Reconciliation of Opposites

I work in the wealth management division in an Indian private bank carrying a Chinese Mao bag and reading Nehru.

Reconciliation of Opposites – three opposites?

somebody move

This time I traveled for my holiday in the trains as well. I have romantic associations of the trains from childhood and I still try to relieve them as well. So hence we travel by train. But one small change – I don’t travel sleeper class. I don’t think I can handle that anymore. I travel at least in A/C. Every time jasmine and I see the second sleeper we wonder how people travel and the fact that we used to travel like that as kids. It’s become much dirtier these days than what I remember. The crowd seems to have all upgraded and hence our kind of class status would be in the A/C’s and the unreserved has moved onto sleepers. Whatever our stupid class connotations I don’t think I would want to travel like that with family. Somehow on my own I might be a bit more adventurous.

But I don’t quite know what to make of the Indian railways. The last five years for the railways has been written in gold with the Indian railways making breakthrough turn to windfall profits. This fact got global attention for the Indian railways and it became a case study for B school. Hell, I also saw an expensive book on it. What does mean for the end customer who uses it for transport, both the daily commute as well as the long distance traveler. Answer – zilch. Forward is an anathema for this anachronism.
I have been traveling in the trains for a long time now. I have been commuting since 1991 and have been doing long distance traveling since I was a baby. From where I remember – not much had changed. The only big leap has been the introduction of computers for reservation. Add online to it as an extension and there – you are done.
There is nothing done to augment the user experience. The loos in the stations and on the trains have remained as dirty as they ever were in all these years. The compartments have definitely gotten dirtier to point of being filthy. The AC compartments are getting worse. Dull and dingy due to ugly dark sun film, dirty curtains in the 2nd AC, bed sheets and blankets that have not been washed but merely ironed again. The pillows are awful and bad. Some are completely out of shape and black inside. The stations are dirty crowded and ill designed. Delhi Nizammuddin station at Delhi which caters to long distance travelers will not have slopes at foot over bridges. The coolies will not charge standard agreed upon fares. There will not be any fixed / fair metered taxi stands outside. The food stall will be sad as ever. The pantry will overcharge, delivery short quantity, prepare bad food and maintain no hygiene. The pantry car is an ugly, filthy, hot and pathetic rat hole.
The attendants are unhelpful as ever, the TC is corrupt as ever. Few good things – they upgrade travelers in case of vacancy… It’s true we got upgraded from 3 tier AC to 2 tier AC on one trip! You can use print outs instead of tickets. Wow! And the website actually has adequate bandwidth and server strength. I can’t think anything much beyond. Can you? Oh ya I almost forgot. The new Rajdhani coaches are nicer and some coaches have interesting new hip and useful reading lamps.
And anything that I think of as a solution just somehow feels unimplementable. In Ratlam we saw the carriage being cleaned by some private guys – they too are not up to mark. Its really difficult to think of solutions. The only thing I can think of is allowing for private compartments managed and branded by hospitality chains. So you may have a 5 star Taj coach followed by a budget ginger coach and then a ‘shiv sagar udipi’ coach. The government can continue to keep the same subsidy while allowing the people to pay more for greater comfort. But this is conundrum is very painful to see unsolved.

Here are some images from the trip this time around
Jispa enjoying her herself. Gymnastics is useful!

Inside the loo
Hammer for breaking glass in emergency. But uhhh… how do we get to the hammer. Oh.. break the glass and get the hammer to break the glass.

Wow nice electronic display. Trains coming and trains going. But wait hang on.. did you spot it… go on look again….
The arrival time is after the departure time in the second last row. Oh ya.. I am a hard to please guy. Aint I?

Entertainment and sleep

I have become like dad used to be. I can’t keep awake for long. A late night movie and I just sleep through the end. We were with some friends in Matheran and I fall asleep. On Friday we had some friends over and while talking I just fell asleep. No sleep deprivation for me. The next day we went to see a play and I slept through a part of it. Oh god. Sometimes I even sleep in office. Catch a cat nap. That’s important. Any time is good. I am famous for dozing off in flights. Especially during landing. I guess that time one mentally tunes off and there’s really not much to do. Conversations typically stop. So the best thing is to doze off.

The play we went for was a kiddie play at Prithvi. Sanjana Kapoor who runs Prithvi theatre is doing a stellar job. Jasmine, Jispa and me and have seen atleast 15 odd plays (all kiddie) there. She has figured that a venue is only as alive as you want it to be. She has kept it alive involving all unlike the principle of selective exclusivity. She could have well and truly made it exclusively for the “higher order” of creative and slowly the place would have been teeming with left wing hot headed, bearded bull shitters. But the place has something to it. A character that’s unique. Lovely.

On Dussera we went to Girgaun chowpatty with Jispa. The idea was to see the Ravan burn. But since we were a little early we took tickets for the Ram lila that was being staged there. It was so silly and so badly hammed, organized and played out. The story jumped due to time constraints. The characters place themselves thanks to the mikes hanging only at some locations. I really can’t believe that they have a ridiculously low budget for something as big as this. If you plan well put a good show in place, do some decent PR then the crowd will definitely come in and pay good money. But what the hell, the audience which was from the cow belt was not complaining and they were having a good time. Who am I to complain? The theatre played out silly, I had a good time, Jispa did some TP and they burnt the Ravan in the end. Wheeeeeeee……

Hanuman and Ravan were the best of them all.
She loves to run -

Check this dude traveling - tin man would have been soo proud.