed was for pecuniary reasons that I had first chosen to fly Biman. But now, I find myself opting for Biman for more than one reason. Most importantly, Dhaka is just just half an hour from dear Kolkata and chez parents!) I quite enjoy it, as much as one can enjoy a long haul flight while travelling cattle class (economy). Never a dull moment on this flight.
The flight from Kolkata to Dhaka is shorter than it takes me to go Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport (previously DumDum airport). Ma and R came to see me off. In fact they were dressed and waiting impatiently for me to finish packing to set off for the airport. They travel considerably less than me and never miss a chance to drop/receive me from airports and train stations, like this time, even though they hung around only for the short duration it took me to check in and then waved goodbye as I walked into immigrations.
The half an hour flight to Dhaka was completely full. I had a 5 hour wait in Dhaka along with 4 others from my flight. We got pally during the dinner. Actually, the officials announced dinner for passengers to London and Rome. Nothing about passengers to France although Rome and Paris was the same flight! There was a geologist who now does something entirely different and mundane in Canada. She and her husband, some years back took (she rued) the decision to live somewhere abroad.
There was a young lady from Milan who spent two months with "Mother Teresa" (and not Missionaries of Charity) as a volunteer. Perhaps her English wasn't too good or she really meant it when she told me with a wide-eyed kind of innocence, "Sister Nirmala is very kind: She always wished us goodnight"! After dinner, the geologist left for her flight and I was left with the skinny chap from kolkata. When I cautioned him about not leaving his hand baggage around, he confessed this was his first flight ever and he was clueless about the proceedings. He was a folk artist and was invited to play with an Italian fusion group in Milan. The chief sponsor, an Italian lady had asked him for some nilgiri tea and he had spent an enormous amount of time in between getting his visa, looking for this elusive tea.Finally a small shop sold him some, which it claimed, was authentic Nilgiri tea. The two other ladies - one Milanese and the other parisienne dozed their heads off and woke only when I shook them awake to board their flight!
Aboard, I sat next to the dozing parisienne while Ms. Milan slept all the way next to the folk artist in the row just ahead of us. I sleep badly while travelling. For one my knees start hurting in the tiny leg space (I am tall) and I have to shift pretty often and secondly, my eye lids don't meet all the way when I close my eyes, the whites of my eyes show even when I am in deep sleep causing alarm in others who take me to be dead or dying or having some epileptic fit! And the usually chirpy bangladeshi passengers keep me awake with their constant problem with their seats, babies or general chatting up with co-passengers. Everyone seems to know everyone else. Cries of 'Bhabi', 'apa' or 'bhai' rend the air. The stewardess are always pleasantly plump and rather taciturn with the endless seating problems. Only once did I encounter two really svelte beauties aboard a Biman flight and I remarked so to A and was overheard by one of the two. Boy did we get some real good service that time! They even offered A second helpings of meals, who had to alas, decline since Biman keeps feeding the passengers! This time too, we were fed 3 meals, all different from the other and not the salad and hard bun meals as on most European flights, in the 6 hours between Dhaka and Riyadh. The steward even woke us up to make sure we were properly fed. When I picked up the coffee cup and returned the entire tray back to the steward, he clucked like a mother hen and returned couple of buns and jam and butter back to me!
The terminal in Riyadh is wonderful. It looks like some futuristic building from afar and an artists idea of abstract palm trees from near, beautiful either way. , Here, we halted for an hour and watched dawn break. The parisienne started stirring and making conversation. I was amazed to find her speaking English not only fluently, more importantly, willingly! Just try to find a French person willingly speaking English. (A lady who accidentally stepped on my foot in Dhaka, turned around and said "Excuse-moi" instead of a sorry)!
In between our 4th meal enroute to Rome, she told me about her two month trip to India and about places I had never been to (but I was not going to tell her that, was I and nodded very knowledgeably to everything she said) - Benares, Jodhpur, Udaipur and even Darjeeling (no I haven't been there yet)! She bought a perfume from the inflight duty free shop but ran short of 7E which I lent her. She said she'd take it out of an ATM at Fumicino, Rome. She didn't find a single ATM at Fumicino and while she rushed about looking for one, I found the folk artist walking around dazedly. The minute he saw me, he said "No one speaks any English out here", he said accusingly, "you said they did." (He had to catch a domestic flight to Milan and didn't know how to go about it). To appease him, I helped him make a phone call to his sponsors in Milan, and to my amazement, found the dial tone exactly like a busy tone elsewhere. He got through to his contact and I left him pouring his heart out to them. I do hope he is not still wandering around Fumicino with his bag full of folk instruments.
