by Akhilesh
The route was never poor so far as trains were concerned even before the Varuna started its run. It was on this route that the superfast trains from Delhi and Punjab travelled to Banaras, Bihar and Calcutta, but they did not stop at Sultanpur. And if any of them did, it did not allow travelling from Sultanpur to Banaras or Lucknow. Still, there were plenty who travelled without ticket, paying the TT a ten-rupee sweetener to cover the thirty-rupee distance. And there were some who did not want to part even with a tenner. Two kinds of passengers – those who paid ten and those who did not pay even ten – used to detain even those trains at Sultanpur that had no scheduled stoppage. They did not deem it a heroic enough deed to pull the chain to stop the train so they used to wrench off the vacuum hose to detain it wherever they preferred. And even if you discount this heroic act, it was no mean thing that diesel trains used to run this route frequently from the religious city to the capital city while not a single diesel train passed through the cultural and intellectual city of Allahabad. There were three trains on the other route but they were hauled by sooty steam engines. Such engines can now be seen only at the zonal railway offices and the Rail Bhawan in Delhi, attracting foreign travellers as curios. Suryakant had journeyed to Allahabad to his Mausi’s house many times in childhood and he had always ridden that train. A furnace blazed at the bottom of the engine and often he would see a man in a blue uniform shovelling coal in. The train, running on fire, used to stop at the Pratapgarh station to fill water where passengers could enjoy four aloo tikkis for one rupee and glug down water while the engine tanks were filled. The engine of the train lugged the compartments, belching smoke, running on an unnatural combination of fire and water. The train stopped at every station in between. It chugged and puffed, making a din with its whistle. Its hoot was different from that of the Varuna Express. It was shriller and longer. This train had neither a first class nor an AC coach. Generally, the windows had no glass panes and the bathrooms had no taps. Either the panes or the taps had been ripped off by the commuters or by the railway employees and filched or perhaps they had not been fitted at all – there was no consensus on the issue. Let alone glass panes, there were often no shutters fixed to the widows. And so, the coal dust spewing out of the engines would settle on the clothes and the body. It would slip on to the face or stick in the hair. Bald heads were covered in a black crust and grey hair turned peppery. Fair-skinned girls appeared as if black paint had been sprayed on them. Most of the stations remained dark at night. Only the headlamp on the front of the engine provided some illumination. When a train chugged in, the station was filled with light. When a train left, darkness materialized. The tracks too remained absolutely dark. Only the red and the yellow and the green of the signals would appear and disappear. Whenever a chap with a lantern popped up on the platforms and the level crossings, there would be a lanternful of glow.
On the other hand, long distance diesel trains via Lucknow were exceptions. Their coaches were not illuminated with sickly, pale bulbs but filled with gleaming brilliance; there were fans as well. Most of the fans worked. Those that did not, the passengers would poke their blades with pens, twig brushes or pocket combs and then they whirred candidly. The Varuna Express was quite different from the other trains that came in and out of Sultanpur. It had a shining floor, and if you opened a tap, water splashed down profusely. When you turned them off, they remained shut. Suryakant would arrive in Lucknow, opening and closing the taps. He had heard that drinking plenty of water put a glow on one’s skin and helped with constipation. It was a different matter whether his skin acquired a glow or not, but he was not cured of constipation either. In spite of this, he used to drink a full jug of water early in the morning and as a consequence, he had to visit the lavatory frequently, washing his hands at the tap outside. He even used the flush in the toilet. But it was beyond him to clean the bathroom walls. There would be drawings of a heart and an arrow piercing it and underneath they would bear the legend ‘I love you’. Artists would have drawn an Om at one spot and written Rizwan in another. Some spots bore the name Banti and some Rupesh. It was a genuine confluence of all the religions. All this was tolerable, but the art turned lurid when someone drew male and female genitals instead of a heart and an arrow. In the opinion of the elders, it was a proof of the decadence of the younger generation. The younger generation claimed it was the sexual frustration of a few perverted fossils. In the jam-packed Varuna Express, it was difficult, if not impossible to identify the culprit. And who the hell had the time to do something like that?
