Having lived a pretty sheltered life, I am still (at 23 shockingly) at a point where traveling by public transport ironically feels like a privilege whether in London, in Belgium and definitely in India. My view of Indian public transport was limited to peering out of my car window in Bombay at a red double decker bus tilted about 30 degrees from the vertical overflowing with people, always JUST about to topple over... but miraculously never quite reaching that tipping point. (It's all about physics really... :-)).
In Bagar, however, I have managed to get to the inside... Bus has now become THE mode of transport and I had my first train experience on Friday from Jhunjhunu (closest town to Bagar) to Jaipur.
Starting from the beginning...... the planning. What train should we get? What time? So standard procedure... type into www.google.com, 'train times Jhunjhunu to Jaipur' and find the fastest and cheapest route, pay with credit card, book seats online, print them out and you are good to go!!! You think that works? No way... as most things in India, even train times are found through heresay and contacts. Someone I knew called someone he knew who spoke to someone he knew in Jhunjhunu to ask him what times these trains leave. After getting that information, we had to now tackle the second issue of how do we get to Jhunjhunu? Of course... bus. When do these buses leave? Lord knows... all about trying your luck... go with the flow. Turns out our luck was pretty good. Not only did we make our bus by 5 minutes, we also caught the train JUST 2/3 minutes before it departed. Good start to the journey ahead.
At this early stage in the day, the train was fairly empty... it was so peaceful, a type of peace that often seems lost in the crowd and traffic of daytime India. Just trees, flowers, fields, sand, rhythmic sound of the train, neighbors snoring and the odd quiet chat between passengers. This was still a part of the day where if I got off my seat for a brief half hour or fifteen minutes, I would still have it when I got back. Best thing to do at times like this, get your ipod (not very rural... I know) put on some quiet slow music, go to the door of the train, hold on to the side railings really tight, plant your feet strongly on the ground and just lean out... so that your entire body except feet and hands are hanging out of the train and watch the sunrise...(was totally my friends idea...so no lectures for me please). Although this definitely has to be on everyone's 'must do before I'm too old to move' list.
Four hours in, this is when the true train experience began. People began flowing in and out at all stations. We were planted in our seats now... trying to stop from slowly slipping off the sides, as not two, but three, four, five people came and sat down right next to us. Suddenly sixth person enters, and logically decides, no space I will just stand. But no... this is rural India. Promptly the man in front of me says 'bethho' and moves over a bit to reveal the seat not bigger than a slice of pizza. Yeah right ... was what I thought ... but the guy gladly made his way to the slice and planted less than half his backside there... content and thankful. To put it simply, it was kind of great.
It made me think of the London tube. How different the word PUBLIC in public transport was portrayed in the two places. On the way to work every morning, the tube was PACKED with people, but besides the occasional 'mind the gap' announcement, it was silent. People were staring at their copy of the Financial Times, Metro, novels, magazines, textbooks...etc etc. In London, turning to the stranger next to me and starting a conversation seemed like an absurd almost illegal thing to do. In fact, even when talking to someone you know, it was usually in whispers! Why? God knows. Here there were probably like 7 different conversations flowing between the 15/20 people in the compartment and any one could be joined at anytime by anybody. There was nothing illegal about me turning to my neighbor and playing with her adorable child. What increased the noise level even more is this new craze of music on mobile phones. There were probably like 3/4 different phones in the same compartment BLARING music from 'Mera Naam Joker' to 'Sean Paul'. It didn't even seem to matter that they were all playing simultaneously and you couldn't actually even follow any one. In the London tube, packed or not packed, unless you are a pregnant lady, nobody would give up or move over to give someone a space to sit down. Doesn't matter if I was a 23 year old girl sitting on a seat while a 50 year old lady was struggling to hold on to the bars...first come, first serve. Here, a perfectly healthy man who probably had the capacity to stand for hours, was offered a seat in an already much to crowded bench.
What can I say except (as usual and once again)......only in India.
