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Let go and live

I drive the highways often. It allows my body and mind to find spaces that I have lost in the city. It allows me to explore the fourth and the fifth gear in my car.

A bit more than a decade ago, the highways were outside my comfort zone. It is not as if I didn’t drive from City A to Town B then, but then that was only when I really needed to.

Those were the days when the highways belonged to the taxi, bus and truck drivers. In short, the terrain outside the city, then, belonged to the professional drivers – the guys who sat at an angle behind the wheel in Ambassador cars and drove with one foot on the accelerator and one finger on the horn. Those were the days when the highway dhabas were patronised by professional drivers, and they had not become travel destinations reviewed in Zomato and Burrp. Rocky and Mayur had not made their television presence.

The Golden Quadrilateral, along with the arteries connecting the north and south, east and west, changed it all. In September 2004 my Maruti 800 quivered with excitement as I raced her along the as yet incomplete arm of the Quadrilateral between Vijayawada and Chennai.

These new highways allow us to find space that we have lost in our cities

The neatly laid out four-lane roads have opened a new getaway opportunity for many like me. No booking train tickets in advance, or searching for the budget seat in a budget airline. No anxious wait facing the tatkal webpage. Just pack up and drive.

The divider separating the traffic flow gives wannabe rally drivers like me adequate protection. We don’t need to dodge the accelerating car heading straight for us before squeezing itself back into its lane. We don’t need to worry about the truck lights blinding us at night.

However, there is something that I worry about all the time driving on these four-lane roads. I check my rear-view mirror far too often. I feel more like a historian rather than a futurologist driving the highways nowadays. I am especially alert when going past a slow-moving vehicle in the adjacent lane. I check the mirror once, twice, to see if there is a smart driver trying to weave through the shrinking space between my car and the other vehicle.

On the highway I am reminded of the amusing title that Rama Bijapurkar gave to her book describing the choices of the Indian consumer – We are like that only. The smart driver does not want to slow down for those few seconds to allow me to pass. It is a dangerous game of get-ahead-at-any-cost. The cost, in this case, can be the lives of all of us in the three vehicles.

In today’s world we love not to wait. Waiting is for misfits, failures and laggards. We are impatient and successful. We want progress – here and now.

Bijapurkar’s book title may need some change if we are to describe our social behaviour in the recent years. It would be more appropriate to describe it by saying We have become like that only.

In 1987, I had moved to the metropolitan New Delhi from the sleepy, laid-back town (then) of Thrissur. The size, scale and intensity of the city hit me on arrival. The peppy Maruti 800 had started scampering on the Indian roads a few years ago and the agile squirrels were slowly replacing the staid Ambassadors and Premier Padminis. Every Kapoor, Thomas and Kidwai who could own one had one.

Having gone to Delhi from the quieter Thrissur, there was something that surprised me those days. And this was at the red light of the traffic signals. After the traffic had stopped and backed-up on the broad roads, there would invariably be at least one M-800 that would squeeze its way and go and stop ahead of everybody else.

What provoked this almost obsessive one-upmanship behaviour?, I used to wonder. Living the city and its social, cultural and economic environment for the next five years gave me an understanding to this question.

Those were the years when Delhi was breaking the boundaries of economic growth. It was building and consolidating on the kick-start of the development activities initiated for the 1982 Asian Games. Enterprise was oozing from every street.

Those who were driving this growth were men and women whose grandparents had been stripped of their property and dignity and had to move to Delhi as refugees. These families worked hard to survive and grow out of poverty. And in the process it was perfectly acceptable to get that one step ahead of the others. What if that business deal or contract that you have worked hard for is only for one person? You certainly would want to be ahead of everybody else. Yours had to be the lone M-800 ahead of the others at the traffic signal.

From metropolitan Delhi I moved to metropolitan Madras (it was not Chennai yet) in 1992. Change again. There were less M-800s in Chennai, which was still in the Ambassador, Bajaj Chetak and TVS 50 age. There was no upstart trying to get ahead of the others at red lights. In fact, the Chennai drivers wanted to be safer than safe and slowed down even as the light turned amber.

The highways I drive today are located south of Chennai. But the behaviour that I see on the roads is similar to that I had seen in Delhi decades ago. At tollgates all too often there would be a car who would come from the side and squeeze into the lane right in the front.

