And so it begins.
We’re at Day Zero in our ISDM residency journey. As I write this, we’re waiting in the passenger train going from Anuppur Junction to Kotma town in Madhya Pradesh. Anu and I are posted in Koriya district in Chhattisgarh. Koriya lies on the border of MP, and from what we’ve read, it is absolutely beautiful with 60% forest cover, many hills and waterfalls. Around 45% of the population is tribal and the people are largely dependent on the forests for their livelihood. Sameer is posted in Kotma area in Anuppur district and this region is abundant in coal with most of the population engaged in coal mines. The three of us are going to be spending the next 8 weeks here, working on creating marketing channels for processed jackfruit products and creating a business plan for the sale of little millets (also known as kutki in Hindi and samalu in Telugu).
As excited as we were to get to these places and understand more about the place, people and culture, we've already had an interesting albeit hilarious start to this journey. Firstly, we somehow managed to mess up the ticket booking and booked our tickets for 24th April instead of 24th March. We're supremely grateful to Afsar bhaiyya and Manish bhaiyya (from the ISDM staff) for pointing this out when they printed out our tickets for us. All this happened in the evening, just a day before we were scheduled to leave. Surprisingly we found another train that was going to Anuppur station the next day with tickets available but was leaving Nizamuddin at 8:30am instead of our our previous April train which was to leave at 5:30pm. Evidently, our entire packing plan was disturbed and activities had to be accelerated. The following day, our train which was scheduled to start at 8:30am, decided to depart at 8:28am instead, leaving Anu and me out with our luggage and our porters and our utterly shocked faces.
Clearly, we should've reached the station much earlier, but we were late because of several factors that played out together, most of which were really outside of our control.
We frantically started calling Sameer, who was already in the train, several times from then on. "SAMEER CHAIN KEENCHO (Sameer pull the chain)". Sameer was quite flustered because Sameer being Sameer, has never done these awful unparliamentary things before, like pulling the chain in trains. Anu and I were visibly disoriented, running on the train tracks with stones and human waste all around, with our troop of porters and all our luggage hoping to catch this express train going at around 60kmph.
Sameer had finally pulled the chain and the train was now around 500m from where we were. As we continued running behind the train, we were eventually joined by this stern looking uncle with a thick 'stache from the CRPF. In about a couple of minutes, we were 200m away from the train and it had suddenly started moving again, in all its express-train-speed. Called Sameer again. "Sameer, please ek baar aur kardo. Hum bilkul peeche hi khade hai (Sameer, please pull the chain once more. We’re standing right behind the train). In under a minute the train stops again, and this time we’re hopeful. In my head I’ve already calculated the time it would take us to reach the train, considering the pace at which we were running but meanwhile my vision had become blurry and the train started looking like a big brown blob.
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The thick 'stache uncle who was relatively passive till then, had started shouting something furiously in Hindi. I began looking around only to find the rest of the crew (Anu and the porters) missing from the tracks. They had gone off the tracks, to the right side and started shouting too, asking me to get off the tracks as well. Only then I realized that there was another train coming right beside ours, towards us. I quickly got off the tracks and joined them, while my mental calculations of distance and time and velocity all came crumbling down. By the time this parallel train had crossed us, our train had started again in its express - train - speed.
The five minutes after this were a blur and I could see that Anu's face had gone completely blank. The CRPF uncle had started asking our names and numbers, and ordered us to follow him to the police station. I was so disoriented that I started asking him what our alternatives looked like, if we were to catch the train in another station - perhaps in Mathura or in Agra. The porters then took over, and assured us that we wouldn't be taken to the police station if we just give the CRPF uncle our numbers and names. I gave him our names and Sameer's number, he mumbled something to the porters and went on his way. The porters said that they'd drop us back at the station, took us through a Tamilian colony beside Nizamuddin, to an e - rickshaw and back to the station. Once my brain started processing these events normally, I checked if there was another train that we could take, perhaps the next morning.
It was serendipity that we had found another train that was starting at 12pm from Nizamuddin and reaching Anuppur at 7:30am instead of our original train that would have dropped us at 12:10am. Tickets were available too. Serendipity. We immediately booked our tickets and got into the train at 1:10pm (the train was late by an hour). We reached Anuppur at 8:45am and met Sameer, who had spent the night there in the waiting room and was visibly deranged.
Nobody could tell that just 24 hours ago, this deranged looking person had pulled the chain in his train, not once but twice, but all in vain. These events are generally hilarious in hindsight, but none of us is laughing for now.
Our passenger train just started and we can already see dozens of 'flame of the forest' trees spread across, from our window. Our co-passenger in this train tells us that we'll find lots of bhaalu (bears) and cheetahs in Koriya. Oh and lots of waterfalls, of course. We nod and smile, as though we're used to seeing these animals everyday. I can see the slight nervousness that Anu and Sameer have on their faces but we're looking forward to the next 8 weeks and the amazing learning experience that each day will bring. As of now, onwards my friends! #ISDMResidency #cometokoriya #residencystories