While waiting, I made another acquaintance, a bangladeshi gentleman also enroute to Paris, who politely pointed out plump Italian rats running amok in the transit lounge, oblivious to the 100's of feet. We became quite pally and he told me (in between our mutual moanings about visa problems) about his recent trip with his newly wedded bride to Darjeeling (not again) and his sighting of the snow clad Kanchenjunga. (Like the tigers of Ranthambore, only the very lucky get a proper glimpse of Kanchenjunga, which is mostly shrouded in mist). Two passengers on the same flight - one from Bangladesh and the other from France and both have been to Darjeeling and I, despite living in West Bengal for 12 years, have made it up to New Jalpaiguri (a night from Darj). Our 1 hour transit was stretched to 3 hours because of some passenger with some visa problems. Finally after an 18 hour flight and 5 meals (6 if you count the one in the transit lounge in Dhaka) and 2 crew changes later, at Orly!
I had planned a "joyous, leaping into each other's arm, riotous" sort of reunion with A, but that was alas, not to be. The girl ran at an incredible speed despite her tiny frame and motioned me to follow, searching for her father in the crowd, to give me the money. All I could manage was a cheery wave at A. And after she had left it was too late because an artist friend of ours had come for her suitcase that I had got from Kolkata.
Her brother had rung me up the night before to ask if I could carry a suitcase. When I got the suitcase next morning, I felt embarrassed at all the brouhaha about such a tiny, light, battered suitcase. I had hemmed and hawed about excess baggage, telling him repeatedly to keep it to about 5 or 6 kilos. He called me quite a few times first about its weight and then about it's missing keys .
I made baba weigh the suitcase before letting the gentleman who brought the suitcase go. I tried the key and opened the suitcase but not without difficulty. I suspect it was some other key and the suitcase was so old that the rusty locks had a mind of their own. Inside, I was very embarrassed to find a bunch of extremely odd stuff - a pair of slippers, a doll's china tea-set, a child's exercise book, some bed linen, old correspondence, a set of Gujarati horses strung in a row, a small jar of pan masala wrapped in silver foil.
Baba who was surveying the proceedings from behind, pounced on the jar. "What is this? WHAT IS THIS? No name, no brandmarks? You might not heed my advice but you might find yourself behind bars in France. And then don't say I didn't warn you".
Next, he turned to a table cloth. "What is this?"
Looks like a table cloth, said R.
"Hmpff", said baba (disappointed no doubt at so mundane and above suspicion a thing).
He picked up a row of tiny cloth horses, "What are these stuffed with, hmm"?
"Cocaine", said R.
"DON'T JOKE. You might not heed my advice but you might find yourself behind bars in France...."
"Shut the suitcase", ma mimed at us from behind baba and R snapped it shut, the pan masala being the only casualty of this inspection, as I left it behind on our dining table. (I do hope our artist friend wont be reading this). Anyhow, there she was clad in a madcap artistic way in a salwar kameez, a naga coat, a bandhni duppatta wound around her neck like a scarf, sneakers, socks and a purple bindi.
"Oh, my brother gave you a key? I never ever lock any of my suitcases and this one was lying with him for some years now. Wonder where he got the keys from?"
Phewww! That means, hopefully she wont miss the pan masala from 2 years back or did her brother put it in just now? Maybe, she'd come to know the minute she rang him or wont she?
My mind was awhirl with musings on pan masalas while my eyes took in, sort of unbelievingly, the spic, span and empty roads in our bus, wondering at the eerie silence after the cacophony back home.
I remember the geologist who after dinner, exchanged her neatly pleated saree for a more practical trouser and t-shirt. "So many people (elderly) come to see me off at kolkata, its easier wearing a saree". Yes I understand. Its not just a change of clothing. I find myself putting on my other persona, adjusting, fine tuning to suit the spic and span, quiet and efficient, sterile beauty of life in France.
(Actually, it was only momentary...this "stunned at the silence" thing. I have readjusted very well and in only 2 days managed to stuff myself with a lot of goodies that I missed back home...and its nice to be in a private world of one's own; This is just not possible back home, not only because of the population but also the culture...but about that I will elaborate in another blog).
