Fragments of a Journey

A woman aims her bag of dirt at the top of a Bangalore garbage pile. She swings it a couple of times, like a discuss thrower perfecting the line of her arm, and tosses it with a final heave. The bag rises up in the air, bits of garbage escaping out into the morning wind, crosses the foothills of the mound, and lands midway up. The woman, having accomplished her mission without having to go too close to the garbage mountain behind her house by the city rail tracks, turns back to her autumn day. A day not without its usual anguishes.

This I see from the train window, after the local train bearing down-city turmoil next to me has passed. Local trains dot the route, crammed respectably. This one has a young woman in a red sari sitting on the floor next to the door, her legs hanging below, a bag clutched in her lap. She sits with her friend, negotiating a halt in their conversation. She has too much lipstick on, and is quite beautiful. She suddenly looks up at me; I prevent myself from looking away. She looks away, an understated scowl. A moment later, she looks at me again. This time with lesser hostility. Perfunctory curiosity. Another man.

The local trains in Bengal have more people, and they are older, nearly decrepit. I find a mother and her son on their haunches on the Kharagpur platform. The child, blackened by the regular rigor, sits naked, defecating on the platform, about two years old. The mother sits before him, shouting curses at no one in particular. A narrow stream of shit colors the platform. The mother, her face grimy from unknown trials by the rail tracks, becomes silent and looks at her son. Her eyes reflect a mid-day ambivalence. A lack of meaning. My father shakes his head and tells me the IIT is outside the city area, thus freeing it of Kharagpur’s squalor. In Bhubaneshwar, an elderly woman gently pees in the corner of the platform.

In Bangalore, before the train starts, I stare out of the wide window. Water pipes run down the tracks, little spouts extending downwards, leaking half-heartedly. A man bends and cranes his neck to let the trickle into his throat. The sun isn’t completely out yet. Maybe he has been working since dawn, or the night before, and the hangover is beginning to recede now, with the sun.

The next morning in the train, Chilka lake stretches out to the sea, small green islands vehement in their existence. Wide waters calm the eyes. The waters reach out to a pale, stormy sky. Andhra Pradesh vanishes, memories only of pink houses amidst fields, and blue water tanks in a particular village. Long distances I travel by train are broken down into these fragments. Again and again I wish to just get down somewhere and walk down the dirt tracks that seem to go nowhere. The rain seems to wait outside. An old land's temporary anguish. 

A couple of days later, as I walk down Calcutta’s Bijon Setu, near Gariahaat, an old woman in rags dances to a perverse melody. I leave the shops behind, people buying away their time. The road stretches forward, crammed with vehicles. At a distance, over the only empty spot on the gray road, black vehicle fumes swirl in a dance. The ultimate nihilism of the city.