Around India in 80 Trains by Rajesh Monisha

Author:Rajesh, Monisha [Rajesh, Monisha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788174369130
Published: 2012-11-07T18:30:00+00:00

11 | The Venus Flytrap of Insanity

During our time on the Indian Maharaja, we had covered Udaipur, Jaipur and Sawai Madhopur, so we were now free to climb north Rajasthan and continue into Punjab. If all went to plan, we would reach Udhampur within the week.

Originating in Barmer, a small town in west Rajasthan famed for carved wooden furniture, the express train we boarded at Bikaner (number 43) was bound for Kalka, the main junction for passengers joining the Himalayan Queen to Shimla. The well-loved toy train was high on our list of priorities, but Chandigarh, the ‘City Beautiful’, had piqued our interest for its status as not only India’s first planned city, but also its cleanest. In a country where chaos and stink formed the basis of daily existence, planning and cleanliness were two notions that had very much fallen off my radar and become something of a lost hope. Post-partition Nehru had commissioned the development of Chandigarh to reflect new India, proclaiming it ‘unfettered by the traditions of the past … an expression of the nation’s faith in the future’. Such a statement made it impossible to bypass this anomaly. Besides, we had heard that there was a garden made from recycled rubbish and broken bangles that Passepartout was itching to see.

Bikaner was half a day’s journey from Barmer, so there was a fair chance that whoever had boarded at the train’s origin had either adopted our berths as their own or used them to store excess luggage. Arriving at the compartment we were dismayed to find that a combination of the two had taken place. Dismayed, but inwardly thrilled. Over the last couple of weeks I had grown to enjoy a fleeting sense of Schadenfreude when someone else had taken my seat and I was compelled to ask them to move. Elderly or injured passengers, and families with children were the exception, and I was happy to make allowances. But for the most part, culprits were young and able-bodied—their only afflictions being a combination of selective hearing and an inability to make eye contact. This game became all the more enjoyable when they refused to move until a ticket inspector arrived and threw them out.

The seeds of this ruthless new behaviour had been incubated during my time at university, after many Sunday evenings spent squashed into the luggage racks between Birmingham New Street and Leeds. The London Underground had provided some degree of nurturing, but now finding themselves in a truly hospitable environment, the seeds had sprouted into a Venus Flytrap of insanity. Two and a half hours cramped on a Virgin Voyager was one thing, but 48 hours without a seat was not to be sniffed at. It was only a matter of time before I started diving headfirst through moving doorways to bag one.

In the interim, standing around and waiting for people to move was torture. In addition to the 75-litre Lowe Alpines on our backs, we had succumbed to wearing our

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