Travelling on Trains in India

I was on a train from Madgaon to Bengaluru. I stocked up on food and drinks for the train journey. I have a sleeper seat in the upper bunk, in a relatively less crowded coach. That is a good sign. Life is kind. As soon as you get into the sleeper coach, there is a ritual you must follow. You place your bag in one corner, lay out the bed sheet and pillow, and take all the things (books, laptop, food) you will need for the journey. Just before the journey starts, the coach starts filling up. This is when an experienced train traveler in India stays detached. It is chaotic and messy. Egos are hurt. Bags are thrown around. People fall. You just observe, or even better listen to music, so people do not know you are observing. If you try solving any of the train problems, then you will end up further aggravating it. You are no messiah. So shut up and stay seated.

"Sir, you are sitting on my seat."

Ma'am, can you please move your bags?"

"I have the window seat for this journey

"My family is here, do you mind taking a seat in another abandoned corner of the train, so that I can sit happily with my family here. It is only a 24 hour journey"

What to do in Panjim/Panaji, Goa? - City Walks, Libraries and Astronomy Centers

My friend in Panjim promised to take me around the city. He knew where the good places where. We start the morning at the Basilica of Bom Jesus, which is a structure that houses the relics of saint francis xavier. I remember reading up on the life of St Xavier. How he gave up a rich upbringing, to spread the word God. He had a deep adoration for life around him. I felt like he came from a place of love. Inside the church, it was interesting that nobody asked me my faith. I was allowed to come in and pray nonetheless. There were so many beautiful aspects about faith and religion. I always wanted to ask the leaders of each major religion of the world a question. These religions included Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and more. I assumed they were really wise and enlightened because of their deep study of the scriptures of their religious books. Why did they not find a way to learn from the good values and practices of the other religions? If they all wanted to promote the idea of respect, love, brotherhood, why did they not work together? Why did the wise religious leaders not cooperate with each other?

Later we visited the St. Cathedral Church and also visited a museum nearby that house a large collection of paintings. Many of these paintings were of the various leaders from Portugal that ruled over Goa. There were artifacts like coins, weapons, maps and other goods also present at this museum. Below the painting of each leader, there were the following details

Born ____

Died ____

Remembered For ______

Some of them were remembered for conquests, some of them were remembered for inventions, some of them were remembered for administration of the colonies. Most of them lived for sixty to seventy years. It made me think about death? When would I die? What would I be remembered for? I recalled the words of the artist, Aisha Chowdary who was suffering from pulmonary fibrosis when she made this comment at a conference, 'In 100 years time, everyone in this room is going to die. Not one person will be alive. We may die at different times. But we all will die someday.' Hmm. I was twenty years old that day. I may survive for another sixty years if I am lucky. That is about 525949 hours, 21914 days, 3130 weeks, 720 months. I have just 720 months left. Just 720 summers left in my life. Wow, that was not too much time. I had to change the world, get married, start a family, travel the world, read every book, make beautiful art, start a company and more. Oh man! I don't have enough time now. If I try doing everything, I will end up doing nothing. If I really want to be remembered for something after my death, I needed to focus on one thing. Just one teeny tiny thing I am crazily passionate about. Hmm, What is that one thing for me? Ah! That is what I am on this journey for. Very cool. But why do I want to be remembered when I am dead and gone? I mean how will it matter to me, if somebody remembers me, if I will never know that they remember me.

In the afternoon, we catch a bus to the panaji library. I thought it would be another broken down building, with books from the last century. Mumbai, the city I came from, was the financial and entertainment capital of the world. This city of dreams, did not have many well resourced public libraries. There were a few in South Mumbai, but not everyone can travel two hours everyday to spend time there. If one of India's most prosperous cities did not have a good library network, what about the tier II and tier III cities. If people don't have access to knowledge, how would they explore human ideas, how they put forward well researched arguments.  A friend, I recently met in Mumbai, told me about a library in his village in Bihar. He grew up there. There was a retired civil servant that stayed there. He decided to hire a small room in a structure in the village and converted it into a public library. He bought new books and made many of his own books available. Because of his contribution, my friend, was able to spend his childhood, reading Gandhi, Tolstoy and Thoreau. It is mostly people like this that have to take a personal initiative to make such resources available to people in their locality. 

