Train Journeys In Three Continents
Trains used to be a major factor
of life in my young days, and still are a major way of life in India. It is not
only that they are well laid out as far as covering the country goes, with most
travel possible by using a combination of major train and some bus journey. It
is also that they lend so well to the mentality, the way of life. People go to
the train station en masse, to wait for the train and to see off the traveller,
they wait for the train and if it is late one spends time there as one would anywhere
else. One gets on the train and finds a place to settle down, and then the
compartment is your new community for the duration of the hours you spend
together. People share food, talk, help each other with getting tea and so
forth from the platforms of various stops at stations on the way, and on the
whole are a substitute family for the duration. There is no exchange of
addresses, even of names often; but the temporary nature of the togetherness
stops no one from being themselves and connecting.
The first time I saw trains
outside India it was in Germany, and a lot was impressive - the neatness and
cleanliness, lack of crowd, quiet, and the trolleys brought around with food
served, if you did not wish to walk to the dining car that is nice too. But the
whole thrill of those journeys was of a pattern with the thrill of being there,
discovering the country, the beauty of Black Forest and its walking trails, the
whole experience. I was told "sometimes a tram can be as late as even two
minutes during rush hours" - and when I was back a train I waited for was
four hours late, and people were restless but at peace enough, and with that I
knew with a finality that it was India, not the dreamland I had visited.
The difference of trains in the
two was even more extreme when once I travelled in U.S. in train from east
coast to Michigan, and found that while most travellers were probably satisfied
with the couple of varieties of burgers I was left with not so much choice; the
stops on the way had only a vending machine, and people in the train did not
talk to strangers - so with a book and some scenery and not much else to do it
is a very different journey. I suppose it might be different if one travels
from Chicago to west coast especially on the scenic routes with glass roof
double-decker trains, but still, the difference of India and west was then
stark.
When I returned to India after
less than a decade it was the train journeys that again brought home something
else - I travelled in trains that were packed with a new definition of the
word, we were sitting on the luggage rack (it is spacious and at the height of
an upper bunk in old trains) and there was not space to descend without warning
everyone who was packed below in every inch of the space; but then we settled
and when the major stop came where everyone wanted tea and snacks, those close
to the window and those who had managed to step out carried out the
transactions with money going from hand to hand and your stuff arriving without
mistake the same way. We were a close community.
It was even more brought home
when once I happened to travel in the general passholders compartment in the
very royal Deccan Queen, and not only was not hassled but even given a very
courteous treatment by those who travelled in that compartment every day twice
a day, commuting over seven hours a day; not only they made place for me to
sit, but when the train catering official arrived with snacks and drinks they
wouln't allow me to pay. They were home, and I was a guest, I could pay for
them the next time, they said - knowing fully well there might be no next time.
And if I had refused it would be an insult, so I accepted, gratefully. They
claimed they were no less than brothers - to each other and me too.
When we were in Germany again,
this time for a couple of years, once we travelled to Paris by train, for
Easter vacation week. It had been nearly two decades since my first visit to
Europe and the thrill of revisiting was strong. But this journey was something
else. This time we got into talking with a co passenger who was travelling with
her young son, they lived in Paris where the son had lived most of his little
life, and she was from Germany.
She was happy enough living in
France but was considering returning, and I got the impression it was more of a
patriotism combined with a little guilt at being happy abroad that was
operating. She was happy enough at doing well, but seemed to be upset when she
asked about our occupations and realised we were more educated, and explained why
she was not - extraordinary, as if anyone has to explain such different levels
of education unless it had to do with poverty and need to earn - it was because
she was doing better than many people who had higher degrees and did not do so
well, that she had no reason to feel bad about her school level education, and
so forth. Since we had no logical response she was a bit disappointed and went
on to say other things that might bring a reaction forth. Some of those pieces
of that conversation are gems, in terms of what they think.
First she talked about the south
American friend she had who was a little darker than one of us. I got the
impression it was contrary to her expectation that people other than European
could be light coloured or could care little enough to have families with
various degrees of light to dark skins. Her friend was of European descent, so
it was a surprise to her that someone of European blood could be darker than
someone from India, especially when the person from India had no European
ancestry.
They forget the effect of
roasting on food is no different from that of sunlight on skin; and that human
genes are endowed with nature's wisdom in adapting to the expected life in heat
of the tropics is not yet suspected by most of those who think the same way -
European ancestry, pale, any other dark. Hence the surprise about them getting
darker in tropics than some of us.
Silly, really. But it got worse.
She then talked about some Jewish
people whom she had met in Paris, old people, who were getting along pleasantly
enough with her until they discovered she was German. Then they stopped talking
to her "even though" she was too young to have had anything to do
with their unpleasant memories. She had neatly reduced the Holocaust to a bunch
of old people sulking and turning away. I think she expected us to sympathise
with her and was quite surprised that it was not forthcoming - we merely
indicated we had heard and understood what she had said, but with no comments.
Perhaps the other two glaring
youngsters in the compartment - not with her but of her nationality - might
have had something to do with that; they had been displeased we were in
conversation, and were glaring throughout, so the last thing we were about to
do was to have an unequal even if only verbal (the latter by no means
guaranteed) encounter unnecessarily. We were rather determined to have a
pleasant holiday, going to Paris, and did not want anything spoil it, not even
an argument.
Also, facts and history do not
change by verbal fights or physical for that matter and no one in the
compartment was in need of information on either historical facts or effect of
tortures on survivors and their looking askance at those who might have had
something to do with it. The frowns and worse we got regularly in Germany, (and
in that compartment from those other youngsters,) when we spoke English - which
was normal for us - had something to do with allied bombings, which people did
talk about when an acquaintance was further along at a stage where they
expected sympathy and are unaware of others' knowledge of history.
Later, when we had fallen silent,
and were looking through the huge high windows at the rolling country of France
- it was somewhere in Champagne region, with vineyards covering hours of
journey view - she spoke again, to remark to the effect that France had so much
empty land and Germany was so crowded with a much higher population; she left
the thought unfinished, but it was obvious she thought that it was unnatural,
selfish, unfair of France not to offer an equal division of land to Germany on
basis of population count, and it was clearly the old lebensraum at work again.
But then - with that sort of
logic about what is fair, why do they complain about African immigrants to
Europe who try desperately to escape a continent ravaged (and Europe had
something to do with that!) with various problems, and arrive in Europe to find
food and shelter? After all isn't that why Europeans went everywhere just a few
centuries ago, too? That they colonised or often enslaved and even massacred
local populations, robbed them of land and anything else they could, and
imposed the rules of their superiority in lands that were not theirs but those
of the locals, is far worse than what the poor immigrants are doing in any
country! Or perhaps that is the fear they have - what if tables were to turn?
I wonder if France is aware of
any - how many, who knows - of their newly friendly neighbours looking at their
land - and Champagne region included - with stirring of the same old idea of
lebensraum.
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