250. Going to the South ....

(ही पोस्ट मराठीत इथं वाचता येईल.) 

One day I realised that it had been many years since I had been to Pondicherry. The last time I had gone there was in 2012. So I decided to go again. First, I had to sort out my accommodation there and, accordingly, book my train ticket.

I used AI to help me plan how to get from Chennai to Pondicherry and what activities I could do in Pondicherry. I gave it the dates, told it my budget and what I might like. AI came up with a fairly good plan. Whether I actually followed it as it was is another matter altogether.

I also knew that AI does get some information wrong. I realised this partly because I had been to Pondicherry before. For example, it told me that the distance from Park Guest House to the Aurobindo Ashram was 600 steps. (I had told AI that I wanted to walk around 7,000 steps a day.) In reality, the distance is about one and a half kilometres. But barring such minor things, the information given by AI was quite useful to me.

Travel is not just about trains, railway stations and getting from one place to another. Watching the people one meets during a journey, talking to them… that is also a part of travelling. If you start observing, you always come across people and experiences. This journey was no different.

People…

I was travelling to Chennai by the Mumbai–Chennai train. As usual, I reached Pune railway station an hour before the scheduled departure. There was an open space on the bridge connecting the metro station and the platforms, and I stood there. Even with so much space around, people kept brushing past me, some coming and standing very close. Why do so few people understand the concept of personal space? This is a question I often find myself asking.

There seemed to be two Mumbai–Chennai Superfast trains one after the other, which confused me a little. My train was forty-five minutes late. Once I got into the train, I spoke to the TC and learnt that the other Superfast train runs once a week. If there is some unforeseen problem, that train gets delayed. The train I was travelling by runs daily, so it generally does not get delayed. It is given priority.

I overheard a funny conversation.

The woman whose lower berth was opposite mine was asking a young man occupying a side-lower berth if they could exchange berths. She wanted the side-lower instead of the lower berth because the two women travelling with her were seated there.

A woman giving up a lower berth is a rare thing. And a man who refuses to give up his side-lower berth even when he is being offered a lower berth is equally rare.

A group of ten or twelve people from Baramati boarded the train at Daund. Their tickets were for different berths and, as usual, they wanted to sit together. The funny part was that they were after the TC, insisting that he give up his berth near the door and take some other berth — number 23 or 43, I don't remember which.

It was quite an interesting discussion.

Some people have the confidence that if they insist hard enough, the other person will eventually have no choice but to agree. The leader of this group had that confidence. When the TC did not give in to their pressure, they turned their attention to me.

I don't like side-lower berths.

I told them, “You can all sit here and chat as long as you want. I have no problem with you sitting here and talking till nine or nine-thirty at night.”

But the refrain continued.

Finally, in a slightly louder voice, I said, “I have already told you that I am not changing my berth.”

They then started talking among themselves as though I was being particularly cruel simply because I refused to change my berth. I ignored them and sat looking out of the window. The scenery outside was changing every moment.

A view from the train

Naturally, I could hear the conversations within the group. They were a group of swimmers from Baramati. Their ages and professions were different, but swimming was the thread that connected them. They were all travelling to Tirupati together.

An elderly gentleman, who knew nothing about my earlier conversation with the group's leader, came and sat there. He casually asked me, “Where are you going?”

I said, “I am getting down at Chennai and then going on to Pondicherry.”

The moment he heard the word Pondicherry, he began speaking to me with a completely different kind of respect.

Perhaps he assumed I was a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. He was a retired principal and had read quite a lot about Sri Aurobindo and Vivekananda. Another elderly gentleman was a retired soldier. He had worked in the Kargil area for a few years and was telling me about the place and his experiences there. When I told him that I had travelled to Ladakh the previous year and had visited the Kargil Base Camp, he greeted me with great respect.

The moment the other members of the group saw these two senior citizens speaking to me with such respect, their attitude changed too.

I found this change in their behaviour quite amusing. They were very impressed that I was travelling alone such a long distance — that is to Chennai, and that too by train! I was surprised that they were so impressed by this. Suddenly, I had somehow become one of them. I could not quite understand what had caused this shift — from being an outsider, a stranger, to becoming one of their own.

That night, all of them insisted on sharing their food with me, even though my RailRestro order had arrived at Solapur station. Ten people's home-cooked food meant quite a variety — everything from pickle and thecha to laddoos. So, in a way, my tradition of eating food from strangers' homes continued on this journey too.

Another little episode happened at around ten that night.

The woman who had earlier exchanged her lower berth suddenly appeared again. She had given up that berth earlier, but now that I — another woman — was sitting there, she wanted that same lower berth back. Most of the people around the berth she had exchanged for were men, and she did not feel safe there.

Meanwhile, at Solapur,  a new TC took over. He knew nothing about the earlier exchange of berths. So he started scolding the gentleman. The poor man had already spread out his bedding and was getting ready to sleep.

He tried to argue, “Look at this lady. She is alone and there are only men around her here, but she is perfectly comfortable. You can sleep there too.”

The lady was not convinced. The gentleman had no choice but to get up and move to another berth.

