Big City, Quiet Suburb

I wake in the warm darkness at six o'clock in the morning, bucket shower to the sound of the kites in the trees outside rousing themselves for the day's scavenging and go down to the courtyard restaurant. After five minutes of searching I finally find the waiter: "Black coffee, Sir?" he asks, bringing a steaming glass to my table along with a Haywards 5000 ashtray. The restaurant is empty, the rest of the hotel dark and silent; it is a Saturday, and nobody is in a hurry to anywhere at this hour. I leave my key behind the deserted front desk and walk down Dhanavanthri Road to the kiosk that sells paan, 10 Paise candies, Hindi newspapers and Wills Classics; it is closed, as is everything else around it. I turn back and make for the station, scanning the raised section of footpath that borders the approach road for dark squares where some of the thick, stone slabs are missing - a three foot drop into the sewer flowing below, perhaps a broken leg on the way down. I buy an unreserved ticket for Bangalore on the 6.45 Chamundi Express and find a street hawker selling packs of Wills Navy Cut beneath a plane tree outside the station gates. I stand in the shadows beside a chai stall and smoke, politely refusing the offers of rickshaws into town, explaining that I am waiting for the train, pointing out to the shoeshine wallahs that my boots are already very clean and declining to buy enormous packets of cashews and groundnuts for journey. A man leading a thin, saddled and lame pony pauses in front of me: "You like ride in town?". The Chamundi Express is waiting at platform one behind a WDM-2 and the bustle of activity in the station is a complete contrast to the slumbering town beyond its perimeter lights. Bales of cloth and mounds of cases are being loaded into the Luggage-Cum-Brake Van, hawkers and chai wallahs hover around the carriage doors serving passengers who dart out from their dim interiors and rush back before their seats are lost; a large crowd jostles to refill empty plastic bottles at the drinking water fountain, while those who have already secured a seat on the train stand on the platform smoking, chatting, drinking chai and glancing at their watches.
I sit on a lower corridor side bunk in a Sleeper Class coach; there is thin foam padding beneath the blue vinyl cover, and it is almost as uncomfortable as the bare wooden seats in Second Class. As the WDM sounds its air horns for departure, a woman who's face is so worn and lined that she could be any age between 30 and 50 pushes through the crowded carriage and sits on the bunk opposite mine; one of her sons is perhaps ten years old and wears a dirty pullover and ragged underpants, the other is older and carries himself on his hands and the points of his knees, his withered legs scissored behind him, crabbing along the filthy carriage floor. The crab-boy climbs into the upper bunk above his mother with surprising agility, perfectly adapted to his condition, and hangs with his head upside down to torment his brother with a drooling leer. The train starts with a lurch, stops again suddenly and then a few moments later gets underway for real. We stop at every halt and station along the line to Bangalore, sometimes for little more than a minute, other times long enough to step down onto the platform to buy a cup of chai or coffee and smoke a Wills Classic.
Travelling on an ordinary Indian passenger train is unlike any railway journey I could take in Europe. In Britain, railways are a strictly commercial, for-profit operation and as such preclude any notions of social responsibility in providing a service for ordinary people: they are for business people and well-heeled leisure travellers, students with discount cards and pensioners with concessions; for almost everyone else they prohibitively expensive. This exclusion becomes less marked as you cross mainland Europe and almost vanishes when you cross the German border into the Czech Republic. Throughout central Europe fares are considerably lower than the west and are the same whether a ticket is bought two months in advance or two minutes before departure; trains are recognised as a social necessity - incomes are lower and car ownership less - an essential link for a large proportion of the population. But in India, the railways are the backbone of the country's transport system and an indispensable part of life for millions of people. The railways have a life of their own: their own political and social structures, annual budgets in hundreds of millions of Rupees, their own police force, officers clubs and welfare associations, more than a million employees and thirteen million passengers every day. For every Shatabdi Express charging 300 Rupees to Bangalore there is at least one ordinary passenger train charging 25 Rupees; on the Howrah-Chennai Mail you can travel the 1663 kilometres in First Class Air-Conditioned at 2935 Rupees or pay 140 Rupees in Second Class. Nobody is excluded, regardless of income; each social tier is accommodated, and the train made up to reflect demand - just 10 First Class Sleeper berths in an entire 24 coach train, the majority of the the rest the least expensive Second Class and ordinary Sleeper Class. Even with increasing car ownership the mathematics make sense: 1663 kilometres, 70 kilometres per litre of fuel costing 50 Rupees per litre equals 1187 Rupees - a comfortable berth in a Three Tier Air-Conditioned coach would cost less. To put that into perspective, if I bought a single standard class ticket from Swindon to London Paddington tomorrow - which is less than 100 miles - it would cost me more than a first class sleeper journey of 5000 kilometres on Indian Railways. And if I chose to spend my money on an Unreserved Second Class ticket, it would buy me 76,000 kilometres of travel. The Times Of India and the Vijay Times often refer to ordinary trains as "Peoples Trains" or "Trains For The Poor" - this is not derogatory in any way, but simply an understanding of the social role played by Indian Railways. And the most surprising thing about India's Peoples Railway? An estimated profit of 2.5 billion US Dollars last year, as reported in the Washington Post.
