Magic Carpet to Ranchi

The train was due to depart at 6.05am.  Now trains in India generally leave on the dot – or hours late.  I woke up at 5.45am.  I had a moment to decide to go for it, or to go back to sleep.  I throw my blanket into my bag and fly down the stairs.  Wake up the night security – an ancient man whose spirit appears to be contemplating staying in the dream state for the rest of eternity.  Eventually he rises, remembers where the keys to the front gate are and then stands completely still, for ages.  His stillness prompts him to  wake up the hotel manager just to check that I am allowed to leave.  I’m laughing inside, well aware that no amount of stress from my part is going to speed up the process – which after all was all of my own making.  

Out onto the street and all I find is empty taxi’s.  But my rucksack and gait is a great advertisement and before long a head pops up from the backseat of a cab, quickly followed by a body and then a voice, which assures me he will get me to Howrah station in time for my train, but the price is non-negotiable and I know to haggle may sacrifice my trip. He cartwheels my bag and I into the back seat, and grabs his laundry which was airing on the bonnet. The taxi transforms into a magic carpet and fly we do.  The horn is pressed the entire way.  It seems to be no concern to the driver which side of the road we are on, and I trust him fully, as he livelihood depends upon how he navigates these roads.  

We career over Howrah bridge, past the countless slums which I used to know well.  The train to Ranchi leaves from platform 10 he shouts at me, through the station doors and to the left.  As I run I pass the city of the station: Several thousand people have made this their home.  Many who once dreamed of making it to the city of Kolkata are now made to be content with making their landing pad their base. It does after all have a water supply, toilets, shelter in the monsoon and each train which arrives contains a huge supply of left over food.  The population of Howrah has even evolved its own dialect – a mix of languages from all over the country.  Once again, I give thanks to the months of work I spent both here and at Sealdah station, as otherwise in this very moment I would have been totally disorientated, perhaps overwhelmed by the chaos. 

I glance up at the clock its 6am.  I can’t believe it – or maybe I can, as I didn’t seriously doubt that I wouldn’t be on this trip.  From the moment Emil and Anouk invited me onto their “Beyond Asana” Yoga retreat which initiated this trip, I have allowed my intuition and not my rational mind to guide my journey.  This was no exception.  Urmi and the team were in coach C.  Which felt like miles down the platform.  Many other ran besides me, until eventually I found what I was looking for.  Plastered to the outside of each carriage was a list of passengers.  The remnants of the British Raj never fail to astound me.  The organization that functions under the structure of apparent mayhem, with a country dealing with 1.2 billion inhabitants, works.  It may be at times corrupt, or insufficient, but organizing huge groups of people is managed to precise details.  Other examples include the Victorian sewage systems, which were designed to cater for a small group of wealthy inhabitants and now operate well beyond capacity.  Likewise, highly inefficient paper work greets tourists through the now computerized evisa system and pops up every time you register at a hotel.  Colonial style markets populate every major city, only now they crumble under the onslaught of pollution and time.

I walk through the carriage and Urmi laughs:  “Of all the people I would worry about making it last minute, you were not one of them!”  I throw my bag into the overhead shelf and sit down.  Ready for the next adventure.  Grateful to be here. 

Right on time the train master’s whistle blows and slowly the Kriya-Yoga Express pulls out of Howrah.  These trains often hold over a thousand bodies, of varying degrees of wealth.  We were seated in an air con cabin, and waited on the entire journey by an appropriately named “Meals on Wheels” service.  Tea and digestive biscuits, were followed by omelet and toast and finally a huge vegetarian lunch with dal, tarkari, rice, roti and curd.  Finally fennel seeds to cleanse the palate were passed around upon a tray for tips.  The contrast to the station dwellers who I had just ran past was extreme as always.  Previously on these trains, the excess of food had made me collect what I could to distribute to those who were fighting starvation at whatever station I departed.  With the exception of Delhi, which had been rigorously “cleaned up” prior to the 2010 Common Wealth Games. Police equipped with large sticks would frequently sweep the station of any uninvited guests.  Similarly, it felt like a bizarre movie to stare out the window as we passed the industrial areas of Bengal.  Brick and steel factories pumped continuous dirt into the atmosphere, farmers squatted in their fields, ploughed fertile with hard dirt and garbage. Lines of freshly washed and brightly coloured saris lay out to dry on the banks of misty green rivers.  The country of contrasts.

Our destination – Ranchi in Jharkand – is in one of the tribal regions (defined as by the state as Primitive Tribal Groups) of India.  After a hard won separatist movement the state was recently formed.  The people here are darker and smaller and when we finally piled out onto the platform 7 hours later I felt like a fumbling giant.  Porters decked in long maroon shirts followed passengers, carrying huge cases onto of their heads.  Urmi searched the car park for pink coloured tuk tuks – auto-rickshaws driven by women.  After a while she gave in and we dumped ourselves and bags into a jeep, driven by a man, and this would become our vehicle for the next days.  

Arriving at the hotel was strange.  It was a fancy hotel by local standards.  Whose staff had been extremely well trained, and yet even though I appeared to be the only foreigner in the hotel, it seemed to have a distinctly colonial air. Its as if some traditions die hard, and now it’s the wealthy elite who have stepped into the Brits shoes, and at times the airs and attitudes of the other guests were extremely uncomfortable to witness.  I remembered the words of one teacher Geog Feuerstein: “The more awake you become, the more ordinary you appear”.  I seem to be continuously surrounded whether it be in Ubud or Kolkata by people who so desperately wish to be extra-ordinary.  Later in the afternoon I attempted to leave the hotel and walk around the city.  The hotel security cautioned me “not to dally”  he seemed terrified that I might wander off never to be seen again.  His concern was so great that he attempted to follow me, literally ducking behind corners whenever I turned around.  Eventually I gave in, returned to the confines of the concrete block and instead searched for some internal space…I found it seven floors up.  On the hotel roof.  A ramshackle collection of machines grunted and churned, I rolled my yoga mat out and to the amazement of the mechanic, dived into a three hour practice.

During the evening meal the collection of women who had invited me here all discussed their experiences of being a woman in India.  Stories of waking up at 5.30am every day for no other reason than to pay the milkman because the family had always had fresh milk, to be considered a rebel for exchanging a sari for a salwar khameez (long shirt and pants), or the wonderful tale from our ceramic artist of how she had began study as a scientist but the call to be an artist was simply too strong to ignore.  As it is in many parts of the world, value is given to certain profession and Art rarely one of them.  She explained that her friends and family used to associated artists with hippies and drugs. Yet she was fortunate in that she had the approval of her father and also the financial support of her husband’s family.  These two dominant parts of her life gave her permission to follow her passion.  The conversation, the hotel, the lack of room to roam without questions, made me feel like a wild animal trapped in a different life.  My ferocious independence, embodied free will and Aquarius ways reflects that right here right now I am indeed a different creature.  A creature that simply cannot fit under the label, stereotype and role of “woman”.