Enroute Uttar Pradesh

Dear Readers

Thank you for the love that you shower. Apologies for being unable to bring stories to you of late. 

Starting a new series of stories covering my recent trip to Uttar Pradesh with this first chapter that shares the first leg of the journey.

This November, circumstances so occurred that I got an opportunity to visit Uttar Pradesh. Although very mundane and dismal it appears as a destination in plain sight, nevertheless what lies within is anything but mundane.

Of course UP does not figure in the ‘to be there’ list of the backpack, ruff and tuff travelers of our times. The lot that finds solace at sightings as exotic as snowy mountains and Oriental demography and loves lingering around in roof top cafes waiting for the sun to set, I tell you shall rarely connect with UP.

My experience in UP is less fit to be told or shared and more apt to be lived in and felt. My quest of UP begun with a morning train from Hazrat Nizamudin Railway Station to Mathura Junction.  I was to be supervised and invigilated by a friend throughout the journey. A friend who was born and had stayed for most of his life in UP!

The short stretch of our association with the Mangala Lakshadweep Super Fast Express heading to Ernakulam was so phenomenal it bordered extraordinary. Packed with mortals of myriad colours and charm, the general coach that day was the perfect case for the city romantics who live in the idea of an India depicted by movies such as Swades.

Sitting on my haunches on an upper birth, suffocated by bags that smelt of food, tucked till my underarms I followed the norm of the scene. I removed my shoes and placed them comfortably over the ceiling fan and confined myself to my mobile phone, updating my love  the curiosities of the trip.

Some three hours from the time we started, we were at Mathura Junction from where the journey further was to be two-phased. The remaining stretch till Patiali was to be covered by a local passenger train from Mathura to Kasganj and then aboard a hyperlocal shuttle from Kashganj to Patiali. One jubilating discovery that I made that day was that local trains in India rarely get late unlike the long distance superfast expresses.

The journey from Mathura to Kashganj was convenient, with lesser people in the coach and lesser bags around me. I could stretch my legs this time and could watch a movie on my mobile phone. All seemed perfect except that the mobile data stopped working as I switched between Airtel network zones. Our advent on the territory of UP had begun and the invisible but relevant borders and complexity of territoriality started haunting me for WhatsApp had lied to rest by then.

The wait time for the change of train at Kashganj was nil. The next train was already puffing out smoke and screaming to leave. We were late to board and hence at the receiver’s end of the struggle to push ourselves in. For the first time did I realize the horror of statistics. The numbers that are brought to our tables back in our ivory towers to notify us each day of the soaring population of our nation.

That was it!

Enough of truth to mock all fiction, the truth enough to shatter the utopia of India rising and India shining. The total count of people sighted by the country’s so called ‘liberals’ for years at length in and around Khan Market where they ramble each evening to romanticize Indian villages, I swear was in all possible ways far less than the count of people stuffed into that one railway coach that afternoon.

I was fortunate enough to find a place to stand. At the narrow turning space that lies between the two toilets I rested my back upon the wall that marked the formal end of the territory of the coach I was in. I would have loved some breath and breathing space but a step ahead would mean crushing someone’s feet or may be the head of the old man squatting at a toes gap ahead of me. 

The only relief amidst all odds however was that WhatsApp had started working and messages begun pouring in intermittently at the mercy of the troubled 2G connectivity. I felt better, embracing the comfort of the virtual world that at once took me away to a cozy café somewhere at Saket. Sitting next to the special one sipping latte and weaving dreams of a warmer tomorrow!

The journey came to an end as we got off at Patiali, a sleepy tehsil in the Kashganj district of UP. The halt for the day was yet to arrive for we were to reach Ashokpur, a village some more kilometers from the Patiali staion.

What followed next was a rollercoaster ride.

Coming up next chapters covering the travel to Kanpur, Unnao and Lucknow.

Keep coming back.