Monday, September 27, 2004
Last Tango in Paris
Well hello Paris, once again.
I arrived yesterday after a 18 hour flight across half the world with stops at Dhaka, Riyadh, Rome and then Paris and 6 meals (5 inflight and 1 in transit) and emerged into a still and hushed France. The whole place seemed like a nature mort painting or something similar; Such a shock it was especially after 3 months in India and the last week aboard a train to and returning from Mumbai.
How did I ever manage to survive here for three years? Its beautiful, functional and living standards are high and all that....but where's the life?
Anyhow, this is just to say that my blogging will be a bit patchy till I return to Kolkata...and I have heaps to blog about, which I will, maybe in a week's time or two!
à Bientôt!
I arrived yesterday after a 18 hour flight across half the world with stops at Dhaka, Riyadh, Rome and then Paris and 6 meals (5 inflight and 1 in transit) and emerged into a still and hushed France. The whole place seemed like a nature mort painting or something similar; Such a shock it was especially after 3 months in India and the last week aboard a train to and returning from Mumbai.
How did I ever manage to survive here for three years? Its beautiful, functional and living standards are high and all that....but where's the life?
Anyhow, this is just to say that my blogging will be a bit patchy till I return to Kolkata...and I have heaps to blog about, which I will, maybe in a week's time or two!
à Bientôt!
Thursday, September 16, 2004
The wonderful world of local trains
Read an article in the newspaper that bhajan singers are to be banned form Mumbai local trains because of 'nuisance value'. I personally, can't vouch for their value - nuisance or otherwise, my experience of local trains being restricted to West Bengal.
As a trainee, in my first job with an NGO working with disabled children, I had to commute extensively by local trains and that was my first exposure to the incredible world that is local trains in West Bengal and infact, in India.
There was the daily rush of commuters who knew each other, had specific seats (squatter's right), the players (cards), the knitters (in gaudy colours for the mild winter), the gossipers (at top of their voices), the sleepers, the buyers and the eaters. The last two were very active and were helped the by the incredible array of merchandise being hawked by an endless stream of vendors. Perhaps because of the novelty of it all, I found it all very interesting, despite the incredible crush and the ear splitting din.
Suddenly the crowded compartment would be filled by the smell of oranges, a temporary respite from the rank odour of a thousand sweaty passengers. Men would sell beads and baubles, safety bins and bobby clips, roasted peanuts and what not, each screaming his wares in such a way so as to be heard over the tremendous din. I still remember a kid selling peanuts. He had a well practiced, low voice, that was so powerful that his words rang inside my ears and I was really taken aback to find it issuing from a kid not 10 years of age. Like the airwaves, these vendors chose different pitches to shout. The acoustics at play, was simply incredible.
There are beggars and singers as well. These range from the off-key beggars singing to eke out a living to the really melodious ones that one hears as one enters Baul country (in and around bankura). I had the pleasure of listening to one baul after another on a trip to Santiniketan. Most were quite well known to the passengers and even did requests. I think that they alone are worth the effort of going up and down the Santiniketan express even if one doesn't actually go to Santiniketan!
And then there are so many other little experiences good, bad and downright bizzare that make Indian railways quite an experience.
On Satna express, we were frightened out of our wits by a snake charmer who wanted to do his snake trick right in our bogey! It took our collective persuasive skills (and my uncle’s frightful hindi) to dissuade him!
Another time on our way to Ghatshila, very early on a wintry morning, a hijra dressed in a ghagra-choli and hair done up in a big bun came around singing a popular hindi film song 'Mera Naam hai chameli' in a hoarse, nasal voice. The hijra accompanied his singing by stomping his ghungroo tied feet and then stopping at each seat for some money. Instantly, we feigned deep comatose sleep although all of us were shaking with silent laughter. (Don't think me heartless to laugh at a enuch singing his way to a living. His nasal voice was really really funny and combined with his bejewelled self everyone in the compartment was in spilts). I had covered my head with a shawl, and just when the hijra reached our row, the chap seated next to me, reached quietly from behind and pulled off my shawl with a jerk, so that I was staring at the hijra with a horrified expression while my body was convulsed with laughter. Oof...
