From Relatives to Absolutes in India
Let me get straight to the point: leaving one’s home is an absolutely essential element in order to ‘feel free’. Let me get straight to another point: the above sentence makes a presumption that you already have a home. The context of home, independence and freedom is not absolute, but relative.
Now allow me to explain this sort-of-a-philosophical-treatise with a narrative of travel. I, along with my friend, Gyelek decided to travel from Delhi to Calcutta by a General ticket. Now there is hegemony in tickets too, with the least fare that takes you from Calcutta to Delhi make sure that the conditions of travel are beyond the means of comfort. No, I will not paint that typical picture of third world transport systems with trains having roaches scurrying all over the compartment, which by the way is an exaggeration but not uncommon. We found out that the Howrah-Kalka Mail stops at Sabzi-Mandi station before it halts for a longer time at the New Delhi Station and decided to board the train at the former, relatively empty station.
This, we thought, would give us the edge in finding some place in keeping our luggage and also a place to stick up our ass in some corner. This was December, and the chill of the sunless mornings in Delhi can make the bones shiver too. The auto ride from Lajpat Nagar to the station was not just chilly, but chilling, the wind our greatest adversary, hitting our cheekbones like a boxer’s jab. Of course, Gyelek is a Tibetan and grew up in the hills in Darjeeling, so it would be more appropriate if the collective pronoun ‘we’ in the previous statement is replaced by the personal pronoun ‘I’. Thus, our experience of travel, though a collective experience, was not a similar one: I being the more privileged of the two, proved to be more at a disadvantage by the very virtue of having the privilege of possessing a home, and living in a country where freedom was a constitutional right. The one saviour in this pricking chill would be a five rupee cup of piping hot tea that somehow seemed to possess medicinal value at this time of the year. So while we were enjoying our tea and observing the way a station too wakes up in the morning, not unlike a human, we nearly missed our train which had already arrived in another platform. We jumped off the platform and into the tracks to get into the train. We found a larger space beside the toilet in one of the compartments and were quite satisfied at the prospect of being able to stretch our legs. Travelling in this way too is illegal as we were in the Sleeper Class where only people with reserved seats can travel.
The Trained Ticket Examiners, commonly called TTs, wearing a black-and-white combination, come as guardians of the railway and fine squatters like us. Of course, what they do is only a part of the rulebook, but what was interesting was their attitude. In one instance, as many as five TTs made their way and demanded the requisite fine: the illegal squatters included two elderly women, one differently-abled person, and three other men, along with the two of us, all squeezed between the toilet and the seats overwhelmed by the smell of piss. Now, what is important is this: I possessed a travel pass from the Indian Railways as it is a benefit my father gets since he works there.
No sooner did I would show it to them than their attitude would change from an imperial colonialist talking to the natives to that of sympathy acknowledging our plight – all for one piece of paper having the stamp of the General Manager of the Eastern Railways. As you might have realised by now, I could travel ‘Air –Conditioned First Class’ with that piece of paper but that I chose otherwise surprised them. The fact also remains that I was the only one in that jostled space who had the freedom to choose, but as Gyelek corrected me, I had the privilege to choose. Thus, freedom and privilege in this context of travelling is synonymous. Added to that is the fact that I was returning home to Calcutta but for Gyelek, such a choice of travelling home too is an impossibility. For his home is one that has been stolen and the choice of returning denied.
That I undertook this journey as a kind of conscious rite of passage comes from a position of privilege and therefore, the place that allows you to feel freedom is a privilege too. What needs understanding is that this privilege is necessary and must be accessed by all, for freedom must be absolute and not relative.
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