Can you believe that in my 33 years of life, I have never been to Mysore (what an unfortunate spelling, no? My sore... what? bottom? armpit? The old spelling, Mysuru is much better in this case) Mysore is only about 3 hours from Bangalore. It's like someone in Pittsburgh never having gone to Wheeling, WV. No matter where you're going, there's always some point where you have to drive through it. Of course, one could argue that Wheeling probably has very little impact on Pittsburgh, but that's not the case with Mysore and Bangalore. Mysore, being the seat of the Wodeyar kingdom and the old capital of the Mysore princely state (which included Bangalore, most other parts of Karnataka and nearly all of Andhra), is the cultural capital of Karnataka. Most Kannadigas are fiercely loyal to the kingdom. So it was with a feeling of intense anticipation that we left Bangalore.
There are a million trains running between the two cities and even more buses. We had imagined that there would be plenty of space available on these millions of vehicles, but the trains were pretty crowded. In a fit of unfounded optimism, I booked us "unreserved" seats on the Chamrajnagar Passenger train for Rs30 apiece about 20 minutes before the departure of the train. Thrilled by my thrift, Ram and I dragged the kids along to find ourselves a nice set of seats. Much to our dismay, we found no free seats anywhere in the compartments we looked. I suggested to Ram that we go right up to the last compartment, since not too many people might be willing to walk that much, but Ram had spied some fellows sitting up on the luggage rack above the seats. It was quite a spacious rack, because it was originally intended to be a berth, but the cushions had been removed.
"If they can do it, we can do it too", he exclaimed and I echoed the sentiment. We pushed ourselves up on to the rack, settled our belongings and said, "why, this isn't so bad after all!" Soon enough, we saw that every single luggage rack and indeed, every single inch of space down by the seats were filled up with people, their luggage, their food, their kids and their luggage and so on. Passenger trains get REALLY crowded. There was no way we could come down, for if we came down, somebody else would go up and our perch away from the crowd would disappear for ever. We peered down for a while (since there were no windows to peer out of and indeed, the angle was such that we couldn't even get a glimpse of what was outside, no idea of the scenery, where we were traveling or which stations we were passing) and after about 10 minutes or so (really, that's all it took), Ram and I started to fidget with discomfort. Half an hour later, we were seriously considering just getting off the train at the next station, but how? The crowd was SO thick that there was no way we could have shoved ourselves, our kids and our bags out of the train (which led me to imagine what might happen to us if a fire broke out or if the train derailed, but the discomfort of that luggage rack soon chased away other thoughts, no matter how macabre, from my mind).
To pass time, I peeled a couple of oranges and passed them to the kids. A couple of minutes later, somebody from the seats underneath said, "Hey, some of the fibres are falling down here. Watch out!" I gave the kids some water to drink, and met with another protest from down below. Jeez, okay, clearly food and drink were out of the picture.
Despite the immensity of the crowd, railway vendors were still shoving their way through them selling hot vadas, roasted peanuts, water bottles and such. We bought ourselves some packets of peanuts, I carefully extracted the peanuts out of their newspaper packets and handed them over to the kids. I'm sure a couple of them must have fallen on the fellows below, but surprisingly we encountered no protests, perhaps because those worthy people were themselves busy snacking.
The trick to traveling on a luggage rack is to lean back against something relatively soft, such a backpack so that your buttocks are not pressing straight down against the metal rods. Since we only had one backpack, Ani and I shared it for the first hour or so, and then Ram and Ani shared it for the remainder of the time. Ani and Ram promptly fell asleep, leaving me to Durga on my lap throughout, which was pretty excruciating once I lost the support of the backpack.
About 2 hours from our destination, Durga whispered to me, "Mummy, I need to pee".
"F***!" I thought in my head, but offered her a strained smile as she looked hopefully to me.
"No baby! Can't go now! Look at all the people down there. There's no way we can get to the toilet. Keep it in for a while", I counseled. Poor little girl.
Finally, an hour later, she was in acute distress and I, motivated by the thought what of all those people down below who had scolded us for orange fibres and drops of water might do if confronted by a stream of urine, decided to act. I brought out a towel (Thank you, Ford Prefect!), used it as a nappy, and encouraged Durga to do her job. Oh, the relief on her face! And the relief in my mind when I realized that the towel was sufficient for her business!
We reached Mysore after a fiendishly long time, the passenger train compelled to stop at every single little village there ever existed between Bangalore and Mysore. What bliss to climb down that luggage rack! The euphoria of being able to stretch one's arms, legs and every organ possible, and oh my God, the almost spiritual feeling of planting one's bottom on a soft seat after 4 hours on a metal luggage rack! Heaven never seemed closer than at that moment!