And in another incident, a friend and I took a local train to Icchapur where we stood out, dressed in our fashionable city clothes. A hawker was selling bengali to english vocabulary books and was having a tough time finding buyers and as a result, his frustration was showing. His voice rose higher and higher and he kept getting sarcastic about people spending money on clothes and frivolous stuff while his book could be life saver. "It’s not enough to send your children to english medium schools if your basics are not correct. Do you know the different words to describe a tiger's anatomy” and he kept circling us, growling menacingly like a hungry tiger, having zeroed in on us being obviously fluent in english or pretending to be. P and I stood back to back, the cynosure of all eyes (passengers and the Hawker), feeling terribly sorry and guilty (for being able to speak in English and thereby depriving the hawker of Rs 4/- , the price of the book he was selling) and kept imagining that at any moment, the locals would turn up as one and say Kill them...they know the names of tiger's body part in english!!
I am not sure of how good or bad these bhajan singers are, perhaps they are really bad. But if this were to set an example then Indian railways would be poorer. It’s just so much a part and parcel of Indian Railways. (Unlike abroad where everything is so quietly efficient. Three of my friends had the same reactions while travelling by the public transport abroad - where's the funeral?).
As a trainee, in my first job with an NGO working with disabled children, I had to commute extensively by local trains and that was my first exposure to the incredible world that is local trains in West Bengal and infact, in India.
There was the daily rush of commuters who knew each other, had specific seats (squatter's right), the players (cards), the knitters (in gaudy colours for the mild winter), the gossipers (at top of their voices), the sleepers, the buyers and the eaters. The last two were very active and were helped the by the incredible array of merchandise being hawked by an endless stream of vendors. Perhaps because of the novelty of it all, I found it all very interesting, despite the incredible crush and the ear splitting din.
Suddenly the crowded compartment would be filled by the smell of oranges, a temporary respite from the rank odour of a thousand sweaty passengers. Men would sell beads and baubles, safety bins and bobby clips, roasted peanuts and what not, each screaming his wares in such a way so as to be heard over the tremendous din. I still remember a kid selling peanuts. He had a well practiced, low voice, that was so powerful that his words rang inside my ears and I was really taken aback to find it issuing from a kid not 10 years of age. Like the airwaves, these vendors chose different pitches to shout. The acoustics at play, was simply incredible.
There are beggars and singers as well. These range from the off-key beggars singing to eke out a living to the really melodious ones that one hears as one enters Baul country (in and around bankura). I had the pleasure of listening to one baul after another on a trip to Santiniketan. Most were quite well known to the passengers and even did requests. I think that they alone are worth the effort of going up and down the Santiniketan express even if one doesn't actually go to Santiniketan!
And then there are so many other little experiences good, bad and downright bizzare that make Indian railways quite an experience.
On Satna express, we were frightened out of our wits by a snake charmer who wanted to do his snake trick right in our bogey! It took our collective persuasive skills (and my uncle’s frightful hindi) to dissuade him!
Another time on our way to Ghatshila, very early on a wintry morning, a hijra dressed in a ghagra-choli and hair done up in a big bun came around singing a popular hindi film song 'Mera Naam hai chameli' in a hoarse, nasal voice. The hijra accompanied his singing by stomping his ghungroo tied feet and then stopping at each seat for some money. Instantly, we feigned deep comatose sleep although all of us were shaking with silent laughter. (Don't think me heartless to laugh at a enuch singing his way to a living. His nasal voice was really really funny and combined with his bejewelled self everyone in the compartment was in spilts). I had covered my head with a shawl, and just when the hijra reached our row, the chap seated next to me, reached quietly from behind and pulled off my shawl with a jerk, so that I was staring at the hijra with a horrified expression while my body was convulsed with laughter. Oof...
And in another incident, a friend and I took a local train to Icchapur where we stood out, dressed in our fashionable city clothes. A hawker was selling bengali to english vocabulary books and was having a tough time finding buyers and as a result, his frustration was showing. His voice rose higher and higher and he kept getting sarcastic about people spending money on clothes and frivolous stuff while his book could be life saver. "It’s not enough to send your children to english medium schools if your basics are not correct. Do you know the different words to describe a tiger's anatomy” and he kept circling us, growling menacingly like a hungry tiger, having zeroed in on us being obviously fluent in english or pretending to be. P and I stood back to back, the cynosure of all eyes (passengers and the Hawker), feeling terribly sorry and guilty (for being able to speak in English and thereby depriving the hawker of Rs 4/- , the price of the book he was selling) and kept imagining that at any moment, the locals would turn up as one and say Kill them...they know the names of tiger's body part in english!!
