I had tried this argument several times before. One more time at this hour would only delay the process. I didn’t know what it would take to convince oneself to go on a yatra like this. After all who in their right mind would trade the comforts of a warm bed, healthy food, friends and non-shaky personal bathrooms for a train, to explore something that was invisible to the sophisticated urban eye??
But 400 did.
So there I was with packed bags and no expectations. All I wanted was to take in that which would be served. I wanted to be like that empty cup which was open to all perceptions, diversity and reality. When I looked around myself, I sensed hope and fear juggling deep within the spirit of excitement as the music began to catalyse socialisation.
As mid night drew closer, tired bodies began to grope for spaces to take a quick nap. That’s when I found a luggage cart and in no time had transcended into some other world. The next time I opened my eyes, all the luggage carts around me had replicated with the same modality. I was thrilled! The mood had just begun to set in.
A wild adventure then, turned out to be my first learning of the yatra. I had innocently experienced a night that is the fate of a majority of unfortunate displaced migrants whose bodies’ shiver daily on the cold, noisy platform. How could such people who are unable to fulfil the basic necessities of life, ever rise along the pyramid?
And if they couldn’t, could India?
The second most intriguing thought struck me when I was enduring the lavatory. Experiencing water shortage made me wonder if there was a part of India that travelled daily in the train from a station to the next and back, to use an equipped toilet.
If this were to be true, then perhaps we could have lavatory on wheels!
My learnings of this yatra are immense. Most of them I cannot word, but the few that I can aren’t just associated with the role model visits or the panel discussions. They have been more from the processes that were associated with it. The above two are just a glimpse of a Meg of thoughts flying in my head.
We started off as 400 diverse souls from different parts of the world and ended up on one platform as yatris of Tata Jagriti Yatra 2009, India. It is now a part of my identity. An impulsive decision then has impacted my life so severely that it has permanently ruined the prospects of a normal, uninquisitive life that I could have led. But now all I remember are the 18 days whose spark and intent I want to enliven into an imprinted sense of being for the rest of my life.
Be it feeling the spirits of the likes of Bunker Roy, Anshu Gupta, Dabbawalas or Sabriye; all that touched me, brought alive that one part of my soul which was suffocating in the routines of the crowd.
As the hangover still lingers my mind, I pen-
18th is my birth date,
And 18 were these days.
400 nincompoops,
On the rail.
With 9,300kms began,
A journey than rang,
Bells of entrepreneurship
In the minds of the youth;
To re-infuse humanity
As the modern truth.
They listened, they reflected.
They questioned the processes.
In the heat and cold,
They’d managed to uphold
The spark within,
Of the yatri realm.
Now they are out there,
Somewhere let loose;
Rebelling the routines,
Experimenting with the new.
Only time will tell,
What they do.
400 nincompoops
On the rail;
Once aboard,
Never the same again.
Yaroon badhte chalo!
Tags: Alysha Tharani
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