People occupied themselves as soon as they found a seat in the train. They did not care about their surroundings. Some read, some got bored, some dozed. Businessmen pulled out their calculators or notebooks and got busy with accounts. Male students moved through the compartment to look at girls or tease them. One day, when one of the students was hanging from the door to look at a girl by the window, a pillar on the railway track crushed his head and flung him in the air. This was the first death in the Varuna Express. Other deaths also occurred – not inside the Varuna Express but under its wheels. Not only humans but even cattle were mowed down. What great disappointment drove them to suicide? The interpretation of the cattle accidents by human beings, who were completely ignorant of the inner worlds of animals and their frustrations, was that they died because of their carelessness.
Whenever there was a death, the train stopped for a while. The passengers would be shocked at first, then grow sad and then get sick of the train being stranded. When the train finally moved, things returned to normal. But Raza Sahib was deeply disturbed at every death caused by the Varuna Express. When it happened for the first time, the members of the card group thought it was someone close to him who had died in a train accident. One of his daughters had committed suicide under a long-distance train in Sultanpur. Now, whenever somebody was killed under the train, he lapsed into mourning. Raza Sahib grieved not for the dead person, but for his own daughter.
‘Raza Sahib, you’re still a daily commuter?’ Suryakant asked.
‘Yes, but only till next month.’
‘After that?’
‘I’m retiring.’
‘What are your plans then?’
‘Whatever God wills.’
‘How are the other members of your group? I don’t see anyone else.’
‘Singh Sahib managed a transfer to Sultanpur and got out of this daily grind. Jogesh Lal is an MST holder from Faizabad. Harminder has settled down in Lucknow, his wife has started a dahi bara and chole bhature shop in Alambag. God is kind to him, and it is doing well.’
‘What about Harminder himself?’
‘He drinks all the time.’
‘Why did he leave Sultanpur?’
Harminder did not have a job. He was a daily passenger in the Varuna Express and used to supply goods on orders from Sultanpur shopkeepers. Every day he received at least a few orders, and earned an adequate commission. ‘What else could he do?’ Raza Sahib said. ‘Agents from the companies started visiting Sultanpur to get orders. Supplied them within twenty-four hours. You can easily take and fulfil orders on the phone and email now. There’s nothing in it for Harminder.’
‘Oh. What about Jitendraji?’
‘Who? Oh, that Jitendra Barnwal? He was paralyzed six years ago. He hasn’t recovered …’ Raza Sahib leaned towards him and whispered, ‘I saw you with a girl in Lucknow several times …’
‘Yes, Raza Sahib, the girl got married. She is the mother of a child and lives in Lucknow.’
‘You must think that she ditched you, but try to understand. Girls do not have the right to choose, and so, when submerged in love, they either turn unfaithful or commit suicide,’ said Raza Sahib, his eyes and voice trembling in unison. He fell silent, gazing at the scene outside the window. Perhaps he was trying to get hold of his lost daughter.
‘Raza Sahib, she didn’t ditch me. She married me.’
His gaze returned to the train. He stared at Suryakant briefly and then
stroked his hands with warmth, ‘Congratulations, congratulations!’
‘Come on, Bhai Sahib.’ The card players were now calling Raza Sahib. They were not the commuters from the initial days of the Varuna Express. Like a card game continuing despite cards crumpling or getting lost, the card game in the Varuna Express also continued in spite of a player dying, leaving or falling sick.
Raza Sahib rose, asked Suryakant to excuse him and joined his usual group. One of the players was shuffling the cards with great skill.
