The Journey to School - I

Since I joined Bantul Mahakali High School, somewhere in a far-off area in rural West Bengal, I have been inundated with questions. Curious friends want to know how life is at this village school for someone who has studied and worked in the city and knows nothing of what life can be 50kms away from the heart of Calcutta. I have tried to answer these questions to the best of my ability but there is just so much to say that nothing I could write on chat boxes or say on phone conversations could totally encapsulate my experience. A series of blog posts on my life at school was long overdue! With the doors of this co-ed institution shut for three consecutive days and the weather enforcing me to keep my own door firmly bolted, it’s time to keyboard my story.

This was going to be my first journey on a local train! Yes, when I mention this to anyone, they don’t believe me. It surely does not make me feel proud of this dubious distinction but I have never traveled short distances by train. I didn’t need to. I was gearing myself up for the worst when my colleagues laughed at my question, “Where should I punch the monthly ticket?” These two friends are regulars on local trains and had told me to buy a monthly ticket for convenience. I was of the opinion that they could be punched, much like Metro Rail tickets. When my colleague took out his ticket and railway ID card, I had my first look at what I needed to be armed with to take local trains on a daily basis.

I had done a reconnaissance a few days before I was scheduled to join and knew that it would take me a couple of hours to reach the school. I started off this reconnaissance trip with a lot of foreboding. I had no idea how it is going to be. I had a rough sketch of where I needed to go and what I had to take. The rest would unfold when I hit the track. High on a desire to explore and quite low on enthusiasm, I took off. I had to walk for 5 minutes to reach the bus stop. If I had to go to Calcutta, I need not have walked because a bus going that way would have saved the trouble for me. Anyway, not to be weighed down by the loss of this luxury, I took a bus to the train station. The bus was near-empty because office goers were headed the opposite way, towards Calcutta. I was going away from it. The bus stopped on a flyover above the train station. I had to climb down about two levels to reach ground floor.

The way to the school was a series of questions. The first one was, “Where is the ticket counter?” I had no choice but to depend on random strangers to locate a destination where I might spend the rest of my professional career. I was shown a structure which was more like a concrete hut with a tin roof and polished marble floors. The rain in the morning had left patches of water on the floor and years of use have eroded the surface. Walking carefully, I reached the ticket counter. Two counters were on the sides of a room that can pass off as a rectangular hall. Rubbish was heaped on at least two of the corners. An old woman was strategically standing between the counters, expecting passengers to drop their loose balance into her begging bowl. Many were disappointing her.

I bought my ticket and headed for the over-bridge that will take me to another platform. Again, this information was indebted to a stranger. The climb up made me sweat badly and I realized with a tinge of fear that maybe these flights of stairs, the flyover and now this, will be difficult to manage some years down the line, if I continue to skip exercises. I got to the right platform and asked a tea vendor when the train will come. He replied that it was due and anytime it would arrive. True enough, I saw it chugging in lazily. With each passing day, I have learnt to trust the information of train hawkers more than railway time tables or officials. Seats were available on the train. The same reason, like the bus, applied to save me from another physical exhaustion. I was on my way.

Napping Away

This is another post triggered by the bus rides that take me to work and back. It’s not that I observed it off late, but I never thought of writing about this earlier. Check the snap. I took it on my cell phone when I was comfortably perched at the last seat of the bus. The gentleman (X) was almost resting his head on the shoulder of the man (Y) beside him. Y was sleeping too, but he could keep his head firmly straight, except for a slight droop. Each time X’s head touches his shoulder, Y gives his shoulders a violent shrug. This alerts X and he sits up bolt upright. Before long he gives up his resolve as the cool breeze wafting in from the Hooghly river sooths his alert nerves. His head starts the sideways slump again. This continued repeatedly till X’s journey came to an end and he somehow pushed himself out of the packed bus.