Here in Panaji, there is another such initiative, The Goa State Central Library. We decided to spend the afternoon here. The first floor was the children's section and had over 10,000 books. The second floor was the circulation section and had 70,000 books, both fiction and non-fiction. The fourth, fifth and sixth floors were for Rare manuscripts, a reference section and a portugese books collection respectively. It was open to the public and anybody could spend the day here reading and learning from the wisdom of the ages. Goa also has a very effective village and district level library system. There are well stocked libraries available in most major cities in Goa. I wish more states in India, learned from the example of Goa. The National Public Library in Kolkata is another example, of a well resourced learning center, with a collection of over 2.2 million books. In the colleges that I visited over the past year, I mostly found a collection of technical and subject specific books. There was much work to be done with regard to developing a more diverse collection of both fiction and non-fiction books. I think it is extremely important for both the government and private sector to find ways to make knowledge accessible to the masses. With the advent of the internet, there are questions about, the need of a physical library. But not every individual in the country has access to an internet connection in India.

In the United States of America, the most well resourced, library is the National library of Congress with over 34 million books in its collection as on 2015. The best academic library is the Harvard University Library with 16 million books in its collection. The Boston Public Library has nineteen million book and the New York Public Library had 16 million books in its collection. The New York Public Library functions as a private non-profit with majority of funding from the city government.  Beyond the public and academic setups, the private non-profit library can be another model, administrators can explore to make knowledge accessible to more people. The Harvard University Library, has 8 times the number of books available at the National Library of India in Kolkata. Harvard University has a large endowment fund, but the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in India can find ways to allocate a larger budget to the creation and sustainence of more libraries at the urban, rural, city, village and district level.

In the evening, we visit another learning center after Dinner. It is an astronomy and star gazing club that my friend was a part of. They had their own telescopes and would conduct periodic star gazing trips around the city. They organized public lectures, film screenings and events related to astronomy, physics and the universe. We have a goan dinner of prawns and beer, and then spend the night at one of my friends relatives homes. It was a good day. Goa seemed like a place, I could easily fall in love with.

We visit my friend's ancestral home in the morning. Family photos adorn the wall. At one point of time, over a 100 people stayed here. The puja room was still lit and a priest came every morning to do the daily rituals. The furniture is exquisitely designed. Portraits of family members who looked like members of a royal family were also on the wall.. There is a palanquin in the attic. The storeroom is filled with broken and semi broken toys. An open cupboard with over a thousand keys is spotted in the distance. The house was like a maze, one room leading to another and then we walk into a large lawn. As we walk out of the house, we meet a lady that stares us down and forces us to take notice of her. He notices her, because she is an old member of the house. They have a conversation about the good old times. I observe and wait. I hear a crackle under my feet. I have stepped on a dead leaf. Back at home, we were treated a delicious lunch of goan fish curry and rice. We catch a ferry back to his home in the evening. We spend the night discussing stories and people we have grown up with. This is my last night in Goa. After a heavy morning breakfast, my friend volunteers to drop me to the panaji station. I catch a bus back to madgaon and then jump on my next train. Karnataka, here I come.

Sat-chit-ananda
@AbhishekShetty_

Friends in Panjim

I planned to meet a friend in Panjim, the beautiful capital of Goa. I am a little sleepy on the bus to Panjim. So I doze off for a while. Oh these short afternoon naps. When you get them just right, it is like somebody has just gotten into your head and cleaned it of all the ooze. Like a ear wax cleaning, but for the head. Or maybe it is like a head massage, the best head massage you have ever received. Somebody once told me that when you sleep, a process that involves converting the short term memory into long term memory, occurs in your brain. For some reason, on this bus ride from Marmagaon to Panjim,  I felt like I had fastened this process. Or I was super aware it was happening. I am woken up, by a bus jerk. Panjim aa gaya hai, utar jao (in slightly more broken Hindi). Panjim, I am finally here.

This feels right. I planned to stay with a childhood friend here in Panjim, Goa. He was a native of the city and moved here after the 10th grade. We were reasonably close growing up. I was looking forward to the time we spent together. Unfortunately this acquaintance, did not happen very soon. I had called him the night before and also left a missed call and message before leaving my last destination. I was sure he knew I was coming. But he did not pick up his phone. Did he abandon me? I called him once and then again. 

