Bangal Express

It was a long weekend and the weather outside was truly inviting. My body cells were pushing me out of the four walls of my house. I with my friends decided to expend the holiday travelling to a new place. After some permutation and combination we decided to hit the city of joy, Kolkata!

We checked the trains online and found that we had just half an hour in our hand before the best available train would leave. We quickly packed our bags and rushed to the station and found the train, already standing in the platform and whistling to get set go. Tearing the rattling crowd we somehow managed to land our seats safely on time. Within a minute the train set off.

Our 6.5 hours of journey to Kolkata was full of excitement and fun. The classic card game Uno added to our laurels the Uno championship one by one. Booking tickets in the eleventh hour had given us the luxury to enjoy the non-AC coach, where there was a non-stop chain of entertainers passing by, giving us jam packed fun. Entertainment included free magic shows, vendors trying to sell off their local products in the most amazing tunes, the physically challenged beggars drawing our ears to their melodious tribal songs, and finally a Bengali family quarrelling among themselves over something we couldn’t decipher (but we enjoyed that)!

We reached the station right on time. The city I tell you, is hell crowded. We ventured to a friend’s place in Dunlop, a location far from the station. The weather was hot and tacky. But we managed to keep ourselves engaged discovering the old city, admiring its architecture and vivacity. Our taxi driver was a Sardar, a rare sight in Kolkata. He added to our ongoing amusement with his superb Punjabi accent.

This good friend of ours had prepared mouth watering dish and we wasted no time pretending decency and we jumped into the dishes like gluttons.

After a couple of hours of rest, we were set to taste the all new flavor of the city. We were suggested to start with a nearby mall. When we stepped out of the house, a friend pointed out that she could hear the roaring clouds and that we might be trapped in rains. We looked up, saw a clear sky, ignored her warning and moved on. We rushed to catch the earliest local train from a nearby station.

The wait for the train in that scorching sun was troublesome. It was fifteen minutes but seemed like hours. We watched numerous local trains passing by, before we could see ours, coming finally.

It was my first (and I wish the last) travel by a local train there. The train stopped and we were instructed to squeeze into the door as soon as possible as the halt was a mere 45 seconds long. F-o-r-t-y f-i-v-e seconds.  It was like a nightmare, believe me. We looked out for the ladies coach and figured uncountable ladies hanging out from a door. Looked like they would jump off before the train stopped. As the train reached the platform, we waited first few seconds for the doors to clear off. But to our greater amazement, the zillions of figures hanging at the door were standing there like statues, not at all tending to come out. In the very next few seconds we realized that we were supposed to barge in to the same doors, make room for ourselves there and become just another count of the hanging figures.

We did exactly what we were supposed to do. This is still a mystery how I got that vigour to enter the mad crowd and freeze myself in.

As the train moved, I heard a shriek. I somehow managed to turn my face to discover the source of that sound. It was a lady shouting as her little child was left behind on the platform while she was pushed into the stream of ladies and the train had already started.

Freezed. This is what best describes me in there. Each part of me was tightly packed in that jam. While one of my hands was holding the handle hanging from the top, tight, I could not feel my second hand at all. My left leg was resting under a lady’s air bag and my right leg was safely lost somewhere, I didn’t care at that time.

I was a little behind the frontier, trying to feel safe with my friends around.  We had to get off at the station next to the coming junction. And of course my next challenge was to hold myself tight in that box on the coming station. As the train stopped, I felt my energy reserve coming to action as I forced myself in against the out-streaming crowd. One of my friends failed to keep the grip and flowed out with the swaying stream. But fortunately we managed to pull her in somehow.

After a grand ropeless tug of war, we reached our destination junction. I was more than happy to jump off the pack. But only when I was about to thank God for ending the misery, here came another one --  A sudden downpour that was already predicted by my good friend in the morning. We strode into the nearest shelter and waited for about half an hour for the rain to pity us. The shelter was a thick black plastic that had started to sag. Had we spent few more minutes under that thing, we would have ended up getting drenched by the water burst out of it. As the rain thinned down, we managed to park us into an auto rickshaw that took us to our destination of the day – the shopping mall. Needless to say, mall was fun and relaxing. We took a taxi to come back by the sunset.

We had an upcoming festival in our city, where we were supposed to wear ethnics. So we decided to shop the next day too, assuming we would get a better variety and cheaper price there.

Our next destination was New Market - An ultimate shopping hub. The arcade is spread in quite a good span. The businessmen here are the blessed lot. Pick any shop and you’ll see swarm of shoppers humming in. A good thing is, think of anything and you get that here.

We enjoyed picking some Kolkata special items, had some street food to our tummy full, took some crazy candid snaps and moved on. The best thing this day was the weather that was cool and friendly.

The challenge ahead of us was again the travel. We decided to take the metro train that was stationed just near the New Market. The station was Esplanade. Nice name.

This metro train again was overcrowded but I somehow managed to get a seat. The entire metro route in Kolkata is underground. In that ephemeral moment of rest in the metro, I was wondering how diverse the lifeline of Kolkata is! On one hand you can see the age old tram strolling in the already congested old

network of streets, and on the other, the ever busy local passenger trains whooshing through the quiet railway tracks. On one hand you witness the pain of hand-rickshaw-pullers carrying by their angelic limbs, some fatsoes, while on the other hand these superb metro rails leaving all the other means behind!

During our travel we also visited the posh Salt Lake City area which is also a major IT hub there. It is a planned satellite town of the state. It was developed in the early 60’s to accommodate the mushrooming Bengal populace.

Every good thing comes to an end. And so did that weekend. This time it was an AC coach well insulated from all the adventures and vividity of the passers by. Luckily it was a night travel; there was anyway no room for any intruder to our sleep. Our journey finally came to a smooth end with the alarm buzzing under my pillow at 5 in the morning. We quickly got ready with our luggage when the train decently stopped and we stepped down, welcoming ourselves to our very own town.

These two days were not enough to explore the diversity galore. The experience though was refreshing. The Bengali family treated us with warm hospitality. Machh bhaat(fish-rice), roshogulla, sondesh andother peerlessBengali sweetsare still lingering my mind. 

I wished we had a little more time to savor the effervescent life of the mighty Kolkata. Had I got few more days to explore the place, I would end up writing a thick novel that would have a full Bangla tone!