A return journey

And so began the journey back from Delhi. After a short wait at the Nizamuddin railway station, the Rajdhani gently chugged into the station. We got in.

It was the first time I was travelling by a train in north India. Other than what I have read in the textbooks and seen on the TV, north India is as much a mystery to me as Kerala must be to someone in Haryana. I will never understand the logic of the infinity of the colourful bangles in their women's hands, of the ghoonghat, of the karva chauth and their belief that everyone from the south of Maharashtra is a Madrasi.

After some time, the scene outside the window of the train becomes boring due to its sheer monotony. In May, the land looks so parched that you feel thirsty on looking at it. Roads are very few in number. And I saw more goats and buffaloes on the way than specimen belonging to the Homo sapiens.

Yet, all the land, or at least most of it was under cultivation. Long stretches of land lay before me, empty after harvesting, ready to give life to the next set of crops only if their thirst was quenched. Houses were found in clusters, not isolated and a bit far from each other as we have in Kerala.

My father made an interesting observation as we were passing through Rajasthan. The north Indians tend to cover themselves up whether in summer or winter whereas the Malayalis preferred the 'minimalist' style in summer. After some brainstorming, we blamed it on our high humidity.

Nobody seemed interested in looking at the landscape outside after the lunch. Dad went to sleep too, leaving me alone to look at how this part of the country shapes up.

I am now both proud and ashamed to say that I am from Kerala. If these states had received half as much rain as we were receiving, nobody in the world would go to sleep hungry. Yet, in the case of the spirit of equality and fraternity, we do fare better.

I saw bullock carts and tractors running side by side. Huts and palaces doted the country of the cultivated lands. Still a glimmer of the untameability of the earth was seen in the patches where bushes ruled over the land. Groups of nomadic artisans living in tents made of plastic sheets lay sleeping in the scorching sun even as this air-conditioned train carrying their brethren whizzed by. Some May day!

Money decides the temperature you live in, the clothes you wear and even the quality of the air and water you consume.

There is no wildness of nature in these parts. No wonder the women are expected to be submissive here. The reins of both of them are firmly held by the men here. Orderly but cruel. Productive but parched, broken, deformed. Not a sign of life that was not deigned and decreed by the lords. How loathsomely neat!

Yet signs of change are seen. A lone woman driving an SUV on a narrow road parallel to the train, patches of wild bushes and trees not grown under 'social forestry' give hope. Let this hope never die.