India is people and packed places. India overwhelms you as soon as you step out of the air-conditioned airport. India is smells and sounds. A canvas of rushing humanity – bodies everywhere – rushing, hurtling. A dramatic collapse of distance between people and things.
We took the popular express train that runs between Delhi and Chandigarh.
We walked into the Delhi train station and stopped breathing – almost. It was like a very hot bird cage. People fluttered around us, bodies and baggage – hurtling, shoving, frantically zig-zagging surrounded us. People sat everywhere on the dusty concrete floor. We squeezed our way through the crowd, climbed into the train and felt the welcome flow of air-conditioning.
A train station platform
The train started on time with a jerk. Meghna stood up at her window seat and saw the new world moving outside past the coolies and the plastering crowds, steel structures and crumbling light posts. The rail attendants handed out little plastic trays with tea and cookies. The train swayed and gathered speed.
A couple of dark tunnels and we were riding through long rows of beehive like dwellings in what seemed like concrete squares with irregular openings. Cement boxes stuck together in random order, doors, windows, balconies in a jumble. Men, women and children rose up within like pop-up figures as the train sped by. Iron water pipes jutted out from unfinished walls spouting viscous yellowish liquid. Vegetation pushed through broken bricks, branches outstretched like reedy hands.
All around lay uninterrupted hillocks of landfill, plastic bags oozing yellow food, vegetable peels, decaying rags. Cows sat on the slippery slopes. Pigs sniffed and trekked on the piles. Children stood within flying kites. Bent leafless trees looked like victims of physical torture. We crossed small bridges with chunks of concrete missing on the sides. A temple stood in the driveway of what seemed like an abandoned power plant. A green paper garland fluttered, wrapped around the Trishul emerging from the conical temple top. Clothes dried on lines that hung over burnt garbage, the earth brown, black and sooty. Crows dipped into small pools of black water with iridescent pink pearl glow of diesel streaks.
The landscape changed dramatically as soon as we entered the countryside of Haryana, the state adjoining Punjab. The landscape swiftly turned green. The land outside became checkered with harvested fields, squares of deep green and muddy brown with thin water-filled moats marking perimeters. Delicate rice paddy saplings stood in water. Combed brown earth in perfect squares fenced by scraggy trees and white skinned Eucalyptus. Every village looked the same. Miles of harvested fields awash in sunlight. Few isolated brick houses, level crossings where the speeding train almost ruffled the hair of the scooterists at the barricade.
The train PA system announced the stations and a pithy history. We crossed Kurukhestra, the eponymous battle fields from the Mahabharata. A 3000 year old war and still has contemporaries. Now a city in Haryana.
Train station vendor
The last stop before Chandigarh was Ambala, a small city in Haryana. A bustling station. Large open stalls sold magazines and paperbacks. Da Vinci Code reprinted in recycled mottled paper. People sat on the floor. Some sat on stuffed burlap sacks. A vendor sold potato patties on an open cart with a kerosine stove. A flat frying pan showcased shallow fried patties interposed with disc cut bright red tomatoes and long green chillies in concentric circles. A new bride in golden sandals and heavily embroidered Zari salwar suit hurried after a commanding looking mother-in-law. A couple of men in tattered clothes and turbans that seemed like parts of a bed sheet sat on a parallel rail track. They were playing cards.
The express deposited us in Chandigarh station at around 10.30 in the morning. The June heat was white, made the clean platform sizzle. Tall and lanky Eucalyptus trees with bleached bodies and ashened leaves stood in a row outside. Overhead an iron shade buzzed with hundreds of restless common mynahs –their skinny brown-black bodies flapping.
We had family waiting for us. We hugged and got out of the station. The parking lot was brimming with small cars. Drivers, coolies, passengers, people everywhere. We loaded the trunk with our oversized suitcases. Placed handbags on our laps, started sweating profusely and drove out, our ears almost ringing with the incessant honking all around. It was like combustion – heat, light, sound and physical bodies. We got instantly sucked into – India.
India is People
It started right then. Understanding realities in a new way. India is people. They ring your door bell at any time, ask your age, make you photocopies, drive you places, change your flat tire, cry unabashedly, chase away your house lizards and in the end, fill your heart with an absurd fondness for them. I survived the adventure because of them. You can love them, you can hate them, but you cannot do without them.