Nobody replied. This kept happening. 21 missed calls later, I thought I was screwed. I will have to sleep at the bus station tonight. That would be a first. But I have my laptop bag with me. Oh God! Why did I bring it along. Maybe, I can use it as a pillow and nobody will find out. It isn't too hard to steal a pillow. I wish I did not bring any valuables along with me on this trip. I wish I just had one pair of clothes and one tiny bag pack on this trip. Wouldn't that make things so much easier. These were the things I needed: A towel, a change of under garments, cargo pants, a casual shirt, diary, wallet, phone, earphones, camera, some pens, a bunch of handkerchiefs (sinus problems), formal t-shirt,bag of toiletries, sport shoes. Yeah, that is all you need to be alive on the road. Only I had two of each of the above and a lot of other unnecessary stuff.

Then the phone rings. Yippiee. It is him. I pick up the call. Where were you, dude? He answers, "I am on my way man, can you stand near the ticket counter at the station." I buy some ice cream, while I wait for him. I see a few students sitting across me, doing a sketch of the passengers at the station. O further inquiry, I find out that they are art students and are here to observe and collect content for their art. That was the coolest thing I heard all week. Maybe the coolest, after Vivin's story. But it was really cool, nonetheless. I think about how much you can learn about the world, by merely observing things around you. I looked at the situation I was in. A crowded bus station. People behaved differently. Some people were making purchases at a canteen nearby. 

Mothers collecting bags of chips and biscuits for their little kids. A bunch of businessmen, in plain clothes, seemed to be in a hurry. A family sitting next to me, seemed to be traveling cross country and was surrounded by a bunch of luggage bags. The bus conductors were shouting out their bus journey descriptions. They were trying to convince, the people at the station that their bus ride was a ride to heaven. The most comfortable ride in the world. The cheapest. It was an offer of a lifetime. They sounded so convincing. I almost bought a bus ticket just for the sake of it. Eventually my friend arrives. He has a car. Thank God. No more buses and trains for a while. We stop at an atm. I had run out of money. I was in South Goa. The commercial beach capital of India. I knew I would need some money. We then spend the next hour driving to his home near the Baga Beach. He stayed near a beach! This trip was going to be insane. Insane in a good sort of way, I hoped.

That night, we decide to go for a walk on the beach. I've had enough of beaches for a year now. But this should be fun. Unfortunately, I wear my faithful sports shoes and not normally recommended beach sandals. I had to take slow, long steps, to prevent bucket loads of sand from getting into my shoes . This is the only pair, I had for this entire six month journey. Cleaning them would be pain. Getting new ones, would be an even bigger headache.  When you are on the road, you have to be extra careful of the one or two things, you use often. For me it was my glasses, my sport shoes and my cargo pants. If anything happened to any of these travel necessities, I would be heartbroken. It is funny. When you use a particular object for a long period of time. That object becomes an important part of your life. You identify yourself with it. When anything happens to it, you feel bad. It is like you have lost a good friend. So this was how I felt, when the frames of my glasses broke, when my cargo pants were dis colored, and my shoes were damaged because of excessive use at the end of my journey. It was like my life had come to an end. Like I was Voldermot, from the Harry Potter series and three of my hocruxes had been taken away from me. I had become weaker.

But we reached a beautiful restaurant, by the beach. It seemed quite inviting with live and slow music, a dim candlelight ambience, beautifully dressed people on tables having engaged conversations. The walk was sure worth the effort. I felt like it would be a good night. We settle down and order some drinks and food. My friend was passionate about Physics and Automobile Engineering. He introduced me to some of the projects he was working on at university. He spoke about a Race Car Design Project , he and a couple of his friends at college had taken up. I could feel the love, enthusiasm and passion that he had for the field. Any discipline or field of study can be beautiful. What is important is that you come to the subject with love. You ask important questions. You ask meaningful questions. You try and understand, why Maths is a beautiful subject and not always focus on how much you will score on the subject. Just listening to him, was such a beautiful experience that night. He was so excited about what he discussed. He loved automobile engineering. It made me think about students at several engineering colleges around India. I prayed they came  to the subject with the same love and dedication, that my friend came with. But if their objective was to just get a degree, they would be missing out on such a great opportunity. The opportunity to study a subject you deeply loved for four years as an undergraduate student. We got news,  that a bollywood celebrity was also in the restaurant with us that night. But no one individual was important that night. Because every individual at every table, felt important. I look to my left and I see a couple, looking deep into each others eyes. More like looking deep into each others souls. The music was slow and romantic and I felt it made the evening even more special for them. It was like every word, in the romantic song being played, in the background, resonated with them.

'Kyunki Tum Hi Ho,

Ab Tum Hi Ho,

Zindagi Ab Tum Hi Ho….'

