Lord Curzon made himself unpopular by saying "the highest ideal of truth is to a large extent a Western conception". Travelling nearly 4,000 kilometres - 3,913 to be exact - by air-conditioned first class on three trains last week made me wonder why he didn't include style as another exclusively Western conception. Indeed, concepts of public comfort and cleanliness must also have come and gone with our colonial rulers.
Today's islands of extravagance amid festering squalor do not qualify. Chilling malls, restaurants that charge fancy prices for local hotchpotch with fancy Western names ("risotto" for plain khichdi or Uttar Pradesh-bred Vietnamese basa passed off as "Dover sole"), and shops flaunting designer labels are as irrelevant to Indian well-being as Antilia is to Mumbai housing. A country's living standard is praiseworthy only when the facilities that the majority use are efficient, comfortable and affordable. Once that minimum is assured, it's perfectly acceptable for the rich to pay more for additional comforts. Today's India forces all but the tiny elite into the straitjacket of deprivation. As a railwayman's son, it pains me particularly to record that Indian Railways is doubly guilty of destroying the fine legacy it inherited.
Even without recalling the deep leather upholstery and heavy teak panelling of ordinary first-class carriages, all three express trains - Falaknuma, Chennai and Coromandel - were equally ramshackle. Strips of hammered aluminium held peeling plywood walls in place. Sliding doors constantly slid open. If the bunk was lowered, the plug point became inaccessible. Grimy window panes obscured the passing countryside I longed to watch. The basin had disappeared. Filthy toilets were awash with water. Commode seats were broken, fans missing, toilet rolls (where supplied) dangled from strips of rags.
The Coromandel enjoyed a special distinction amid this all-pervasive squalor. It - or our coach - never stopped or started. It jolted so suddenly to a halt that I feared the entire train would jump the rails. Then it shuddered into precipitous life as if for a great leap forward to its destination. My travelling companion hoped there were no Chennai hospital heart patients on board.
At one time, AC first-class compartments were exclusive domains occupying an entire bogie that only actual passengers and staff who catered to them could enter. That ensured privacy, security and some cleanliness. No longer. Only three first-class AC compartments for 10 passengers were wedged between AC Three Tier and AC Two Tier (which even educated Indians mispronounce as "tyre") accommodation on each train. That meant crowds of travellers searching desperately in every compartment for their numbered berths, coolies (sorry, porters, English words being thought to be more respectful in this make-believe Make in India world) with mounds of luggage that belonged elsewhere, and an unending procession of hawkers singing out the charms of water, soft drinks, vegetable chops, newspapers, channachur, tea and coffee all day and night.
As far as food quality and hygiene go, the stalls that clutter Kolkata pavements selling chow mien, momos, egg curry and rice are a shade superior to the fare pantry cars churn out. I watched a waiter - nothing so lowly as a khansama in these swadeshi times - lurching along the corridor of the Falaknuma Express, hugging two lunch trays to the grimy bosom of his dirty tunic. When a poppadom fluttered to the floor from one of the trays, he merely picked it up and put it back in place. It didn't matter that thousands of muddy germ-infested feet, bare, slippered and booted, stamped along the filthy corridor day and night.
What I didn't set eyes on while any of these three journeys lasted was the attendant supposed to attend to the comfort of passengers on every first-class AC coach. Walking to the end of the corridor I did sometimes glimpse an unshaven man in vest and lungi snoring in a little cubicle, or playing cards with cronies on a dishevelled bed. He struggled into a crumpled uniform only as we neared our destination to come and demand - no salutation or greeting - the tip that was his due.
It says something for the nature of contemporary life that while trains have deteriorated in every possible way, they now provide plugs for laptops and mobiles. That's like Dharavi slum bristling with TV antennae; it also explains drivers of rickety auto-rickshaws careering recklessly while jabbering away into mobiles wedged between shoulder and ear. These gadgets symbolise the new India. As for the rest, the worst is better than many know at home. No wonder no one complains.
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