Rail's ways

I was at a station that holds a record. I saw railways staff of the day-shift go home, and I saw them come back to work the next day. I witnessed a dawn and almost the previous dusk. All the trains of the country through that station passed by, two of them twice. About a thousand passengers came and went. It was like men may come and men may go, but I stay on forever.

Yeah, my train was late. Historically.

Some people have the habit of walking as they wait for something or somebody. Likewise, I walked 5.1075 kms waiting – there’s not one meter of exaggeration here. I took 3 strolls from an end to another, each 1.7025 km. this length is what makes the kharagpur station world’s longest. You can imagine my desperation that took me to such extreme lengths (5.1 km to be exact).

Many long hours later, confusion wreaked havoc. My prudent train was numbered 18615. They announced 18616, same name, different direction (down train) – at a platform far away. It took me moments (many) to gather the truth that it wasn’t the train I was waiting for, it was the one I came in a day ago.

Limits had been crossed. The meaning of the word patience had been put to test. Rekindled hope named ‘hatia-howrah’ was splashed with a tank full of water, over and over again.

I realized, I was setting off for the kharagpur station when this down train left from ranchi. I was still in kharagpur, when this train travelled all its way to from RNC to KGP. Limits had been crossed. Now, the limit tended to infinity.

There’s a Hindi saying ‘dene wala jab bhi deta hai, chappar phaad ked eta hai’. I observed that the inverse is also true. True-er.

Staying awake was a losing battle against the ever invincible drowsiness. I had limited weapons. Walking- I had used (to an excess). Talking to anyone, even someone at the platform meant waking him up, everybody was asleep.

Yes, people at the platform waiting for a train were asleep- no announcements were missed, as none were made whatsoever. And over that, people were hopeful, that the train won’t arrive while they slept. [Later, I found that the railways stood up to their expectations. It arrived much after daybreak, when the sun was blazing and the birds were already tired of tweeting their larynxes out.]

I took out the last weapon. Blaring music was being played inside my earphones, and even through that, I caught a sleep or two. It was then that I saw god. I usually don’t believe in god. But it changed. he was sitting inside a mechanical engineering marvel now obsolete. He was dressed in light blue shirt and black trousers- the driver of the train. I would have leapt at his feet, had I not been intimidated by the size of the contraption that the engine was.

I felt relief once inside the train. Momentary pleasures are the best. AC was on, and the sheets that the catering endowed me were wet. Not damp, but wet. I didn’t allowed shiver to get better of me, and wrapped my thin self like a cocoon with the only dry thing, that brown disgusting blanket. Despite all, I slept. After all, I had slept only for 4 hours in the last forty. Momentary pleasures, as I said, are the best. A demon of a woman had brought a kraken of a baby. You can imagine the events that followed.

The train crept as if hell bent on breaking all records of being incredibly late. It slugged like a tricycle, halting at every insignificant station for an hour or so. I could have eaten at the restraunts and dhabas of all the town/village the train stopped at, within the halting interval. Had these areas not been naxal affected, that is. And financial constraints, of course.

Now it gives great pleasure to my eyes to see lush green hilly areas, reminding the fact that hometown isn’t far off. Yet, the speed of the train scares the sh*t out of me.

As of now, I am waiting with bouquet of flowers and that ruddy blanket to honour those delegates of Guinness and Limca records organizations who would be arriving soon to check the credibility of the fact that this train has set a new record for being late. I am their unfortunate witness.

Over adjusting?

Seven were already inside the auto rickshaw. There are always many of these autos at an auto stand, but somehow not many to hop in. An auto stand is more of a central area of a busy roundabout; it can be any area where the auto-wala feels comfortable to park his ride, sometimes even allowing other vehicles to use the road! Anyhow, being the eighth wonder inside the auto. Back seat loaded (better, overloaded) with four mammoth sized and bull shaped arguing aunties and the elegant front seat occupied by the country’s foremost luminaries, and founders of the Utopian societies.

