Link to my observations on the Kumbh Mela: http://www.tripatini.com/profiles/blogs/kumbh-mela-instant-moksha
The Kumbh Mela held every 12 years on the banks of Rivers Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati at Allahabad is supposedly the biggest religious fair on earth. Allahabad or Prayag is my home town and I grew up with the myths surrounding the three rivers.
Moksha is salvation and a dip in the sacred waters cleanses mind and body.
The familiar bleak friable landscape interspersed with algae ponds, cattle and livestock in different stages of thinness grazing on non-existent grass, the sparsely cultivated fields, thatched hutments, semi naked children chasing mangy dogs, men huddled on charpoys or walking listlessly with the familiar ‘lota’ (metal mug) for their morning ablutions, women head covered engrossed in washing, cleaning. I was aboard the Prayagraj train, named after my home town Prayag and present Allahabad, after a gap of nearly 20 years and sat glued to the window not wanting to miss out the familiar sights.
The excitement was visible as on night of travel I arrived at New Delhi station two hours before departure time to a deserted platform and wondering if had got the day wrong. Maybe I had the Freudian fear of missing a train and arriving at railway stations two hours ahead of time though unlike Freud I did not associate train travel with death. For Freud ‘Dying is replaced in dreams by departure, by a train journey’. (Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis’).
My misgivings proved wrong and within minutes the rush started and deposited on my berth, second ac sleeper top berth near the entrance and the toilet. I was looking to swap my berth for a lower one, Second AC has two berths instead of three of Third AC sleeper, but my appearance, frail, nor my age softened male hearts. As one person I requested put it ‘I have approached railway officialdom for lower berth of my choice months in advance’. The ticket collector too was elusive and for a moment was tempted to pass on some bucks but an unbeliever in bribery resigned myself to the continuous footsteps and the all-pervasive urine odor from the rusty, rickety toilets (one is western and other squat).
An overnighter, the Prayagraj, is ideal for business or work commute but not for viewing the dusty plains of North India. I was awake early morning, 4 a.m. to preempt toilet use and for the first glimpse of the Gangetic plain awakening to dawn. I had done this journey umpteen times but the gap of 21 years made me curious about the changes as we crossed obscure hamlets familiar not for their names but appearance, decrepit stations with platforms stacked with parcels and human bodies asleep or the in between naps, oblivious to the rattle of speeding trains. The familiar food carts, the tea stalls displaying the mud cups or kullars and their owners parroting ‘chai chai’ ( tea-tea). Station tea tastes best in earthen cups with aroma of leaves mingling with the mud smell. Fathepur beyond Kanpur had been my favored station to drink the special brew as the train arrived here early morning.
Around 5 a.m., the filtering sun exposed derrières along the tracks and at one place a group of boys ( four- six years) appeared to be playing a game sitting in a circle. Not a pleasant early morning expose. There are no major cities on this route, till we touch Kanpur or Cawnpore of British India history. The motley procession of spreading dry fields interspersed with green patches shaded by mango and neem trees and being a history buff visualized marauding mutineers and British soldiers galloping across the grayish brown terrain. The Mutiny of 1847* .
There was still an hour to reach Allahabad and as I gazed into the horizon I compared the passing scenery with another train journey in 2009 from Hong Kong to Beijing – Shanghai and back to Hong Kong. Then it was T 98 a superfast luxury train and the Soft Sleeper (four berths)compared with present situation had felt a luxury on wheels with clean crisp sheets, comforters, pillows, hangers, luggage compartment (at the top), hot water flask, step-on garbage-bin, mirrors, reading lights, air cons and new colored slippers for each occupant. The toilets were clean but towards end of journey, toilet hopping, it is a through train, appeared a better option.
The train had swaggered past the scenic Pearl River delta, a continuous drizzle and a disappearing sun cast a chimerical effect to the picturesque antiquated ‘shark’s teeth’ mountains, leaving behind the pastoral countryside metamorphosing into a clinical landscape of barracks and factories, the occasional residential complexes with children frolicking in puddles and the elderly smoking, squatting or working in fields.