I am not sure of how good or bad these bhajan singers are, perhaps they are really bad. But if this were to set an example then Indian railways would be poorer. It’s just so much a part and parcel of Indian Railways. (Unlike abroad where everything is so quietly efficient. Three of my friends had the same reactions while travelling by the public transport abroad - where's the funeral?).
Monday, September 06, 2004
You can fool some people all the time...
I had gone to drop A off at the Sealdah Station. After his train left, I made my way to the taxi stand through a long snaking line of taxis. Usually there is a sizeable crowd in the taxi stand but yesterday evening Sealdah itself was curiously un crowded. A young chap sat on a stool at the begining of the line, next to the first taxi. There was just one more passenger who was haggling about something.
The chap on the stool asked me where I wanted to go and I told him.
He handed me two slips and said Four Rupees please and pointed me to the next taxi. Something didn't quite seem right. I have never seen a taxi stand where one had to buy slips of paper except the Pre-paid stand where one had to pay the entire fare ahead.
What is this for? Some sort of a taxi stand fee or something?
No. No. (with a loud laugh which had everyone turning to look at us). We are collecting money for the Vishwakarma puja.
What? You never told me. I thought it was some sort of a pre-paid taxi fee.
Well you can take back your four rupees if you don't want to give it.
I felt like such a fool. I had actually gone to him and asked him "how much", after all he was just sitting there. And four rupees is not all that much to make a hoo-haa about. (It was just the principle of it but somehow making one's point is easier if the sum involved is larger). Oof the embarrassment. I gnashed my teeth silently (not vocally) since the cab driver had been witness to the entire thing!
Now that I think about it, I can't help admiring the smooth cool way they had devised to collect funds for the puja - perhaps for the taxi stand. And he was not asking for a lot, just 4 paltry rupees!
The chap on the stool asked me where I wanted to go and I told him.
He handed me two slips and said Four Rupees please and pointed me to the next taxi. Something didn't quite seem right. I have never seen a taxi stand where one had to buy slips of paper except the Pre-paid stand where one had to pay the entire fare ahead.
What is this for? Some sort of a taxi stand fee or something?
No. No. (with a loud laugh which had everyone turning to look at us). We are collecting money for the Vishwakarma puja.
What? You never told me. I thought it was some sort of a pre-paid taxi fee.
Well you can take back your four rupees if you don't want to give it.
I felt like such a fool. I had actually gone to him and asked him "how much", after all he was just sitting there. And four rupees is not all that much to make a hoo-haa about. (It was just the principle of it but somehow making one's point is easier if the sum involved is larger). Oof the embarrassment. I gnashed my teeth silently (not vocally) since the cab driver had been witness to the entire thing!
Now that I think about it, I can't help admiring the smooth cool way they had devised to collect funds for the puja - perhaps for the taxi stand. And he was not asking for a lot, just 4 paltry rupees!
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Lessons learnt at the Railway Reservation Counter
I went to the Eastern Railway booking office this morning and learnt the following:
West Bengal is ahead in women's liberation stakes. There were four counters with a sizeable crowd in each but unlike elsewhere including capital Delhi, no "women-only" counter! Women are obviously considered at par with men, and up to standing for long hours in hot stuffy reservation queues, shoulder to shoulder with the men. Don't know if this is quite what we wanted.
Road to Salvation is through the queues at the Eastern Railway reservation counter. An elderly vaishnavite monk in saffron robes and chandan marks on his forehead and down his nose was taking an inordinately long time at the ticket counter. He finished and then we had just moved a place forward when he returned to the window once more. The others were obviously not very happy about it but let him through where he exchanged angry words with the clerk who kept telling to go to another counter. Turned out they kept giving him a side berth which he did not want because of "disturbances" due to a constant stream of passengers going to and fro from the toilets as well as attendants and vendors. Quite lost his cool. Looked quite odd for the swamiji to lose his cool so. But perhaps the Indian Railways are enough to rile even the wisest sage. And who knows maybe his order sent him here as some sort of a final test!!
The third one pertains to Murphys law (I think) - the slowest line is always the one you are in. A and I stood in different lines (one of us was bound to reach the window before the other). Two old ladies took their time at the counter fumbling over their reservation form. The clerk kept returning their half filled form and pointing out errors or something they had missed. And they kept clucking and smiling. The clerk took his time counting and recounting the money. The sighs and occasional grunts of impatience had by now grown to a loud murmur. A young chap was quite vocal. One of the two old biddies asked him to pipe down because they couldn't hear what the clerk was saying. The young chap asked them to use an hearing aid. The biddies then indulged in 'today's youngsters, how rude, what is this country coming to' for another 5 minutes with much clucking and seeking support from other old people in the line.
