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”.
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