Next morning we got a glimpse of the grey skies, a continuous phenomenon of our 10 day journey, as we approached the enormousness of Beijing station mid afternoon. Few days in Beijing and another train ride to Shanghai and this time in the swanky D 301 Beijing/Shanghai express train, an immaculate all white, brand-new 200km/h sleeper train with staff in spiffy red uniforms and caps. Slightly intimidating and we slid in quietly so as not to disturb the other passengers in the upper bunks of the 4 bunk Soft sleeper. It was a twelve hour nigh journey and we missed out the country sights.
Shanghai station is a throwback of stations back home, except for its voluminous interiors, with escalators not working and no one to tell you where to go. The return journey to Hong Kong via T 99 in Hard Sleeper with 6 bunks was a journey closer to real China train experience. The upper, middle and lower bunks cushioned bunk stacks and I had spent my waking hours in the corridor, folding table and chairs placed in the corridor, observing passengers trussed amongst bales, packets and luggage, playing Mahjong. We had planned the train journeys for a view of the countryside and to interact with the locals but it was nowhere near the ‘family’ atmosphere of Prayagraj, of camaraderie with friends, foes, acquaintances and strangers.
My bonding with trains is probably a residual baggage of my mother’s accounts of journeys aboard the British India Railways, the compulsory every six months winding up the hills to Simla and return to Delhi. Her stories were peppered with grandmother’s verbal tags on the helpers and coolies, her vigil of the steel trunks carrying the family ‘silver’ …clothes, ration, and household stuff.
The steam engines wove their magic in my psyche and as a six-year-old I would dream of traveling the Indian countryside in the chuk-chuk trains. My elder brother, probably in line with family tradition, joined the Railways via Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE) Jamalpur, an institute started by the British to rope in the best brains to manage the railways. His first posting was in Bhusawal, Maharashtra and my mother, me and younger brother spent a summer in his cottage in the railway colony. At night we would be woken up by frantic calls from the linesmen about some derailment or another and often my brother had to rush to the scene. He had been assigned a carriage, with bunks, washroom and kitchenette, which was attached to a goods or passenger train, depending where he was traveling. We joined him once for a regal ride from Bhusawal to Mumbai and Pune. The carriage was coupled at the end of a goods train for most part of the journey and our mother spent the entire night worrying about being looted by robbers or being stranded in some vague station. It was an experience having the humongous railways at our service, the linesmen, station attendants waiting to welcome the Sahib and train travel took on another meaning.
New modes of transport did not lessen fascination of trains and they continued to be a metaphor connecting lives across the dusty plains whether in air-conditioned comfort or sweaty general compartments.
Here, I was two decades later re-living the romance of the philistine wheels not on an unknown journey but a journey to my past.
Photo taken from moving train with my iPhone on way to Allahabad.
Patched, luminescent cobras, owls, kites (Milvus migrans)l on strings serenading lanterns, boxes, circles, squares, rings, rectangles, crowns…. to the accompaniment of drum beats and tribal dance steps.
I was at Delhi International Kite Flying festival ( December 2012) where paper aviators kept pace with the variegated flavor of India Gate grounds….a ‘kite’ tree sprouting snazzy spindles, kites in bamboo, tissue paper, elastic paper and cloth; chintzy bangles and gift items – a concession to women visitors; dancers, hawkers, spectators, school children conscious of their winter uniforms, the silks and traditional Indian salwar – kameez vying for attention with western wear and the awed tourist hounded by persistent photographers selling slice of British- Indian history under the watchful eyes of city cops.
Kites had been introduced (another product) in India by Chinese travelers F Hien and Hsuan Tsang in 4th and 7th. Century and captured the collective imagination of the country. Festivals and public holidays, especially ‘Makar Shakranti’ on January 14 and Republic Day on January 26 are special days when kites jostle for celestial space. International kite festivals in Jaipur and Ahmedabad coincide with Makar Shankranti* festival.
