Far from the hustle and bustle of the city there is a cove in the forest — a secret hideout — where I tuck myself in and forget all about the word. It is an escape into the holy from the unholy; a place where I heal between battles. Time stops there for me and the same stars shine every night to give the impression of a still earth. There are neither pointed fingers nor expectations. Since when have forests asked questions anyway? But it was not always that I knew about such a place. I had chanced upon it in one of my escapades into the wilderness of North Bengal.
There was once a time when I was a player in the corporate savanna. I prowled with my pride, scrounged with the hyenas and tore through unsuspecting preys. Such is the corporate ecosystem in India. You aren’t truly successful until you have built Minars with skulls and paved your path with headstones. I did all that and more. And when success kissed my feet I went the extra mile — in the deepest darkest recess of the human mind hides a heinous predator. That predator seeks comfort in dark warrens where human flesh is auctioned and bent fetishes are quenched in the night. I went to such places with my friends in the corporate world. But other than bearing witness to arching bodies locked up in the embrace of paid love, I couldn’t do much. I guess old fashioned codes of loyalty and one-woman manhood stopped me. There was money, there were avenues to spend, but the dissatisfaction was fast mounting. Money, it seemed, was not the key to happiness.
It was in the early summer of 2011 that I boarded my train to Alipurduar from Durgapur, my hometown in the red and parched sands of the fabled Chhota Nagpur plateau of Eastern India. Alipurduar is my other home. Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, the busy capital of its namesake district is a frontier town of the State of West Bengal. With Bhutan to the north, Assam and Bangladesh to the east and the rest of Bengal down south, Alipurduar stands as gateway to two different countries and a neighboring State. While the town itself has been sequentially razed of its green top, the surroundings are still lush. Endless stretches of saal, mahogany and teak jungles, glassy water streams, and mountains rolling up into the clouds — that’s what surrounds the busy little town. But my corporate life had left me with little time to be a vagabond in their midst.
Before I could board my train it began to trudge out of the platform. So I had to sprint to catch it. My tongue hung out of its usual resting place and the lungs demanded an early retirement — side effects of a life lived on booze I guess! I had almost got into the train when I tripped on the boarding ladder and landed flat on my face inside the tatty compartment. Two mating cockroaches were flabbergasted by my sudden intrusion and flew away in front of my nose. A strong dark hand pulled me up. He was a key-chain hawker. Grinning from ear to ear he remarked, “You were going under the wheels!” Yes I was! Thankful as I was, I bought two key-chains as a sign of deep gratitude.
It isn’t that I was late to the station or that the train pilot had suddenly decided to leave without me in an abrupt act of cruelty. I had been sitting at the station all the time, when the train stood and generously waited for the passengers to board. It is just that I was lost in my thoughts. It is a full fifteen minutes stop for the Chennai to New Jalpaiguri fast passenger train at the Durgapur railway station; enough to let the entire feral population of the surrounding bazaar board the iron cocoon in one mad rush. But thoughts, as they are, don’t come and go at the will of the head’s true owner. I was finally free to leave for the Himalayan foothills, where the plains meet the mountains and the clouds conspire to tease the rolling hills with their constant game of hide and seek. In that land of the forest Gods myriad streams crisscross vast stretches of the valley like arteries under the skin. My eyes longed to witness the bickering of the peacocks in the impenetrable jungles and watch tea flowers blossom in the estates. The rain had come there already. But it was still rather unpredictable in the feverish Chhota Nagpur plateau.
The compartment was hot and musty. The usual hot Indian summer had cooked up the innards of the train along with its passengers. Everywhere I scanned, weary eyes looked out of the window with unfixed gazes. Among my co-passengers was a family of four. While the man hummed an unknown tune, the woman seemed to have had her fair share of cross country train ride. With an untidy knot of hair and disheveled saree, she looked like she was going to fall apart and cry soon. Their children were having a merry time though. It was only a few hours later and after I had gained their trust that the man told me about their near infinite journey from Chennai to Guwahati. That’s a mind boggling 2000 kilometer train ride in one rackety, smelly tin can!
(to be continued…)