Just as the 'Pune–Ajni Vande Bharat' empties out at Shegaon, this train too became almost empty at Renigunta at around eight-thirty the next morning. Nearly eighty per cent of the passengers were getting off there to go to Tirupati.

A group of women had started standing near the door with their large bags almost an hour in advance. I kept telling them, “There is still an hour to go,” and persuaded them to sit inside. They were worried about how long the train would stop at Renigunta and whether they would manage to get down in time. I repeatedly told them that the train would halt there for a good five minutes. Yet, in the end, they went and stood at the door fifteen minutes before the station.

There seemed to be two distinct groups of passengers going to Tirupati — men and women. There was a difference in their luggage too. The women's bags were huge; the men's were quite small.

There was a difference in their conversations as well. The men talked about (office) work, arrangements made through someone's contacts in Tirupati, what else they wanted to see, what their wives had packed in the food boxes, and so on. The women's conversations were about where they would bathe, whether they would have to climb, what food would be available, whether there would be only idlis for breakfast, and so on.

The subjects of conversation were different, the bags were different; but the tendency to cling closely to one's own group and remain wrapped up in it was exactly the same in both groups.

In Chennai…

Chennai does not have just one railway station. Chennai Central, Chennai Egmore and Tambaram are the major stations; besides these, there are many smaller stations in the city's suburban railway network. Of these, Chennai Central is the most important. It was earlier known as Madras Central (MAS). In 2019, its name was changed to Puratchi Thalaivar Dr. M.G. Ramachandran Central Railway Station. But in everyday usage, the name MAS has remained.

Chennai Central is a large station, with seventeen platforms.

Chennai Central Railway Station

When I got down at MAS, there was an EV right outside. I had been sitting in a train for seventeen or eighteen hours, and I had a trolley bag, so I could easily have walked. But I wanted to experience travelling in an EV, so I got in. For thirty rupees, it dropped me at the station's main entrance.

Then came the search for the metro station. There were, in fact, information boards and signboards showing directions at several places, but, as is my usual habit, I kept asking people. I had to take the metro to the Koyambedu bus station.

Work on the Chennai Metro began in 2015. At present, the Blue and Green lines cover 54 kilometres. Both lines pass through Chennai Central, so I had to speak to several people to figure out which metro I needed. AI had told me to get down at Koyambedu Metro station.

When I bought my ticket, I had told the metro staff member that I needed to catch a bus to Pondicherry. I hadn't even looked carefully at the ticket he gave me. When I got down at Koyambedu, I saw two women police officers standing there. I asked them whether the bus station was right there. They said I had to get down at the next station — CMBT.

I hurried back into the same metro. And then I wondered: my ticket was only up to Koyambedu. Would I now have to pay a fine? I casually looked at the ticket — and it was actually up to CMBT. The man who had issued my metro ticket had understood what I needed and given me the correct ticket. I thanked him silently.

One thing struck me immediately about the Chennai Metro. There are full-height glass doors between the platform and the tracks. They are called Platform Screen Doors. When the train arrives, the train doors and the platform doors open together, and they close again after the train leaves. I had not seen this arrangement at Pune Metro or at most Delhi Metro stations. The platform therefore looked quite different from the metro platforms I am used to.

MAS Green line Metro Station

The announcements and signboards in the metro were only in English and Tamil. Of all the people I spoke to after getting down in Chennai, most did not know Hindi — which is quite natural. For them, learning Hindi is as difficult as learning Tamil is for me. Learning a language becomes more difficult when it also means learning a different script. Not everyone knew English either — and that is perfectly fine. But because of this, during the next ten days I often found myself in situations where there were people in front of me who were willing to talk, but I could not talk to them because there was no common language between us.

But even when there was no common language, people helped. Through gestures, by sometimes walking with me till I found the right road, or by putting me on the right bus… women and men of different age groups did whatever they could, with a smile. Even without a common language, there were small exchanges — a smile, a cup of coffee, a banana, a fellow passenger helping me get my bag down when I was getting off the bus. These became our ways of communicating. Even though I was in an unfamiliar place, I kept feeling that the people here were my own.

The Bus Journey

I got a State Transport (government) AC bus to Pondicherry.

Government bus

You could buy the ticket online after boarding the bus. It wasn't very crowded, and I could sit by myself. Many local passengers were also paying for their tickets by phone.

In Tamil Nadu, bus travel is free for women, but only when they travel by ordinary government buses. There is no concession for women on express, deluxe or AC buses. And I think that is quite fair. After all, the ticket was only two hundred rupees for a four-hour journey.

State Highway

It seems that people in Tamil Nadu do not get to enjoy the Maharashtra experience of having roads with potholes. All the roads I saw were in good condition. Roadwork was going on at several places, but nowhere did I see long queues of vehicles. Nobody seemed to be honking without reason. There were no endless toll booths on the highways. And government buses did not have to pay toll. This is something Maharashtra should do too.

Since I had chosen a bus that travelled along the coastal road, I could see the sparkling sea for some time.

Among my fellow passengers was a Gujarati-speaking woman who was settled in Chennai and therefore spoke good Tamil. We chatted in Hindi.

I reached Pondicherry at around five in the evening — exactly twenty-four hours after leaving Pune.

******

To be continued ....