I was always fascinated by the soaring kite and would stalk my four brothers, they refused to let a girl fly a kite, carrying their ‘charki’ (holder for glass coated thread or manjha). It required a certain amount of skill as I had to release the thread avoiding tangles and follow the flyer on parapets and edges as he released the diamond shaped ‘Patang’ or ‘guddia’ over the mango trees. Any sign of squeamishness and I would be promptly banished from the terrace. I did pick up a few tricks, a slight flick can maneuver the direction and outcome, and tried it years later at Surfside beach near Houston, USA where my son had no option but to hand me the string.
Kites followed me to New Delhi and would wait for the aerial ballet of dozens of kites let loose over Delhi skies, confusing the avian population, on 26th January (Republic Day). The ‘cut’ kites were chased by eyes glued to the dipping kite till it would get entangled in a tree or electric wires. The loot would occasionally end in scuffles between groups and the torn kite left forlorn on ground.
Travels and growing children wrinkled kite fascination to movies and novels* and it was an unscheduled visit to the Delhi kite festival that brought back memories of flying paper on sunny winter afternoons.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makar_Sankranti
* http://fighterkitecentral.com/pdfs/KitesinIndia.pdf
* The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini * *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kite_Runner
* http://www.texasexplorer.com/Surfside.htm
Delhi is celebrating 100 years of its existence as the capital city of India and shades of its glorious past squint through heritage sites and dilapidated pockets of livelihood. The long journey of transformation from collective villages into a metropolis has been traumatic, uneventful, deceitful, apathetic, joyful, resentful.
Delhi is my adopted city, married here, and Allahabad my birth city and school holidays meant visits to my mother’s ancestral home in one of the lanes of Ballimaran, Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi. My great-grandfather had seven sons and one daughter and the wise old man refused to build property because he did not want his sons to fight over bricks and mortar. I remember the rented ‘haveli’ or mansion with its shadowless rooms, the ‘baithak’ or lounge with a massive mattress, where great-grandfather reportedly spent hours puffing on his hookah, and the labyrinth of passages for the children to run around. I heard stories from my mother and her cousins of how they would sneak out to purchase candy from street-hawkers when great-grandfather had his afternoon nap. The visits also meant gorging on jalebis* at the Dariba, fruit chaat* from the vendor in front of State Bank building and parathas* from the Paratha gali or lane.
I made New Delhi my home, after marriage, and similar to most dwellers became immune to the dirt and squalor blaming it on the government and the people trooping from adjoining cities and villages. I would weave my way through traffic stopping at red lights by choice and accepting noise pollution, power outages and water shortage as addendum of daily living.
The equation changed when we returned after five years in Oman, 2000, and I viewed Delhi from an ‘outsider’ perception. The ‘India Shining’ slogan rang hollow against the squalor, the lounging cows blocking roads and traffic, the daily workers living on roadsides and using the vacant plots as toilets, the women beggars with scrawny infants hanging onto their hips, child beggars and the ‘acceptance’ attitude of the public. The list was endless little realizing that I was voicing ‘tourist’ views when I too was to blame for the apathetic state of affairs.
The Gurgaon entrance
In 2006 we moved to Gurgaon, 15 miles south of New Delhi, hoping for a slice of the ‘millennium’ bonanza. My first impression of the ‘Millennium’ city was that ‘it is haphazardly crowded’ with nearly 26 shopping malls showcasing major world brands, golf courses, private clubs, movie theaters, pubs and bars, luxury apartments, palatial villas, slums and all-glass commercial hubs displaying world’s top corporations. The city touted as the symbol of rising India slipped somewhere along the line and problems that were once the bane of Delhi haunt the new city and its residents: The unreliable power supply (generator power is the main power supply), missing pavements and sidewalks, vacant lots converted into garbage disposal sites, pot holed roads and lanes, the newer overcrowded Metro stations still in incomplete stage, rickshaw queues and traffic snarls.