I arrive at Bangalore City station a little after 10 o'clock. Nobody seems to use the footbridge over to platform one and the exit, the disembarking passengers choosing to walk across the tracks instead. It's a risky affair: there are five running lines and numerous power operated points to navigate. I cross in front of the WDM at the head of my train and immediately jump back as a red and white WAP-4 electric blasts its horns at me as it passes on the adjacent line. I watch as the points snap over with a thunk! and it reverses back onto its train in platform three. I pick my way over to the exit, pausing again for a pair of WDMs to rumble through the station and find a rickshaw to take me to MG Road. The driver demands 150 Rupees, which I negotiate down to 70, and we set off into the choking fumes and gridlocked streets of the city. As with Mysore, there are no cycle-rickshaws in Bangalore; the roads are too crowded and too dangerous, the distances and the hills too great. Where Mysore has herds of cows and horses wandering the streets and lanes, Bangalore has hordes of cars and scooters, rickshaws and Ashoka Leyland buses, along with the notorious packs of stray dogs; the pollution is staggering and the noise overwhelming. For all its affluence, it is an unattractive city. It takes almost forty minutes to travel the seven kilometres to MG Road, most of which is spent in traffic jams breathing in the fumes from a thousand exhaust pipes. I find the Thomas Cook office tucked away in a modern shopping mall and change a cheque; the cashier only has 100 and 500 Rupee notes and I walk back to the street with an inch thick wad of notes crammed into my security wallet, bulging noticeably behind the pocket of my jeans. I find the Indian Coffee House and order a drink and a very pukka cucumber sandwich.
"Do you mind if I join you?" an elderly Indian man in smart casual clothes asks in perfect and un-accented English.
He introduces himself as Jesse, retired naval officer turned freelance journalist and part-time author, and is delighted when he notices a Le Carre novel that I picked up at Higginbotham's on the way to the coffee shop. We chat about books, reading, writing, politics and some of the absurdities of Indian life. He warns me about the eunuchs who frequent MG Road, and their unorthodox means of begging: dressed as women, if their initial request for money is refused, they will simply raise their sarees or dresses and follow you until you pay up. While visitors may be shamed and embarrassed into submission, the locals aren't quite as sensitive, as the Vijay Times reports: three eunuchs - Rupa, Prema and Mary - were attacked for harassing people in Kanakapura Road. While Mary made her, or it's escape, Prema and Rupa were both hospitalised. But it's not all bad news for Bangalore's eunuchs: some unscrupulous banks are employing them to visit defaulters homes to recover outstanding monies - a tactic that is proving very successful......
I take a rickshaw back to city station and just make the Bangalore-Mysore Tippu Express. I stand in the open doorway with a Wills Classic as we crawl through the suburbs; this is the view of Bangalore the city doesn't promote. Squalid shacks and tented slums; stinking, polluted streams choked with litter and plastic bags; barefoot rag-pickers and filthy naked children; open sewers, open cooking fires, packs of big, brown rats scurrying amongst rotting piles of garbage. In downtown Bangalore the money is high-rise; from there the poverty spreads outwards for miles in every direction like a stain.
The heat is dying down by the time I arrive back at Mysore; I walk down the tracks to the over bridge, climb down the embankment and walk over to the Mayura Hoysala. I order a Kingfisher in the courtyard restaurant and exchange pleasantries with the waiter. He tells me he is finished for the day and asks whether I would like to visit his home and have supper, which his wife is preparing. I go to my room, change my shirt and then climb onto the pillion for the ride out to Kuvempunagar, a small suburb on the southern outskirts of town. The difference between the cacophony of Bangalore and this leafy corner of Mysore could not be more stark. The narrow lanes are clean, quiet and free of traffic, stray dogs and eunuchs. The home is small - four rooms on the bottom floor of a modest two story house: two bedrooms, living room and kitchen. The toilet is in a small alcove near the back door and the bucket-shower is in the alley behind the house. Piles of coconut husks dry on shelves in the kitchen for use in the stove, and an old colour television takes up most of the living room wall. The whole place is spotlessly clean and the smell of home cooking wafts from the little kitchen. I am introduced to their son - an intelligent and polite 18 year old - who plugs my MP3 player into an ancient stereo and plays "Hard Day's Night" at full volume. The sound of The Beatles echoing around this sleepy neighborhood on the edge of Mysore as the sun settles on the horizon is unexpectedly satisfying. I eat supper with the family at a small table in the dining room; I am given the only chair while everyone else stands or shares a stool. There is a spicy South Indian chicken curry, sambar, chutney and steamed dosai all prepared with fresh herbs, spices and produce from Devaraja market in a cramped kitchen over one gas burner - far and away the best Indian food I have ever tasted. However hard I try, the family will accept no money to help with the cost of the food, even though it became clear during the meal that they had bought the chicken only when they learned I was coming.
I ride the Suzuki 150 motorbike back to the Mayura Hoysala with the son giving directions from the pillion; the roads are almost empty this late in the evening and to his delight I get the Suzuki up to 80kmh on a long stretch - which he confides is the fastest he's ever been on his bike. I drink a Kingfisher in the restaurant, which is as empty now as it was early this morning, and then lie on my bed under the slowly rotating ceiling fan. I have another early start in the morning, but instead of a WDM to take me to my next destination, it will be a bus.