I’ll tell you this with my two years’ experience in the auto, as I used to go to my coaching (!) classes while I apparently prepared for engineering entrance exams.  There’s no better place to listen to the political rumors than the front auto seats. The views of the people, in almost all cases involving the auto driver are worth listening to. They are just ludicrous! And yes, incessantly complaining of the government, sometimes even unsure what they are complaining about.

But that’s the thing I appreciate about them: they complain, they talk about the corruption, abuse the system and most importantly know more than well-educated young people listening to their i-pods. This is what our society, among various other major elements, greatly lacks. We have stopped discussing the social problems, we have stopped complaining the setup and we have stopped resisting. We have just taken everything for granted, like we pop up a crocin whenever we feel like without even consulting. All the inconveniences and problems we face are a part of our life.

People have started ignoring even front page headings, and the memory is getting short lived. From acts of terror to simpler scandals, we have developed a tendency to ignore it. The twin blast in Hyderabad went past, and so did the myriad of rape cases before the Delhi case. Crime is as easily neglected as common cold.

Political agendas are no more discussed upon. The down-the-sewer education system, or the construction of three dams by china recently. The nuclear project controversy, or the chopper scam. No discussions. I don’t consider the debates (as if they are) on the news channels as discussions; they are heated arguments in an uncontrolled environment, which moves very quickly from ‘what is to be done’ to ‘what the opponent hasn't done’. The only discussions that make it to the minds of people are of Raghu’s slaughter of the auditioners in roadies, and the useless likes.

We have moved ourselves so comfortably into the bubble of comfort, revolving around the concept of not thinking of that what’s happening around. On the issue of the Delhi rape case, a deep analysis was done by a psychological expert. It revealed that most women feel that they won’t be raped because they don’t want to imagine it that way. In a similar manner, you will never imagine your city under bomb threats, unless it is. I can’t imagine a bomb kept at the big bazaar at Ranchi! (Many of us might not know this but one was found at that very shopping mall. Wonder why every big marketing complex in Ranchi has detectors now?)

Just recall how many times in the last ten years have you heard ‘Irom’? No, I haven’t misspelt the name of a metal here (by the way this one is stronger than the metal!) This woman has spent her last ten years on fast, without food or water! And she has a purpose, a very strong one. But people just supported her when she had started her fast. After a few months, the news of the fast was past. People forgot her, but she kept the fast. People outside the seven states kept ignoring the gravity of the situation AFSPA created, and the repercussions it brought along.

Recently, giving up hope on people who had seem to completely forget the person spending ten precious years of her life on fighting for them, Irom Sharmila broke her fast. It was coming. What would have been if nobody would have attended the speeches freedom fighters used to deliver? What would happen if you ignore the person trying hard to help you? The person will eventually stop helping. In this country we have rare few souls trying real hard to help. And the way we encourage these souls, we are going to lose them too.

So why is it that we ignore the daily dose of anti-social and immoral acts around us? Overdose? Yes, the media- print or cacophonic (otherwise called electronic media) has thrown to us reports of infinitely many unwanted events. So much, that even before you ponder and stretch your mind on one, another fresh report comes in. Take a month, like this current month and see how many scams, how many murders and how much corruption captured the screens. In case of scams, it’s like back to back blockbusters I used to listen to when I last saw television (and that was long ago!). 2G scam, 3G scam, Swiss bank scam, Commonwealth games, Tatra trucks, Chopper scam and the list goes on, with money involved chronologically increasing! Many more scams have been overwritten in my memory, again due to overdose!

Of course sitting in front seats of auto won’t help. And sitting in the back seat and arguing definitely won’t. It’s not that if something bad happens regularly, it becomes ‘less’ bad. We were born with a choice of volition but the social environment made us forget this. The government isn't there to take away your choices; it was made to take choices for you. Raise your voices. Heat up debates. Place your demands for a better peaceful society. Or did we forget that we can have a better society?

We have the power in us to change. Lord hanuman was cursed to forget his powers. Of course it’s a story, but it was written to learn from. We all very well know what he achieved when he realized his strength.

