Ahimsa Express moved out of the Pune Station, its wheels drumming the tracks under. I could feel the sound through my feet as I stood at the passage on a coach, the passage that connects compartments of a coach and the one that is used by moving hawkers who sell almost everything from nail clippers to safety chains, paper soap, padlocks, mineral water, cola, cold drinks, potato and banana chips, guavas, pomegranates, torches, hair combs, Sidney Sheldon and Baba Ramdev books, playing cards, latest Stardust magazine and Tinkle comics and all that you need, may need, might need and don’t really need.
It is also used by the IRCTC staff that moves to and fro with that evocative call – ‘Chaaaii… Chaai.. Masala Chai’. This passage is also the one that is exactly in between the central berths and the berths on the side. All the berths had accommodated more people than they were meant to. The train made its way out of the city over and under bridges, sometimes with cars, trucks, rickshaws and motor bikes waiting impatiently on either side cursing the train and filling the air with deafening sounds of the horns pushed with anger and frustration.
Soon the sight through the window changed to green fields and open spaces and sometimes compound walls of real estate (the last, to be exploited pieces of land on face of the earth) with movie posters pasted on them and advertisements of ‘babas’ and ‘hakims’ and ‘baidyas’, saying they could cure piles, stones, impotency, white spots and ED. Embankments on either side now looked greener with grass and weeds grown on them and not surprisingly colorful too, with packets of chips – green for American Cream and Onion, Red for Spanish Tomato Tango, Blue for Indian Masala and Yellow for Classic Salted. To add to the panorama were hundreds of plastic bottles of water which was not in them anymore and the water which was pure, healthy, safe-to-drink and with 300% more oxygen in it than any other water on earth, chocolate and candy wrappers, crumpled pieces of newspapers, broken glass bottles which once contained finest quality malted barley and hops.
I had a ‘waiting list’ ticket. I put my bag under a side berth. From where I stood, I could see the end of the coach which was also the partition between toilet and the corridor. There was an opening in the partition which was ‘waste disposal bin’. It must have been full as I saw a ‘natural’ mango drink pack peeping out of it with a bent straw inserted in it like a long hair pin in a Japanese woman’s head and two plastic bottles popping out. They looked like babies of a kangaroo peeping out of their mother’s pouch.
Some well dressed young men sat on the upper berth on my left and another six on the opposite berth. They had just finished their ‘vada-pavs’ and were enjoying some forwarded jokes which were in their cell phones. One of them sat his legs folded up with a bag in his lap that looked like it had a laptop inside. I received a text in my phone and was replying to it when I felt like someone pat me on my shoulder. I turned around to look. It was the man with laptop bag. Without any words, he stretched his hand out with something in his hand. It was a crumpled piece of paper. He had bent down slightly and he moved his neck pointing at the window, in a way asking me to throw it out of the window. I understood and without any words and hesitation I took that from him and my hand went in to my pocket.
With no further thoughts, I went back to the reply that I was typing. Just in a few moments, he poked me again. I looked up at him. He said – “Bhaiya, fekne ke liye diya tha” (“Brother, I gave it to you to throw it out”), this time, all other fellows on the top berths staring at me – and he told me he did it as his hand could not reach the window from where he was sitting. I had a little smile and said, “It is not good to throw it out” and I went back to my text. In a little longer while, he poked me again. This time he asked me to give the paper back to him. He said sorry which I told him was not necessary for him to say or be. I saw him put the oiled crumpled ball of paper in his laptop bag. I went back to my text. There was a silence at upper berths for a while before I could hear the laughter and jokes again.
Mayur Shah
Asia Plateau - Panchgani
