The Poorva Express station enters Varanasi more than three hours late. Around nine o'clock at night the two locomotives begin to snort like a buffalo as dozens of passengers slip through the doors before a huge parade of cars comes to a complete stop.. Then, Hundreds of people descend the two ladders and vendors rush to get rid of as much food as possible.
In the India, 11.000 fatigued trains nationwide, a territory that multiplies by six the surface of Spain and by 26 its population. Sometimes, one of those "mythological animals" arrives on time, others desperately late; day sometimes trot, other night, always roar; they scare cows that walk along the platforms and rats from the tracks. In their guts they house people crammed into the "sleeper class", other placid sleeping in bunks, others poking their feet and heads through the open door that ventilates the most humble wagons...
At nine o'clock at night the two locomotives begin to snort like a buffalo while dozens of passengers
doors glide
The railway, beyond a means of transport that only in India transports around eleven million souls a day, represents a symbol in the old imaginary of the colonial world. England, as a world power in the 19th century, developed an effective communication model for the supply of raw materials and the expansion of its economy following the classic modus operandi of the colonial commercial script: cultivation of crops in the interior and transport to seaports to serve London in exchange for items from the metropolis. But this development, powered by rail and other means of communication, it also articulated a cultural cohesion in the country itself.
Witnessing all that fertile fishing ground of anecdotes makes this country one of the most attractive for train enthusiasts
Today, the popular classes can move through a network that reaches unlikely places within the reach of a handful of rupees. The heritage of what began in 1853 with the introduction of the railway in the Indian subcontinent it continues to give amplified tail, now electric and diesel powered where coal and steam powered the heavy machines. Achieve, in the space of a dream, a distant city, is the most reliable way to get anywhere. In fact, it is not advisable to travel by road at night: 125.000 people die on the road every year in India, a 10% of the global figure. And witnessing all that fertile fishing ground of anecdotes makes this country one of the most attractive for train enthusiasts..
The hours of the journey pass between the darkness and the penetrating smells of the food of the bunk neighbors
Once in the carriage, printed in the sweat shirt, beep, a blow and a withered stir mark the departure towards Delhi. The station dissolves behind us and some native still hastens the last strides so as not to stay on land. Recent memories of other journeys are crowded in the memory, in other wagons, on other trains. Khushwant Singh, online "Train the Pakistan», thus described the aspect of a train that crossed the town of Mano Majra: "Travelers were perched on the roof of the wagon with his legs dangling, or climbed on berths squeezed between the bogies. Some were dangerously mounted on the bumpers». Traveling mixed with the travelers of the most popular cars is reminiscent of that image where any square centimeter of the floor will be covered by any sleepy head.
The hours of the journey pass between the darkness and the penetrating smells of the food of the bunk neighbors, speaking, and are, and they look at you when you try to break the vigil. But the Poorva Express stops at some insignificant fraction of the 7.000 stations scattered around the country and the potato chip vendors, passengers with packs bigger than them and the ritual of leaving the station – beep, blow, withered scramble and the last strides of a clueless one – strikes with the intentions of reaching the depths of sleep.
The locomotive enters again in a very palpable darkness that crosses the dawn and towns that are barely intuited beyond the slight light that, hopefully, be glimpsed from the windows. Because despite the growing middle class that swarms in the cities, India is a developing country with too many deprivations to guarantee even a shack for every family, o power supply without long and tedious hours without cuts, or a sewage system that frees the children who bathe in the streets flooded with deadly infections… In return, the spirituality that emerges from their lands is a powerful magnet for travelers from all over the planet.
The locomotive enters again in a very palpable darkness that crosses the dawn and towns that are barely intuited
A Déjà Vù riding a skin-, I wake clarity. To the delay of three hours is added the one that has accumulated in the long hours of travel, so the time of arrival at the final destination becomes uncertain: faces do not serve to orient travelers; impossible to find a reviewer at that time, in this car. Nor do anyone's attitudes help -pick up the backpack, breakfast rush, stand up – because they can do it a long time in advance. Nor can one be guided by slowing down, because an hour before arriving, the train is already moving very slowly and people get off on the move; you can not even trust to see you surrounded by buildings, Well, the capital is a particularly large city...
Finally, uncertainty vanishes when entering the New Delhi Railway Station, the station burns in motion and a swarm of people surrounds me, some to carry luggage, others to mislead. Then, follow path and leave behind 16 long platforms, the lobby of a decadent building dodging people lying on the floor and I enter that country that Singh defined as "a crowded room".