In the future not very distant

The headline read “Prime Minister Rahul Gandhi requests Pakistan to relinquish Kashmir and Punjab”. I sighed and kept the fifty rupees newspaper aside. It used to cost five in 2013, a ten times rise in six years. I proceeded towards the university where I studied (?) once. Around fifteen thousand students crossed me as I made my way through the campus to its central area. I sat on the roof of a hostel, trying to imagine myself sitting on the grass where now this hostel stands. Few more inmates were lying around, some smoking weed, others with tablets. I was listening to their conversation. One of them was a tech geek, who didn’t know programming. Another was like an ‘every other student’, emaciated, just like I used to be.

The geek spoke. No, speaking is something to be mentioned. They were rarely talking, mostly chatting. So the geek spoke “hey this IRCTC is a damned site, I logged in like-yesterday and the page is still loading!”

After typing a long chat on his tablet to distant friend, the other person thought it obliging to reply. “Yeah, you are lucky, because when I logged in before the winter vacation, I could access the page after the vacation was over! What do you expect from this government! All govt. sites are like this.  (Btw IRCTC is a private website) Railways is just anyhow continuing.”

“Who owns this railways?”

“Nobody owns railways! It belongs to a group of powerful people. I saw it on YouTube”

And then they started castigating the government, and then the discussion moved to the university. Every system they were a part of was corrupt, and their talk revealed that they were of the purest forms to ever walk the earth.

I received a call just then. It was my mother. She informed me that my aunt had given birth to an engineer (i.e. a boy). He was enrolled in FIITJEE's extensive congenital training programme. He would be shown colorful sketches of thermodynamic concepts and structure of polyethylene-m-tetra-chloro-phosphate. I went to her house, pointed to his head and told her he’ll crack it! But instead she heard he’ll crack IIT as this is what the prestigious coaching institute had been telling her all day.

Next morning, failing to pay for the newspaper, I was surfing the net and came upon a survey that presented another grim picture. It said “china crushes Indian economy by overtaking her in the service sector, the only sector left after agricultural sector committed suicide owing to heavy debts. It is worth noting that industrial sector never existed in India. As a result IT companies have closed their recruitment gates, which used to absorb a large chunk of the teeming number of graduates manufactured each year. Joblessness is back on the streets.”

It was hot in there. And I needed water for bathing. I went to the market and after booking my number for water, I continued reading from my laptop (yes, reading in the market from a laptop) there was this chotu from the nearby tea shop calculating his earnings from an app in his smartphone. I asked him “do you read or write?” He gave the expected answer. “But I can count my money in this touch phone”, he continued, with special emphasis on the word touch. I adjusted my ‘keypad-ed’ cellphone inside my trousers. One of the last such sets. Vintage.

Feeling like a black and white character in a glittering world, I continued reading the newsfeeds. At least I could read. “USA intimidated by the aggressive market domination policy of the Chinese. On the other hand, the US president tried unsuccessfully to avoid suspicions surrounding its involvement in the unrest in central Asia, lured by the last drops of the precious fuel petroleum.” I couldn’t take any more of this negativity. Enervated by the vegetative state of affairs of the country, I was about to close the browser when in noticed a minuscule text at the bottom of the page, reading “paid news”. Now this was too much!

I got into the queue for water, as my turn came up. An elderly man was behind me. He started speaking (the elderly talk, frequently). “You see that nerd there?” The nerd in concern was with ear buds in his head, which was banging like a rock-less punk. “Yeah, I do”. The elder continued “kids like this are going to run the hell-heading country tomorrow. I asked him who was the second last president of US and he replied Bob Marley. They are ridiculous, this generation, ignorant and arrogant.”

I sighed. The youth feel that the elders as a spent force and the elders think of the young as un-enlightened and ignorant fools. Everyone blames others. I realized I am doing the same, blaming these two generations.

Anyways. Delhi and other such underdeveloped cities now have no traces women. Legit. It is only filled with money centered people, and power centered people. Mumbai has crumbled under its own crime lords’ empires. Bangalore looks like as if an apocalyptic effect has swept through, creating the new center of joblessness.

But it’s not all bad. People still believe that some miracle will occur which will alleviate their problems. It’s good to keep faith and do nothing else. Let the problems continue, there’s no need to solve it. Someone like Gandhi will come out splitting his grave, wave his ‘lathi’ and everything will improve. Corruption will melt away and will flow down the sewers, right where it came from.