But this (Being in the slowest line) is not necessarily a bad one, as I (nearly) found out. We were making very slow progress when some one realized that the 2nd counter was closing for an half hour for lunch at 11am. Counter no. 3 was closing at 11.30 and the counter no 4 at 12.30. So people in line 2 got really mad; those in line 3 got panicky and those in line 4 looked smug for having made a wise decision! (Counter 1 simply gave out train forms). By this time, I was making pretty good progress and kept wondering if the people would get wild if I called A from his line. This was after all, a sort of cheating. Most people came by themselves and had to wait out in a single line.
We had quite forgotten about the monk in this discovery about lunch hours when some one spied him inside, behind the counter. An officer was listening to his problem and then walked up to our clerk and told him to attend to the monk first and solve the problem. Any sympathy for the monk evaporated instantly.
I felt thunderclouds gathering and not all of it in the skies. Thankfully, both A and I reached our respective windows at the same time and I was saved the hassle of calling him out from his line to mine and surely having to face the Bengali public's wrath (which can be quite amusing if you are just a bystander...the Bengali vocabulary is wonderful and so is their wit in any given situation; but obviously its not quite the same if you are in the receiving line).
West Bengal is ahead in women's liberation stakes. There were four counters with a sizeable crowd in each but unlike elsewhere including capital Delhi, no "women-only" counter! Women are obviously considered at par with men, and up to standing for long hours in hot stuffy reservation queues, shoulder to shoulder with the men. Don't know if this is quite what we wanted.
Road to Salvation is through the queues at the Eastern Railway reservation counter. An elderly vaishnavite monk in saffron robes and chandan marks on his forehead and down his nose was taking an inordinately long time at the ticket counter. He finished and then we had just moved a place forward when he returned to the window once more. The others were obviously not very happy about it but let him through where he exchanged angry words with the clerk who kept telling to go to another counter. Turned out they kept giving him a side berth which he did not want because of "disturbances" due to a constant stream of passengers going to and fro from the toilets as well as attendants and vendors. Quite lost his cool. Looked quite odd for the swamiji to lose his cool so. But perhaps the Indian Railways are enough to rile even the wisest sage. And who knows maybe his order sent him here as some sort of a final test!!
The third one pertains to Murphys law (I think) - the slowest line is always the one you are in. A and I stood in different lines (one of us was bound to reach the window before the other). Two old ladies took their time at the counter fumbling over their reservation form. The clerk kept returning their half filled form and pointing out errors or something they had missed. And they kept clucking and smiling. The clerk took his time counting and recounting the money. The sighs and occasional grunts of impatience had by now grown to a loud murmur. A young chap was quite vocal. One of the two old biddies asked him to pipe down because they couldn't hear what the clerk was saying. The young chap asked them to use an hearing aid. The biddies then indulged in 'today's youngsters, how rude, what is this country coming to' for another 5 minutes with much clucking and seeking support from other old people in the line.
But this (Being in the slowest line) is not necessarily a bad one, as I (nearly) found out. We were making very slow progress when some one realized that the 2nd counter was closing for an half hour for lunch at 11am. Counter no. 3 was closing at 11.30 and the counter no 4 at 12.30. So people in line 2 got really mad; those in line 3 got panicky and those in line 4 looked smug for having made a wise decision! (Counter 1 simply gave out train forms). By this time, I was making pretty good progress and kept wondering if the people would get wild if I called A from his line. This was after all, a sort of cheating. Most people came by themselves and had to wait out in a single line.
We had quite forgotten about the monk in this discovery about lunch hours when some one spied him inside, behind the counter. An officer was listening to his problem and then walked up to our clerk and told him to attend to the monk first and solve the problem. Any sympathy for the monk evaporated instantly.
I felt thunderclouds gathering and not all of it in the skies. Thankfully, both A and I reached our respective windows at the same time and I was saved the hassle of calling him out from his line to mine and surely having to face the Bengali public's wrath (which can be quite amusing if you are just a bystander...the Bengali vocabulary is wonderful and so is their wit in any given situation; but obviously its not quite the same if you are in the receiving line).
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