She smiled. There was a certain twinkle in her eye. The man pays the bill and I see them walking out of the restaurant, holding hands, dancing to the music, madly in love. Soon they disappear in the distance. They become dots, on the vast distant landscape of white sand of the beach, illuminated by the lanterns from the restaurants that line the beach.

We finish dinner, and I have to take my big slow steps, to get back to normal non sandyland. When I reach home, there are three- four spoonfuls of sand, in my shoe. Not Bad. Good Job Abhishek. Really Good Job.

Sat-chit-ananda

@AbhishekShetty_

Night on the Beach

We think up a plan, of spending the night on the beach. Lots of the shacks have restaurants attached to them. We find a place, that seems to have good music. One friend orders a beer, the rest of us observe her drinking the beer. A couple on the table next to ours, seems to be having an intense discussion about life. A lone man sits on the table behind ours and drinks the night away. It is so interesting, that so many human lives with different stories exist parallelly. Everyone has a story. Everyone has problems. Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to love somebody.Later we buy some bread and chips (to make ourselves potato chip sandwiches) We find some waste newspaper and an empty spot on the beach to settle down. The beach looks deserted. It is past midnight. The barking dogs and late party goers keep us company. But the night is still young. At least we still thought so. That night we had a real conversation. Something about being 20, and having hour long conversations seems very appealing to me. 

Uncertainty and the longing for acceptance mixed with the infinite choices of life and super ambitiousness. Anything is possible. Yet nothing seems possible. I cannot seem to focus on one task for too long. I wonder why? Why do I always have to run away? From projects, from people, from school. I bring this up in one conversation. Books, songs for the night, human radios, life back at home (wherever that was currently) were some of the other hot topics that night. Three hours went by in a jiffy. We wanted to be macho and stay up on the beach for the whole night. We planned to wake up with the rising sun, like a warrior returning back home after war. Let us do this.  We take turns to walk the stretch off the beach, and also wet our legs in the ocean water. The waves seem stronger at night. I feel they can just pull one of us into the ocean and take us away forever, to another beautiful world. By 4 am, we are half dead, we need to sleep. We decide to spend the rest of the night at the only open restaurant on the beach. Loud music and a wild party is still on. I doze off on the chair as soon as we sit downI am woken up an hour later and we head back to the shacks. I try convincing them for another hour. But I was the one that slept not them. So we decided to rest for an hour and then wake each other up for sunrise. 

I wake up, the one hour of sleep helps. Both my friends are in their deep sleep zone and decide against the morning walk down the beach. I did not get a chance to see the sunrise, apparently the beach is on the wrong side. Or the beach is a sunset type of beach. We were not the only ones that had all night plans. Empty bottles, torn shirts, leftover newspapers tell so many stories. Things have stories hidden in them too. What happens to a coin, as it moves from one individual to another? What happens to a plastic bottle from industry to consumer to industry again. I look out into the ocean and know that even the water out there has a story. Everyone has a story. I wish I listened more. There is so much to learn from the world around you. 

That day we woke up late, and had a normal day. We sat on the rocks to watch the sunset that evening. It was beautiful. Tomorrow we leave Palolem. 

We pack our bags and decide to walk to the nearest station. Bad decision in this goa heat. But we all are a good sport, so we play along acting like we are all okay with it. But yeah, I guess Leg 1, of the Finding Myself trip went by alright. Did I seem to get closer to the ultimate answer. Not too much. 

18th March 2015

We stop at a restaurant close by, to have breakfast, first thing in the morning. We order everything we can and then we meet the Man. Vivin seems to have done it all. He owns the restaurant and on further inquiry, find out that he is quite the Indiana Jones come James Bond character. Or maybe we thought he was just too cool. So he earned a lot of money working in hotel management in five star hotels around Australia and South East Asia. He travelled all he could. He told us his passport, had an entry stamp from almost every nation on this planet. We were a bunch of 20 year olds on a backpacking trip during a college break. Travel was the ultimate escape plan from the normal daily routine of our lives. Vivin was the Man. The Man that did it all. The Man we all wanted to be. Square spectacles, beach shorts, folded sleeves, formal t-shirt and your own restaurant near one of Goa's coolest beaches.  This was the life. He gave us his number, and told us to keep in touch. We walked out wonderstruck. Oh wait he also dropped us to the nearest station. 5 more points to Vivin and his legend.

My friends plan to take a bus back  to Hyderabad from Marmagaon. We take a train from Palolem, to Marmagaon. From Marmagaon, we take a bus to the local bus station. Over there we part ways. They catch a bus to hyderabad. I am still unsure where I will end up. Then I remember. 

