Travelogue of a journey from India to Bharat

The journey was truly from India to Bharat. The occasion was Wedding Ceremony
of a friend and colleague. The Wedding was to be held at Jhansi. The name Jhansi
evokes such a great sense of history as we all have grown up on great patriotic stories
of Rani Laxmibai of Jhansi. Now we all know how hazardous it is to apply for leave
in these troublesome times but a mandatory week off forced by client on our team allowed us to go for the wedding. Now since the trip was planned on a very short notice affordability of air tickets went beyond our finance. So we all planned to take the service of Indian Railways to travel. But even here we could manage a Sleeper Tier ticket that too not all of us got confirmed seats.
Travelling in Sleeper class to north India in mid July will give scare to anyone who has faced the fury of summers in that part of India. That I have been in Bangalore for last 5 years in the most beautiful weather has made me even more skeptic about travelling.But the feeling of going to land where you have been brought up and where your roots lie will overcome all these apprehensions.
The train leaves Bangalore at 19:35.Now Bangalore railway station is not the perfect example of how a Railway station of a leading metropolitan should be but it is just enough clean and tidy enough that if your train is late you can comfortably wait at
the platform.
Indian Railways sleeper class coaches can be perfect classrooms for the course in
Hospitality management. All the leading institutes around the globe should make it sure that the students enrolling in this course should be given a trip in the sleeper class and it will be even better if the trip involves travelling across any north Indian town.Anyone who boards the train at any station boards the train with an assurance that irrespective of whether he has a reservation or not, he is entitled to sit or sleep at any seat he wish to. The boarder enters the compartment and if he has the seat he will take the seat quite assertively and if he doesn’t have a seat he will ask the already seated people to just push a bit so that he too can have a seat. The one who has the seat reserved is expected to be hospitable enough to accommodate any no of people who comes through. Will you get a better example of sense of hospitality anywhere else !.
This is Indian Railways for you.
There are huge distances to be covered. So there are various means of passing time.
People make friends, they discuss politics,cricket. These days they carry laptops too
so have the luxury of watching movies, listening music. And then we have the ubiquitous ‘Chai wala’ without whose ‘Chai’ no journey is any Indian train is complete.
So one ends up gulping 10-15 tea cups during the journey.
In my compartment I was accompanied by 4 engineering graduates who are pursuing
engineering in Bangalore and were retuning home to Lucknow via Jhansi after finishing their semesters.As usual they had just one seat between them and I readily became a
‘bhaiya’ for them. Now the term ‘bhaiya’ if used in Maharashtra evoke such a fear
in north Indians(courtesy Mr Raj Thakeray) but when used in Trains,such a perfect platform for forging relationships. In the same compartment another student studying Pharma was travelling to his home in Rajasthan.He readily became another bhai for the eng. Grads. So at 11 pm me and the pharma student were sharing the berth so that we all can sleep tight in night.

The next day was spent with these guys narrating how enjoyable their first 2 years have been far away from watchful eyes of parents. They will narrate their dare devil acts and one fellow in our compartment who must be in late 30’s had it enough and sarcastically asks them ‘Are they right in doing all this? Was this the reason their parents have sent them here? Moments ago this man was being offered wafers, soft drinks and what not by these guys but now he was an Uncle. I tell you, this generation hates being preached.

The day passed by. The night too. The train reaches Jhansi at 3.30 A.M. The train reached at the right time. We got down. And what was to be seen was a huge sea of humanity sleeping on the floor as if we have reached some Military dormitory just that the amount of dirt and filth lying around the area the people were sleeping would shoo away all notions of this being a Military camp. Welcome to Bharat.

62 years of freedom from Gora Sahib’s rule but when our Railways Minister talked of
Creating 50 'World Class Railways stations' and 375 ‘Adarsh Railway Stations’ Mr Lalu Prasad says that is not feasible.Now these ‘Adarsh Railway Stations’ will have all basic amenities like clean water,waiting rooms, clean platforms etc etc. This is ‘Adarsh Railway Station’ for you. 62 years and we are still struggling to have ‘bijli, paani’ and having these will make a station ‘Adarsh’.These are basic amenities in other world though.
.
We got out from the Railway station. It appeared that we are in some Red Country.
Walls, floors ,streets almost everything seems red. Red by expectoration from Pan chewing people, from Gutka eating people , from people eating Pan Masala etc.
Communists from China would have been so happy to know that in remote corner of UP a town is so dedicated to their dying theory .The Red Revolution.

The wedding went fine. It was such fun attending the marriage in old traditional fashion
again though I restricted myself to just helping myself with unlimited variety of delicacies. How badly I love the Shadi ka khana.

After the wedding I thought of visting my Parents in Lucknow as Lucknow is not very far off from Jhansi. And Indian railways has made sure that there is a train from everywhere
To everywhere. So here I was again in a Inter City Express between Jhansi and Lucknow.
The train pass through the town of Kanpur and as the train left the station what one sees
is a such a huge conglomerate of slums that one will be forced to think that are we passing through Dharavi?. No problem I said to myself.Let the train get past another town and the same visual will repeat.I wonder is there some term called ‘Fourth World Country’? If not then why not coin it and get it patented .This is Bharat. I left India the moment the train went past Bengaluru.

The train reached Lucknow in another hour and a half. Same visuals repeating themselves but who cares now.The smell of your own land taking over all your feelings.
Maa has cooked Kadhi at home and I can smell that from light year apart.

I call for a auto and this ends the travelogue.Please feel free to comment on this.

Arey Auto wale Bhaiya , chaloge.

Love,
Saket.