still developing
On a recent visit to Delhi/Gurgaon from Hong Kong, our residence since 2008, I was driving from Gurgaon to Delhi on the main connector M.G. Road with its demolished landmarks (commercial buildings demolished when the Municipal Corporation decided they were illegal) and the crawling traffic made me chant prayers to keep my cool. For a few minutes it worked but I soon gave up all pretence of civility and for rest of the one hour drive I was mouthing expletives at passing motorists and motor cyclists. There is still no lane or signal concept and before you can say ‘red’ a car zooms past oblivious of your rear view mirror. It is an ordeal or an adventure, whichever way one looks at it, though I still would not trade it for a monotonous drive I experienced commuting from San Jose to San Francisco where one is in danger of dozing off.
The 2011 Anna Hazare movement against corruption captured the collective imagination of the country in different ways. Even when the Anna fast was going on and streets crowded with sympathizers, an employee of the electricity sub station in my block, in Gurgaon, wanted to know whether I was living in a bungalow or an apartment. I had gone to register a meter fault and was without electricity for four hours. He showed up around 6 p.m.,least apologetic about the inconvenience though sorry for missing out on ‘pocket money’ because by then I had called a private electrician to repair the meter. A Catch-22 situation..be damned if you give and be damned if you don’t.
The Gurgaon and Delhi refurbishings are still on, and hopefully, someday the cities would not remind me of village belles stepping out of their comfort zones with mismatched accessories.
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jalebi
*
http://tarladalal.com/Fruit-Chaat
* Stuffed Indian flat bread
Feb. 28, 2010: The morning fog had a surprise in store for me. Walking on Hung Leung road, Hung Hom towards Whampoa,(Kowloon) I heard the distinctive ‘Koo Ooo’ of the Koel, my childhood nemesis. It was a surprise because in 2 years of my stay in Hong Kong this was the first time I heard the ‘Koel’ and it was an instant carry back to cool summer mornings, boat rides on the Ganges river, raw Mangoes and Guavas. We have this open land around our house in Allahabad (India) crowded by Mango, Neem and Guava trees and early spring the trees would be full of blossoms and new fruits. The Koel could be heard from different perches and I would follow the voice to put a face to it but the bird would, invariably, outwit me. Till date I do not know what it looks like except for Wikipedia pictures and with information that it is the male of the species that loves to hear its voice. I always thought it was the female but like the Peahen (Peacock family) the female Koel is the indistinctive one. The Male Koel is bluish black with yellow-green beak and crimson eyes. (wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_Koel)
| Bird Call of Koyal India video by Shirishkumar … 1 min 56 sec – 1 Oct 2007 http://www.youtube.com |
Now, here in Hung Hom, in concrete surroundings with countable trees,
I thought I was imagining the snippy ‘koo OOo’ and the only way I could check it out would be to out koo OOo it as I would do during three ‘spring’ months every year till I outgrew the sport. It was a regular ‘slanging match and with every koo..OOo the pitch would increase forcing one of us to give in….either I would be called inside the house or the Koel flew away. Another reason for finding the narcissist tweeting irritating (as the present techni-tweeting) was that the Koel was a precursor of Board examinations (Class 10 and 12) and later College and in between all the cramming the melodious koo OOo was a taunt. Here was a bird, a known parasite who does not make its own nest, hopping around full of cheer and I had to study.
In ancient Indian literature, the Vedas, the Koel is referred to as ‘raised by others’. The male Koel creates the ruckus helping its partner lay its single egg in the crow’s nest next to the already present egg. The crow, without realizing the difference, conveniently hatches the egg.
In Indian poetry the ‘Koel’ is a melodious symbol and the Sanskrit root of Koel is “Kokila’. Both very popular names for girls in India.
Listening to the Koel, after all these years, reminded me of challenges and serene mornings that had inadvertently tiptoed into mundane affairs.