Suryakant looked across the window, wondering which station was next. He tried to recall it, but failed to remember the name although he used to travel by this train every single day. All daily commuters knew the sequence of the arriving stations by heart. Some of them had mastered the journey to such an extent that they could tell which station the train was approaching, even while half-asleep. These men had mastered time and space or else they had developed a mystical insight. Did the sound of the train change at different places ever so slightly? It probably did, very little, but it did – and these passengers were able to tell the present, past and the future of the station without looking outside. Had these men been archers instead of daily passengers, they certainly would have been veterans in shooting at sound. Had they been properly trained in the art, it was quite possible that they would have found out from the sound of the train where water was located under the ground and where one could discover the treasure trove of minerals! Which site contained gold and diamonds and which one, petrol! Where the landmines were buried and where mulberry would grow and where the lichis would bear sweet fruit!
The train arrived at Rahmat Nagar, and suddenly all the memories flooded back. As soon as he recalled Rahmat Nagar, the next stations came back one by one. The luminosity of memory kept growing – the names of all the stations shone there now. But the bizarre fact was that these were minor semi-rural or rural stations where trains like the Varuna Express did not stop. These trains whooshed by, slighting men on the platforms in their tattered, filthy clothes. Naturally, frustrated children took to senseless acts like throwing bricks at the train. Similarly, Sultanpur too felt snubbed when a train flashed by without stopping or even slowing down. There were a few trains that did not pause even for stations bigger than Sultanpur and hurtled on, trampling the town’s self-esteem in their arrogance. In the very manner when a passenger or a fast passenger stops at a minor station and the inhabitants of the place strut and preen, looking condescendingly at the villages that can boast of neither a railway station nor a bus stop.
And so, there existed a stratagem of apartheid of the high and the low, of the rich and the poor in which the rest remained to be insulted or to insult, with the exception of the cities and the metropolis.
Innumerable villages occupy the space between two stations. Several of the villagers leave their villages and settle in cities. What would happen if the villages themselves one day migrated to the cities with or without their residents? What if numerous villages like Ramchetpur, Chilbila, Paudhan, Manchite, Nagram, Parela migrated to New York, Paris, London, Washington and Tokyo? Or to localities like Connaught Place, Khan Market and Lodhi Road in Delhi, or Park Street and Jagdish Chandra Bose Road in Kolkata? Of course, this is a flight of imagination, but there is no doubt that the cities are surrounded only by villages. What if every single village in the world got mad at the cities?
What if they behave in a similar manner again? Suryakant watched the flock of birds gliding outside the window and thought, Why am I going home? Gauri must be miserable. Is it my defeat then? Why am I going then? He had a strong urge to return to Lucknow and quit Pandey’s assignment. The other option was that he could visit Sultanpur but not go home. He could stay at a hotel or a friend’s place. That would be much better, he decided.
He thought of the night he had been evicted from home. Babuji had thrown Suryakant and Gauri out at 11 p.m. and slammed the doors shut. The door had screeched loudly as if proclaiming a public decree of his expulsion. Babuji was screaming on the other side of the door, ‘Don’t show me your face again! Go and caress the thighs of that whore! Rub your mouth inside her petticoat! Bastard! Behaving so badly in front your father!’ The vile utterance was followed by Ma’s sobs. Perhaps she had lunged, weeping, to unlock the door. It had rattled but not opened. Babuji must have stopped her by force. And then there had been the sounds of someone being beaten. Who was it? He had guessed that it must have be Ma, who else?
‘What’s the taim?’ One of the villagers who was hurrying to his destination asked him.
‘It’s around 7 p.m.,’ he informed. Suryakant was upset, the train was already late. He tried to hit upon a justification to go straight home. If the train arrived late, would it be proper to knock at a friend’s door? It had been years since he had severed his relations with this town, who knew which friend still lived there? He had no idea of the hotels either. When he had left town, there were a terrible minority that used to stay in the hotels; moreover, the dhabas were then called hotels here. Anyway, he told himself, it was Babuji who insulted Gauri and me, but he was not the only person in the house. There was also Ma, Dadi, Shibbu, Chacha and his family. The house may belong to Babuji, but it was a home for all the others too. He decided he would go home. He thought he’d reach by night. I’ll be standing outside the house at night again. The only difference is that Gauri was there with me the last time, and tonight it is only me. Will Babuji open the door? Suppose he doesn’t let me in? What if he shoves me by the scruff of the neck once again? In that case, I shall be standing outside my house yet again. But there has been this long gap, and it is a different time of year. It is a summer night; the other night was winter.
