The first lap of my voyage to Paris in 1955 took me to what used to be called Bombay then, and Mumbai now. The ride lasted more than thirty-six hours. As the train left the station, I took off the fragrant garland which my family had generously placed around my neck as a farewell gesture. It had slightly wetted my new brown woollen jacket. I tried to sit as comfortably as I could in the little space I had appropriated for myself in the corner of the third-class wooden bench in the crowded compartment.
My friend KB who was traveling with me to Paris was not just unhappy; he was furious. He kept raving about the irresponsible railway employees, their inefficiency and incompetence as a result of which our reserved first-cclass sets were not available. He said he was going to write a letter of complaint to the Railway Board of India and demand a refund. It is amazing how perturbed one can become about minor disappointments in life. I tried to calm him down.
The elderly man sitting near us heard all this and said he was not surprised in the least. He began to narrate to us three different occasions when he had been misled, ignored, or unfairly treated by railway authorities. “Things were much better under the British,” he said almost in a nostalgic tone in an unpatriotic outburst. I did not like this historical reflection, but I jotted it down in my notebook anyway, adding, “Mr. Churchill might have applauded this.”.
“So where are you going?” the man asked me, “Why did you get all these garlands and flowers?”
“We are going to Europe for higher studies,” I said, “My family gave me these flowers to wish me good luck.”
“Very good, very good. May you be successful!”
The idea that I would not be seeing my family for more than three years suddenly hit me hard, and I started to weep . The fellow passenger with whom I had been talking tried to console me. He reminded me that it was quite normal for a young man to move away from home and then come back after some time. He suggested that I direct my mind to things I would be seeing and doing in the next few years. At one point he said, perhaps to console me, that he was impressed to see so many people at the Howrah station to see me off, and added, “You must be very popular.”
This stranger, who must have been in his early fifties, was an accountant in a company in Nagpur. Being with him was helpful, for aside from the fact that I could talk to him about my feelings, he kept distracting my thoughts with other matters. He said he also wrote poetry in Marathi. In his view, a great period of Indian history was during the time of Shivaji. Had it not been for the British intruders, he went on, India would have become one great Hindu nation. Marathi, perhaps the richest language of India, would have been the national language of the country. “Unfortunately, people associate Maharashtra with only one state in India. In fact, all that the name means is Great Nation, and that is how India must be called,” he went on to say. Then he spoke of the beauty of the city of Nagpur which had, he informed me, some very magnificent lakes and gardens and temples, all constructed by Mahratta kings. The city was more than a thousand feet above sea-level. “Most people know about Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras,” he noted somewhat plaintively, “but not many know that Nagpur is one of the most beautiful cities in India.” He urged me to visit it someday.
KB joined in our conversation now and then, but his thoughts were mainly focused on the intractable first–class berth which was his due. Fortunately, before we reached Kharagpur, a railway employee showed up, and notified us that we could move into our reserved first–class berths at the next station.
So at Kharagpur we took leave of the poet from Nagpur and moved into a first class compartment. It was very luxurious: a whole cushioned berth for me. The bathroom was clean and spacious. We could order food to be brought to us. I took out my notebook and recorded the events of the day. Then I began to wonder about all the experiences that were in store in Paris: the people I would meet, the places I would see, the courses I would take, etc. I also wrote:
“I feel as if I am about to start reading a fat new novel that has not yet been written. Is not the march of life equivalent to the unfolding of a novel? Some of its pages are interesting, some may be boring. Some are exciting and happy, others depressing and sad. Some are funny, others silly. Some are promising, others bleak. They all add up to one long story, lived and experienced by just one individual. There are as many novels as there are humans: each unique and special in its own way. Yet, few real-life stories are as interesting as the imaginary ones that good novelists churn out. This is largely because of the language and descriptions of a good novelist.
When the train stopped at Nasik station, I saw an old man get down, touch the platform with his hands, and then touch his head in a worshipful mode. I asked a fellow passenger why he was doing that. He explained that Nasik was a place of pilgrimage. It is on the sacred river Godavari. Starting from the Western Ghats and flowing for almost a thousand miles before reaching the Bay of Bengal, this majestic river with numerous places of pilgrimage on its banks, gently cleaves the Indian subcontinent into two land masses. He recalled that Sri Rama and Sita of our epic Ramayana had stayed in Nasik during their exile in the forest. I made a rough calculation of how much time might be needed to reach Nasik from Ayodhya on foot. Walking an average of ten miles a day, the journey must have taken at least two months. The possibility was not inconceivable.
I was thrilled as the train gently wound its way through serpentine tracks and picturesque precipices on the hills of the Western Ghats. The same trees and terrain, valleys and ponds and rivulets which had been seen and admired by millions of others over the ages now rushed past my field of vision.
I was much impressed by the work and risk involved in laying miles and miles of railroad tracks. They were based on much engineering and design, calculation and precision. I thought of the British who, in their eagerness and efforts to exploit India economically, had laid the network of railways which was serving me very well now.
Spurts of Thought 