My negligible salaried job has a good incentive. It helps in getting visas. I have got my visa ready to leave this country in its mess. There’s no scope for any optimism here. I hope that corruption itself goes corrupt, as I proceed towards my apartment with water to bath. The Independence Day program is to be broadcasted a few hours from now, with a special documentary on how freedom fighters fought hard to achieve the precious independence which we now so indulgently enjoy.

ILL-LITERATES

If you enjoy the privilege of a better memory than mine, you might be able to recall that there was one solution that was common to all problems we studied about in the wonderful school years, be it poverty, hygiene, environmental degradation or calamities. This one solution was awareness, or education. And India has achieved great heights in the field of education (hope you know I’m being sarcastic as usual). I thank the mentality of people for this, a problem which again roots back to education.

The Indian society in general has a very strange air about it. Education is considered as the most important asset to be acquired by our society, yet it’s the very thing that it so unfortunately lacks. It however, is laced with qualifications and degrees. Doctors (!) and engineers (!!!), managers and clerks, and nothing else. How frequently have you heard of people starting their own business? Students opting for athletics after high school? (No wonder a country with one-fifth of the world’s population isn't able to win every 5^th medal in the Olympics!) How many have taken up research? Facts tell two out of a 1000 M.Tech students do a PhD.

After being ‘educated’, you get to work under industries and companies. For some or the other person. If not educated, you get to work as farmers, laborers and the likes. You can now imagine why India is one of the world’s few countries which switched directly from being agriculture based economy to being service based, without crossing the manufacturing stage. The repercussions are evident and more will be evident soon. The very few other people who received little or no schooling, but got educated in the true sense, are the people at the top. Industrialists, artists, sportsperson, entrepreneurs, and the like. Even the illiterate politicians are far above the class of literates. The root of the problem lies in understanding the true meaning of education.

Education is taken as another word for academics and quantified as number of degrees one acquired. It’s not about throwing away your life into the books whether or not you like it. It’s taking decisions, making choices about the field you want to take up your career in, and pursuing it with full fervor and labor. USA might not be the best example to state for education quality, (it’s degrading like anything in the past years) but clearly it provides a huge variety of options to choose as your career; real options.

Here in incredible !ndia, we have science, commerce or arts after tenth grade. In science we have only maths or biology (these are apparently the only two subjects that constitute science!). And maths means engineering, while bio means medical science! At the end of engineering, you get to choose from either CAT or GATE, as if they are the only two criteria to be declared human. Actually, it was meant to be business administration or m.tech, but the meaning has changed. Because its qualification that matters, not knowledge.

Take cities and then villages. Compare the voting percentages. See where people help each other more. Observe where neighbors are friends. Look up where crime is abundant. See where people are healthier (setting aside access to health). See where people are happier. And city people are expected to be more educated!

The situation that came up after the Delhi gang rape showed what education gives to literates. On the day the incident occurred, no one- not a single person stopped to help the victims. Next day you find the same shameless people (with a few of those who genuinely felt sorry) protesting. Once the police showed signs of aggression, they all vanished. Reading recently a case of the rape of a three year old girl which received no attention whatsoever, you can see the protest was a sham. And a shame.

And of course the babas in our society. Literates adore people like asaaram, nirmal baba (he asks you to eat samosas if you say that you have a bad stomach), and follow their instructions to the word. Once I went to a recharge shop, and was looking around. I found no pictures or idols of god. Just when I was about to mentally appreciate this fact; I saw a picture on the wall, incense sticks below it and quite evidently a symbol of devotion. It was nirmal babas. This man worshipped that fraudster!

It is not just the shopkeeper. Most of them are like him. Marriages are based on kundalis and manglik crap. They wear rings to avoid non-existent evil forces. Animals are killed in temples in the name of sacrifice. Sacrifice doesn’t mean killing someone else, it means giving up something you don’t like to part with. The word is sacrifice, for English’s sake!

So, we have an awesome education system, sometimes lead by next-to-god-legends like kapil sibal. I am proud to be an Indian. An educated Indian.