It had been 11 p.m. on that other icy night. Everything had been shrouded in fog. For the last four days, the fog had descended as soon as evening fell and by night, it had enveloped the entire town. Folks in Sultanpur said that there was fog after thirty-five years. The fog was deep, so deep that one could not make out even his own hand and clothes. Fearful of collisions, men walked as slowly as ants and bicycles moved at the pace of men. Cars moved slowly. You could tell their movements only by their lights. People were quite cautious and yet, mishaps occurred. Twelve vehicles had been involved in an accident between eight and nine o’clock one morning.
It was pointless to say that the fog had eclipsed the hustle and bustle of the town. As soon as the fog intensified, the buzz of the town cooled down like the hearths in the hotels. If you didn’t consider the exceptions, even the beasts vanished from the roads. Dogs barked only in the daytime and kept mum at night. Sometimes, the cold made them whimper, and the sound seemed to come from deep in the night.
As soon as the fog descended, people began to walk faster towards their houses. Some even ran. Finally, there were hardly a couple of men left on the streets. Children were, of course, careless and so they suffered. All the children in the town had begun to cough and sneeze, and many lay ill in bed. The grown-ups, not reckless as children, were always covered in woollen garments. Thousands of baldies bought monkey caps. Some of the old men started wearing two socks instead of one in each leg. Stocks of caps, shawls, mufflers and sweaters would arrive in the shops and vanish. The cold did not let people enjoy themselves fully or get completely morose.
All this was fine but the most awful thing was that the cold and the fog killed eight poor people. Three of them were beggars, three, labourers, one, a rickshaw-puller and one, a disabled woman who was run over by a truck because of the low visibility. However, the poor took their own precautions. They did not spend nights in the open. If they were unable to find shelter, they sought refuge in the dens of animals. Conditions worsened to the extent that dogs, cows, donkeys and the poor, all hunted for shelter even at the cremation ground.
There were a few quirky folks too; they came out of the house when the fog thickened and sauntered on roads with a regal gait. They smoked and munched on peanuts. And therefore, it can be said that life had not complet
ely been vanquished by the fog and the cold. In spite of the freeze, there would be at least one tea stall doing business, where these whimsical fellows and a few poor men would sip tea. Moreover, there were other penniless and lowly men huddled around the solitary fires to pick up some heat. If a stroller or a cyclist joined them, the circle would shuffle to make room for him. He would sit for a while and warm his palms and soles. He would warm his face and ears with his warm palms and then get up to resume his ant walk in the fog.
It was in such weather, in such fog, in such piercing cold that Suryakant and Gauri had been driven out of the house at 11 p.m. The bang of the door, the sound of crying, perhaps Ma’s, and the voices, ‘Go and caress the thighs of the whore … Bastard!’ scrambled on his neck over and over again, until he felt the hate-filled, obdurate pressure of a father’s hand on his neck …
When he had walked around four yards after being expelled with Gauri in the fog’s empire, a bottomless anguish, born of parting from his home, overwhelmed his heart. He turned and cast a glance at his house, but the fog was so thick that he was unable to see it. Yet, he could clearly see what was happening inside and hear the words … bastard … whore! He had realized his eyes were full of tears. He slumped on the road and broke down. Gauri pulled him up and guided him to the flank. The house was now in front of him and he was weeping before the house. Gauri held his hand as if he were a child. The house swayed in his teary vision. Gauri also found the house swaying, even without tears.
When he had stopped crying, he realized that he was not so sorry about the situation. He had been overcome with disgrace and chagrin. There was such combustion in the two sentiments that his temples had been afire even in the biting cold. He had decided that this was the last straw and that he would never come back! The home that suffused each part of his life and was rooted deep in his heart was fading now. He had grown sentimental and whispered in his heart, ‘O home, I disown you!’