Indian Railways has come of age. The Rajdhani trains have got a good facelift: the train in which I was travelling, for instance, has been sold to the National Stock Exchange. Gone are the dirty orange and butter yellow (or dirty white?) striped coaches. Everything is draped in NSE colors - from the coach exterior to panels above the seats, to the common area. Even the window panes are not spared - though it is done quite nicely I would say, you may see through them from inside. I might have missed any NSE details in the toilet, though for different reasons altogether. Not that the flux of money bothers me, it is actually good sign. Had it touched more than just the coaches, I would have been happier.
But in India some things do not change after all - mostly the overall train riding experience. The experience is broadly categorized as "bad". Although many things have changed over the years, Modern forms of bad experience have taken over more archaic ones.
Let’s start with the worst of the lot: toilets. The infrastructure has definitely improved, since you can no longer see the tracks through that dirty hole. Flushing too has become push-button. But the cleanliness of the people using it hasn't changed at all. In the morning, I had to hike 2 coaches to find a usable toilet. And that too after being barked at by an occupant who had 'locked' it using the same latch that opens from outside. I don't think this basic design flaw is listed anywhere as unsolvable.
And now over to fellow travellers. Not that I hate customized ring tones, but repeated howling of "jai ganesh jai ganesh ...." at the top volume at midnight was not exactly a heavenly experience. Especially when you are trying hard to sleep under the dirty and probably lice filled blanket, protected by a thin supposedly newly washed sheet. The religious agony aunty, who has taken a theeka of resolving everyone's family issues, worked till late night. She always talked like they used to make trunk calls in old films.
Talking of films: gone are the days where the past time was just a portable cassette player playing the recent chart busters. The coupe next to ours was occupied by a young couple who has been watching Hindi movies, one after another, after another … ad inf, on their notebook computer. The volumes were moderate but I kept marveling at their exclusive thoroughness and attention to detail: from the cheap jokes to the lengthy dhinchak songs. Some jokes and even songs got repeated at the lady's request. The new world modern looking Bengali couple seemed to be a connoisseur of 90s popular Hindi movies as I recognized from one of the songs. They had not even started their dinner when the guys came to clean the plates. Man, I would have become eligible to write a review of The Inception had I put in so much effort.
And to add to this was something disturbing you cannot even blame. An infant of a few months kept me at the edge of my sleep, all night. The mother tried her best but without avail. Not all were bothered by this however. Surely not my good old Keralite friend who snorted off all night and was up at six sharp, he boasted later.
Smoking is banned on trains for more than decade now - although with zero compliance from the passengers. People do it at will, in the toilets. I used to encounter a faint smell of tobacco smoke every 15 minutes. Also illegal is opening doors on a moving superfast train. A desperate young hero repeatedly sought attention of a high school girl by standing firm on the wide opened door, when the Rajdhani was cruising at may be 80 km per hour. In India people, in most cases, just love to break the law. And in other cases, as we all know, they have to break it. Either way. Why not love what you are doing after all!
I later encountered the door guy, hale and happy, but thought he might be doing the door stunt for a reason. He had a sphere of body odor around him: anyone falling inside is liable to lose consciousness. Fortunately I encountered just the Event Horizon.
I am pretty sure the Railways (yes, my tax money) pays a lot more to the contractor than what shows. The cheaply paid train staff provides you service of the same value they earn. This varied from relatively minor mischiefs like not giving you a newspaper if you do not ask for it, to minor mistakes like not checking is the flask contents are still hot, to utter felonies like presenting a non-vegetarian meal to a vegetarian. The poor guy would have sold back the remaining newspapers back to a vendor, or kabari. Or he was just being lazy with the flask. Or he was suffering the genuine mistake of another staff member in the veg-non-veg goof up. They also perform a customary 'begging for tips' exercise once your ride is about to get over.
Our Rajdhani was heavily delayed by widespread dense fog over Northern India. And of course by the delay in the incoming train. The outsourced train staff did not have allowance for provisions, the Rajdhani stops for a few minutes at any intermediate station, and no vendors are allowed on the Rajdhani. And all that simply meant that passengers had to skip a meal. There were no options left.
A perfect finish.
NB: Although truth is the main course here, some sauces and spices are fictional.
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