Bhubaneshwar Diary -- Prologue

So I set out on yet another train journey, or rather yet another train journey to Orissa, to the state where I grew up, a state which always has that familiar echoing call of home.

Apart from the fact that I caught the train literally by the skin of my teeth (my ticket got confirmed only in the morning, just two hours before the ETD of the train) and the fact that I managed to get off it literally by the skin of my behind (I was in deep sleep when the train reached Bhubaneshwar), the journey was more or less uneventful. But for the fact that I again couldn't read or write much and that, that I was yet again allotted a side upper berth (which surprisingly enough don't have a charge point).

Gosh!

Did I say the journey was uneventful? And I also mentioned sleeping! Lest you get the idea that I spent the whole journey flat on my back, here are some highlights.

I had to break my recently undertaken vow and buy a plastic bottle of water. But I stuck to that one through and through the journey (and can use it on my return journey too). Which meant that I (unlike most who travel AC and reserved) was part of the great Indian Railway stampede headed for the drinking water taps, at a number of platforms that the train pulled up at, in between Kazipet and Vijayawada, when the heat was at its hottest. Part of the stampede of forearms and shoulders, each intent on muscling bottle mouths to taps, for that most precious of "free" commodities, water. And -- in keeping with the panic of summer train travelers -- most of those bottles were big and even being lined up in twos and threes, while all I wanted was just one tiny bottle of water.

All this is in passing more or less, I survived all those stampedes as would anyone who has traveled enough to learn a bit of patience, a bit of consideration for his fellow man.

It's just that, during one of those stampedes, a forearm was crowding mine with a huge green bottle (that looked like a veteran of many a tap-side battle) shouldering into my puny Bibo water bottle. I felt like pushing back, but just in time, I saw a tattoo on the forearm -- MAA, in Odiya script. And all I did was half raise my arm and say something like "Ruho Tike", peace reigned and the green bottle withdrew back. I walked back with a bottle of water and a touched feeling, for once again having an intense encounter with the mystique and power of the mother cult.

It was pretty late, 10ish more or less, when the train passed through the total darkness of Elamanchili railway platform, halting barely for the 2-3 minutes it is scheduled to, almost as if it was a forced gesture. And for absolutely no reason -- no one was coming to meet me, nor did I need to buy anything to eat or drink -- I decided to wait up till the train reached Vizag. That wait which I had estimated to take no longer than 45 minutes, ended up taking close to double the time. Meanwhile I was lucky enough to witness the "hills of Vizag" standing sheer and dark like massive fort walls or the coils of some prehistoric snake against the lights of the industrial areas around Vizag...and the far off lights of the city itself. The night breeze as the train cut through it was cold, there was a hint of rain in it...and of course a hint of that peculiar cocktail of a smell too -- of sweat, salt, casuarina and coconut -- that announces Vizag to the olfactory part of me. Maybe it was worth waiting up for, I thought...while standing on Vizag platform and (off all things) charging my cellphone at a deserted charge point, watching people (many of them heavily laden) running helter kelter over a slippery platform (it had just been washed and many puddles remained) to reach the unreserved compartments up ahead, in all probability intent on making it home to Orissa, somehow or the other, in time for Maha Vishuba Sankranti.

To wind up, sharing a "discovery", you can travel without ticket on the Indian Railways now. All you need is the SMS sent to you by the IRCTC, in lieu of a print-out of your ticket. How progressive, no?