It’s not a wonder for me anymore. Over the years I have seen passengers on the bus take power naps on their way. Many wake up from the bounce on the roads. Many naps are cut short by an elbow of the passenger standing beside him. Some have a lot of peace stenciled on their faces. It seems like this is the only time which they have to themselves. They can sleep peacefully without a wife yelling in the other room or without a teenage child hankering for extra pocket money. They don’t really feel guilty about taking it for granted that even if their heads end up on the adjacent person’s shoulder, there won’t be much harm done! Some don’t even apologize. Some get angry when they find a head on their shoulder. Sometimes quarrels are triggered. I have seen considerate conductors leave the sleeping passengers alone when he goes along collecting fares. The ones standing and swaying to the movement of the bus look at the sleepers jealously. What would they not give to swap places? Some people have all the luck, they seem to grumble. And why not? While they sweat it out in the humid interiors of the bus, with only very short intermittent gusts of wind striking their grimy faces, the better-off mortals are replenishing their energy reserves.

I am guilty of the same offense as well! There were quite a few times when I fell asleep on my way. But I don’t use the person beside me as a pillow; that much I can assure you! However, I allow children to use me as a pillow if they fall asleep! I make jerky movements to ward off adults looking for the same privilege. As for me, actually my mind starts to wander about the moment the bus starts moving. When it gets lost in a maze of incomprehensible garbage, I find my eye-lids getting heavy. Before long they meet secretly. Their hug is torn apart when the bus comes to a sudden halt or when the car beside honks unusually loud. I squint out to check where I have reached. If that’s far off from where I have to get off, I allow myself to indulge a little, with a mental note that I have to keep this short. Sometimes when I wake to see my destination just a couple of minutes away and I feel really sleepy, I have this mad urge to sleep on and come back on another bus! But I fight it off because our time is such a slave to others that even if we want, we cannot get it to do something for our own pleasure.

Apathy

It’s not without a lot of hesitation that I have decided to write this down. By the end of this post you may find yourself cringe, you may feel guilty; you may also find your sensitive side violated. This is the expression of what I have observed over the years on public transports, bus terminals, government offices, and even in educational institutions like schools and colleges. There is a thick fog of apathy hanging determinedly across all these places, enveloping them in a maze of indifference, the walls of which would not thaw or dissolve.

Let me relate an experience that I go through sometimes on my way to work. There is a girl, about twelve years old, who gets on the same bus as me, with her father. She’s dressed in school uniform, wears spectacles, and has a white gauge of bandage firmly taped over her left eye. It’s obvious that she has sustained some sort of injury. The bus is generally crowded then, being peak office hours. I have noted with horror that no one offers this little girl a seat. She sways to the rash driving of the bus, latching on to the edge of the seat to prevent herself from falling over.

The bus is so packed with people at this time that she or her father can’t move beyond a particular point. I generally sit on the last seats. I tried to call her over and offer my seat, but she couldn’t even begin to reach me. Too much of jostling was something that she couldn’t afford with an eye in bandage. And I could sense the others seated near her, shifting uneasily in their cozy seats. They were feeling unsettled that someone far away from her could offer a seat while they couldn’t bring themselves to do that. Some looked out of the window fixedly, pretending they had no clue what was going on.

But I got my reward. The girl smiled sadly at me, as if to thank me for at least trying to help her.

What is it with us? What stops us from carrying out random acts of kindness? The other day when I was having tea at a tea-stall with a colleague, a beggar came with her child. She wanted to buy a cake which cost Rs. 3.50. She had only Rs. 3. The shopkeeper refused to sell it. I took out the cake and gave it to her. The other people at the shop stared at me as if I gave away my purse or cell phone to her. My colleague commented that they earn more than us! I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

A Bus Service That Changed Things

It was sometime in the beginning of this summer. I was out for work at the usual time, talking to my friend while I walked down to the main road to catch the bus. It’s a ten minutes walk from my house. I was engrossed in conversation when suddenly two guys on a bike pointed to a white bus behind me, coming down the road. They said something about the 2nd bridge. To take this further, I need to acquaint unfamiliar readers with a few facts so they know what I’m talking about.

I live in Howrah, a suburb adjoining Kolkata, across the Hooghly river. The ten minutes walkway I talked about had no buses coming in. We had to walk to the main road and then take a bus. I have to cross the 2nd bridge, officially called the Vidyasagar Setu, to get to Kolkata. Every day is like a battle waiting to be fought. Some days you win and the transport is easy. Some days you reach office, too exhausted to be on your feet, forget working. You can refer to an earlier post I wrote about surviving on these buses.

