Non-reserve trains and grade 11 physics

In the midst of our week long vacation to the Indian northwest, Andrea, Herleen and I were in the Amritsar train station hoping to buy some non-reserve tickets that would get us halfway to our next destination, Dharamshala. After defending our place in the ladies ticket line and partially dodging bombs of pigeon crap (it landed on my backpack, not head—thank God) we secured our 17 Rs. tickets to Pathankot.
Walking onto the platform was not unlike other train station experiences, save and except a much larger than normal congregation of passengers near the end of the platform on the left. I spoke aloud to myself, “I wonder what they’re all doing over there,” but didn’t give it much more thought. One of us set out to purchase our go-to travel food—Parle-G biscuits—while the other two stood waiting. Not more than ten minutes later, a train moved its way into the station. “Great!” I thought, “It’s on time!” It seemed like a positive omen for our next leg of travel.
My optimistic thoughts took a drastic downturn when I noticed how abnormally short the train was, and I immediately realized why those astute Indian travelers all stood near the end, while we naively stood in the middle.
The train was no more than 8 cars long. My brain went back to high school physics and tried to calculate how fast we needed to run to score a seat on that thing as it glided past us with the cool, indifferent composure of Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada. The answer came to me quickly, and it was simple; we needed to sprint. Fast.
There was a chaotic herd—think wildebeest stampede circa the Lion King—of people trying to get onto that train. Grown men were flinging themselves into the open windows, as mothers with children displayed no caution in charging toward any open door.
From behind me, I could hear Andrea and Herleen call out, “Kelly Anne!!!!! We’re not gonna make it!!” as I panted with my luggage in the 45 degree weather, trying to find a car with empty seats. The last car on the train had a locked door and initial attempts to open it from the outside were unsuccessful. I moved on.
I had already caught up to the second last car when I heard my name called again. I turned my head quickly to see my fellow interns floating onto the last car of the train in the front of a current of pushy travelers.
I blurted an expletive and adrenaline propelled me toward that open door. Surprisingly, I made it on and found one seat—one glorious, shining, open seat—waiting for me in the first row. I sat down, and settled in for an otherwise non-eventful 3 hour ride to Pathankot.

Lessons I’ve Learned

If life is a classroom then Varanasi is a lecture hall that I find myself frequenting daily. As time continues to passe, I am able to observe the emotional ebbs and flows this experience has produced for me. Have I been inter-culturally effective? Manulea, our CIDA facilitator with whom we took an ‘intercultural effective course’ prior to our departure to India, might diagnose me as ‘right on track,’ the point in the trip where the graph levels out. With the honeymoon and homesick phases over and done with I am now feeling like a regular Varanasi resident, so much so that I would like to drop in at a city meeting and voice my opinion re: electrical power outages; but that’s a whole different blog.

My Varanasi residency brings with it an uncanny sense of familiarity with the city. The warmth and unmatched Indian hospitality create this feeling, as does the daily encounters with the chai walas, the slow moving street cows who have been great teachers in patience. My patience has also been tested in the Tulsi Kunj library. The combination of deadlines and scorching heat have had an exhausting effect on my energy levels, which are consistently tested by the ‘hard to say no to’ faces of children pleading me to play with them. As I write this blog in the Gandhi room of the Tulsi Kunj library I have eight of these beautiful young faces who are, periodically peering up at me from their books, begging me to entertain them. At last I oblige and show them pictures from a wedding I attended last night.

The epic and long anticipated wedding has come and gone. Shitanshue, The Banaras office’s program director, is married! The excitement for this wedding rippled down to us interns who, I can confidently say, have been looking forward to this wedding since our arrival three and a half months ago. An opportunity to buy and wear a sari might have had something to do with our level of anticipation. Shopping for saris: a monumental event alluded to in a former blog.

After the wedding, on our late night rickshaw ride home, buzzing with happy exhaustion, we began tailing the rear of a tractor pulling a truck full of men chanting a haunting chorus: “Ram Ram Satya Ram, Ram Ram Satya Ram.” The disturbing and evocative mantra moved us from our post wedding contentment into sober reflection. The men were traveling to the Ganges with the body of a dead relative. Their chant translates into “Ram is our God, Ram is our God.” Aware of the stark proximity of life and death in Varanasi, for me this was a palpable example of how vivaciousness lives a rickshaw away from mortality in this city of contrasts.

I remember our first meeting in Toronto when Mamta Mishra described Varanasi’s ability

to cultivate resilience in the absence of the West’s artifice surrounding death; now I can see that she was completely right. Watching a boy fly a kite next to a funeral pyre on a burning ghat or leaving the bliss of a wedding only to run up against a funeral procession has stripped away some of my fear of and blindness towards death. A beautiful Buddhist proverb says: “when you were born you cried and the world rejoiced and when you die the world cries and you rejoice.” Death has a whole new meaning in Varanasi, an ancient meaning. As the days march on I know the lessons I teach my students in the Tulsi library will always fall short of the lessons I continue to learn from the ghats of Varanasi.