My mantra for life is pretty simple, almost cliched. But I believe it completely. It is that everything happens for a reason. And I wondered what might be the reason, the lesson, in this oh so excruciating journey. Is it never to travel unreserved again? Yes, of course. But that's rather superficial. For me, the biggest impression I have of this journey, looking back 4 weeks later, is being a small part of something much bigger. This journey made me intensely aware of the people around me- those crowds, those people, their food, their kids, their luggage. I was a part of this teeming, swelling, relatively poor, mass. What affected them at that time also affected me. Their worries about the journey were my worries (and perhaps my worries were theirs.. surely had anyone, especially the folks sitting beneath us, known about Durga's pressing bladder, would have been quite as worried as I was!). For a person who has spent the past 10 years in the US, very aware of personal boundaries and space, this journey sort of shattered that idea of aloofness and privilege.
When we stepped out of the train, some of my train-mates nodded goodbye. Some went by car, some by motor bikes. We caught an auto and ironically enough, checked into a hotel called "United 21", with a flag of the US waving outside, next to a Papa Johns' pizza shop.
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| This is sort of what we sat on. The size appears to be just about right too! |
"If they can do it, we can do it too", he exclaimed and I echoed the sentiment. We pushed ourselves up on to the rack, settled our belongings and said, "why, this isn't so bad after all!" Soon enough, we saw that every single luggage rack and indeed, every single inch of space down by the seats were filled up with people, their luggage, their food, their kids and their luggage and so on. Passenger trains get REALLY crowded. There was no way we could come down, for if we came down, somebody else would go up and our perch away from the crowd would disappear for ever. We peered down for a while (since there were no windows to peer out of and indeed, the angle was such that we couldn't even get a glimpse of what was outside, no idea of the scenery, where we were traveling or which stations we were passing) and after about 10 minutes or so (really, that's all it took), Ram and I started to fidget with discomfort. Half an hour later, we were seriously considering just getting off the train at the next station, but how? The crowd was SO thick that there was no way we could have shoved ourselves, our kids and our bags out of the train (which led me to imagine what might happen to us if a fire broke out or if the train derailed, but the discomfort of that luggage rack soon chased away other thoughts, no matter how macabre, from my mind).
To pass time, I peeled a couple of oranges and passed them to the kids. A couple of minutes later, somebody from the seats underneath said, "Hey, some of the fibres are falling down here. Watch out!" I gave the kids some water to drink, and met with another protest from down below. Jeez, okay, clearly food and drink were out of the picture.
Despite the immensity of the crowd, railway vendors were still shoving their way through them selling hot vadas, roasted peanuts, water bottles and such. We bought ourselves some packets of peanuts, I carefully extracted the peanuts out of their newspaper packets and handed them over to the kids. I'm sure a couple of them must have fallen on the fellows below, but surprisingly we encountered no protests, perhaps because those worthy people were themselves busy snacking.
The trick to traveling on a luggage rack is to lean back against something relatively soft, such a backpack so that your buttocks are not pressing straight down against the metal rods. Since we only had one backpack, Ani and I shared it for the first hour or so, and then Ram and Ani shared it for the remainder of the time. Ani and Ram promptly fell asleep, leaving me to Durga on my lap throughout, which was pretty excruciating once I lost the support of the backpack.
About 2 hours from our destination, Durga whispered to me, "Mummy, I need to pee".
"F***!" I thought in my head, but offered her a strained smile as she looked hopefully to me.
"No baby! Can't go now! Look at all the people down there. There's no way we can get to the toilet. Keep it in for a while", I counseled. Poor little girl.
Finally, an hour later, she was in acute distress and I, motivated by the thought what of all those people down below who had scolded us for orange fibres and drops of water might do if confronted by a stream of urine, decided to act. I brought out a towel (Thank you, Ford Prefect!), used it as a nappy, and encouraged Durga to do her job. Oh, the relief on her face! And the relief in my mind when I realized that the towel was sufficient for her business!
We reached Mysore after a fiendishly long time, the passenger train compelled to stop at every single little village there ever existed between Bangalore and Mysore. What bliss to climb down that luggage rack! The euphoria of being able to stretch one's arms, legs and every organ possible, and oh my God, the almost spiritual feeling of planting one's bottom on a soft seat after 4 hours on a metal luggage rack! Heaven never seemed closer than at that moment!
My mantra for life is pretty simple, almost cliched. But I believe it completely. It is that everything happens for a reason. And I wondered what might be the reason, the lesson, in this oh so excruciating journey. Is it never to travel unreserved again? Yes, of course. But that's rather superficial. For me, the biggest impression I have of this journey, looking back 4 weeks later, is being a small part of something much bigger. This journey made me intensely aware of the people around me- those crowds, those people, their food, their kids, their luggage. I was a part of this teeming, swelling, relatively poor, mass. What affected them at that time also affected me. Their worries about the journey were my worries (and perhaps my worries were theirs.. surely had anyone, especially the folks sitting beneath us, known about Durga's pressing bladder, would have been quite as worried as I was!). For a person who has spent the past 10 years in the US, very aware of personal boundaries and space, this journey sort of shattered that idea of aloofness and privilege.
When we stepped out of the train, some of my train-mates nodded goodbye. Some went by car, some by motor bikes. We caught an auto and ironically enough, checked into a hotel called "United 21", with a flag of the US waving outside, next to a Papa Johns' pizza shop.
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