To get back to the story, I saw this bus which clearly had ‘Ruby Hospital’ stenciled across the windshield on one side, in bold, red letters. This clearly indicated, coupled with what the guys told me, that it was crossing the bridge. I noted that the other side of the windshield was blank and on the side, 'K7' was painted in white with a red halo. According to convention, the other terminus should be written on the other side of the windshield. My doubts were confirmed when I boarded the bus.

This was a new service. They had fixed Ruby Hospital as the terminus on the Kolkata side. They had experimented with other areas on this side of the Ganges, but couldn’t hold fort anywhere for more than a couple of weeks because of resistance from local transport authorities. No body wants a new service cutting into their business. Anyway, so there it was. Passengers on board were an excited lot. They wanted this service to work, come what may. Some of them were eager with their suggestions on how to grab market share when it came to passengers. Some were busy advising the conductor and driver on how to drive in a competitive way and elbow out rival bus services. It was all a happy family.

Then people began to complain. They were not happy with the time this bus took to get them to office. They complained about the fare. They alleged that the bus authorities cooked up the fare charts and the chart on display, framed in wood and nailed to the inner walls of the bus, was not the one approved by the government. They complained they were not being able to avail the bus on their way home. Some of them reportedly waited an hour for the bus to come and then took some other bus, disgruntled and disillusioned. It’s not always easy to accept change, especially when you are cynical.

But you are too powerless to resist change for long. The service picked up after the government took off all buses that were more than fifteen years old. Our greenhorn flexed its muscles and grabbed its place under the sun. People thronged the buses and silently thanked the driver and the conductor for saving their neck at the workplace. Local passengers took to the bus eagerly, braving the daunting task of pushing through their way through a bus packed with Kolkata-bound people. Middle-class housewives, who had to depend on male support to take them across the Ganges, could now get to the city in happy, chirpy groups. They could also avail a concession on the ticket if the conductor was a local guy they knew.

It’s nice to see that people embrace change when it happens, though they sometimes need to overcome their inhibitions initially. As we go deeper into the Pujas, the bus is the one people around here are looking at to pierce its trident through the demon of transport problems and chaotic confusion of traffic. Happy Pujas!

Grabbing ‘Gobment’ Service - I

Yes, that is how Bengalis refer to government jobs. Landing up with one is the dream around which middle-class family life revolves. Every teenager in a typical middle-class Bengali family is advised extensively to get a Public Service Commission card and try to obtain as many forms for government exams as possible. Then you have to go through the grind that has multiple layers, only to end up in a beetel-stained, dilapidated office building, writing a yellow-paged logbook with a pen that has a blue and red refill at either ends. It’s so stereotypical.

But there are quite a few slips before you make it to that creaky chair that promises lot of job security but zero job satisfaction. You need to sweat it out at serpentine queues, umbrella in one hand and water-bottle in another, not to forget a bag dangling on your shoulders containing all your marksheets, their Xerox copies, your birth certificate, your ration card, your identity card, and many other cards that can make life so smooth for you. Then with the form in hand, you need to go around hunting out gazetted officers from their privileged holes. When they have blessed you with their stamp of approval (better keep some time in hand, they may not have the rubber stamp with them always, and when they do, there might not be enough ink in the stamp pad) and signature, it’s time to figure how to deposit the money and where. Better ask some veteran in this field, for there are many aspirants who are struggling for years and know more about the details of the exam than the examiners. If you want your money to reach its destination, rely on ‘senior’ advice.

Then you wait. Yes, wait for the postal system to find out your house among millions (don’t argue that you have attested a self-addressed envelope with the form) to get you the admit card. When it gets delivered to you, it’s just on the day before the exam, or in a worse case scenario, after the exam. In the former case, you need a topographical map then. No, you are not going on a trek, it’s just that the exam center is so remotely located that you need archaeological assistance. After you have zeroed in on the exact location and called up everyone you know to find out which God-forsaken transport you need to perch yourself on, go to sleep early for you have to get up real soon the next day for your government exam!

What happens on the exam day? Stay tuned for Grabbing ‘Gobment’ Service - II