Sat-chit-ananda
@AbhishekShetty_

Solitude, Boats and Boredom

Third Day in Palolem. Expect my friends from Hyderabad, later in the afternoon. Eight - nine hours of sleep sure fills you up with energy. Ah! Sleep. Is there a more noble endeavor. You close your eyes, lie down on your back, and dream beautiful dreams. Scary ones too. But mostly beautiful. It is 8 am. I don't know what to do. So I read. That is how I plan to escape boredom. By reading my way into a better world. Sometimes you feel like, every book has been written just for you. Like the characters in the book are talking to you. 

In person. I feel like sometimes nobody wants to talk to you. You may expose too much of yourself. You must be strong. You would chat comfortably for an hour or two on the internet. But in person, even fifteen minutes seems intimidating. My room is so messed up. The loo broken. Insects all over. Holes in the floor. It seems like the shack may come down any moment. I buy some oranges and wait for my friends at the bus stop. I offer another soul, standing at the bus stop, one of my two oranges. I am such a nice person. I sacrificed one half of my breakfast for a complete stranger. We find shacks for them. My landlord plans to charge them double the amount he charged me. 

We bring it down to Rs 300 per night. The trick is to never give in. Sometimes, you have to just walk away and act like you are not interested. But don't walk too far away. Walk away really slowly. If the person you are bargaining with calls you back, go and buy it for whatever amount he offers you. It is much lower than before. If he doesn't call you back, you turn back and tell him this, 'Okay Bhaiya, Aaakri Bhar, Kitne Mein Dogey?' Hopefully he will consider your plight and reduce the price.

They rent a beach chair and take an afternoon dip in the ocean, we catch up on good old times. At Palolem, you can hire a paddle boat and that is exactly what we planned to do. We get some basic training and then are off on our boats into the wide blue ocean. We stick together for a while and then go off on our separate ways. The waves are not that strong and we are thought a technique to paddle over it. 

Wouldn't it be fun, to just swim out into the ocean and never come back? Nobody would even know where I have gone. Nobody would even care. Everyone was too busy anyways. But then my friend calls out to me, and interrupts my escape plan from the world. 

The sun setting in the distance makes the landscape in front of us, even more beautiful. But all good things come to an end. I was a little sea sick to. Maybe good things come to an end, because you get sick of good things too. Such a pain to paddle back. When you climb a peak, you also have to reserve some energy to climb back down. Why didn't I think about this when I started paddling out into the ocean. Urghh. After fifteen minutes of paddling, we reach the shore. Unfortunately, the paddle company's base is at the other end of the beach. The boat seemed really light on water. But it seemed like it weighed a ton, on the beach. We have to pull it for a good three hundred metres. 

Then our paddling adventure came to an end. We have pizza that night, and shop a little bit around Palolem. It is nice to have people around. Nice to not be alone. Then I wonder why we long for company? Why do we like being around people? Sometimes, when I am around people for too long, I long for solitude. Urghhh. Why the conflict? Why can't you just be fucking normal? I remember meeting a couple in Mumbai that have been married for 60 years. Wow, I wonder, what is must be like, to be with somebody for so long. Do you love each other more as time progresses? Do you stay together simply because staying alone seems  painful?  It is nice to fall in love. But I am sure nobody falls in love, while thinking about staying together for the next sixty years of their life. Don't people get bored of each other? Ever?

Sat-chit-ananda

@AbhishekShetty_

Writing, Swimming in the Ocean and Talking to the Stars

I grew up on a healthy dose of National Geographic travel shows. I was such a romantic. A travel writer once wrote back to me. This was what he advised me, pack your bags, travel a lot and write about it. I knew that already. Why was he stating the obvious. Or maybe the best self help advice, is always just really obvious. Maybe it is just common sense. I spend the afternoon reading bill bryson and vs naipaul. You have to understand what is out there, before you want to transform it. 

Food and Reflection

I am in Palolem, Goa. After a long afternoon nap, I wake up by 4 3o pm. It is still blazing hot. I am drenched in sweat. The stupid fan did not do its job. Ughh. Wash my face, change my sweat drenched clothes and walk out of the shack for some lunch. I settle down at a beach shack come restaurant, with an open sea view. Buy some rice and chicken, for my starving stomach. Then just wait. Look at all the people out there on the beach. There is so much shade here, there is none there. Can you store some in a jar and sell it on the beach?