Delhi has spread to all parts of the country. In the past 25 years, the game of one-upmanship has been promoted. This is a result of the very premise on which economic liberalisation has been built on – promoting consumerism. The way to a person’s wallet, or credit card, has been by reaching to him as an individual. Exclusivity sells.

This premise has its benefits. When everybody in the country takes care of himself/herself then the country takes care of itself, is the argument in its favour. Growth and mobility brings in energy into people’s lives. Growth also brings a belief in being in control of one’s lives, adding impatience when something small goes away from the script. It also brings a sense of insecurity – will one be able to continue on a trajectory of growth, always.

So when the smart driver sees my car closing the space between the slow moving vehicle and me, he wants to squeeze through. I could slow him down. Or, I could reach before him at the tollgate. 

My rear-view mirror is my protection. I do not want to be a collateral damage in his impatience.

Of 'Madrasis' and 'Bengalis'

The winter was just beginning in 1988. I saw him while I was waiting for the bus at R.K. Puram in New Delhi. He must have stepped out of the train just the day earlier. His wavy hair was ironed down with coconut oil, and his palms were sticking from under his pullover. He came close and struggled to ask me the direction to a location in Hindi.

Explaining the directions needed a few questions and answers. I could have relieved him of his discomfiture by talking with him in Malayalam. But then, I didn’t want to deny myself the vicarious pleasure of making him struggle with a difficult language. I was in my early 20s then, and at that age I enjoyed this mild ragging.

The skyline of Thrissur with the recent buildings built mainly by migrant labour.

In fact, he and I belonged to same class in the facelessness of Delhi – an immigrant from South India. The city called him, me, and also my friends from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Pondicherry and Andhra Pradesh by the same name – Madrasi. We were those who ate “dhossas with sambur”. Fortunately at least then the Delhi-wala star had not made the lungi dance famous.

From being a Madrasi I had moved to Madras in 1992. I had my brush with the term Madrasi at a premier academy for training future officers of the armed forces. The Press Information Bureau (PIB) chief in Chennai had a programme to take journalists from Chennai to Government of India institutions in different parts of the country every year.

In the news bureau of the newspaper where I worked, we took turns to participate in this annual tour. When my turn came, the destination was Pune and its near-abouts. One institution we visited was the Academy.

Our group reported at the Academy early in the morning and attended a press briefing by the commandant – a lieutenant general – and his senior team before breakfast. It was November 1999, and the country had just gone through the Kargil War. For the journalists from Tamil Nadu, meeting and speaking with cadets from their State would have made excellent human-interest stories for their publications. They requested the general, through the PIB chief, for an opportunity to interview cadets from Tamil Nadu.

The general appreciated the idea. “Woh Madrasiyon ko bhejo!” the general told the colonel. “Woh Madrasiyon ko bhejo!” the colonel repeated to the major. I saw and heard the order getting lost in the military undergrowth.

After visiting the beautiful locations in the Academy, we returned for lunch. There were a few cadets standing ramrod in attention for us, in whites and blazer. “So, you are from Tamil Nadu?” asked the PIB chief. “No sir, we are from Kerala,” one of the cadets replied. Those following the general’s orders perhaps interpreted the term Madrasi in its generic sense.

Denoting a large community with a generic name has strong socio-political intent. It is a stamement of power. It means, “I don’t care who you are, where you are from, your individuality or your dignity. You are here to help me with my interests.”

More than two decades ago, Malayalis like me smarted under the generic reference. In the year when Tracy Chapman sang “you got a fast car” on behalf of all of us migrating in search of our dreams, my stranger-friend at the R.K. Puram bus stop and I had moved into an unknown land for employment. We hadn’t gone to Delhi in a fast car, but had taken the Kerala Express. Far removed from a fast car, a scooter was our near-term aspiration.

Flash forward to today, and I hear an equally disparaging expression being used, this time in Kerala. “Awan Bengaliya” (he is a Bengali) is a term that I hear being used in Kerala all the time. Again, the term Bengali here is as potent as the Madrasi in terms of its geographic reach. Perhaps more. It covers anybody from Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Bihar, the seven states of the north-east and maybe even Bangladesh.

These young men and women have got into trains and moved to lands with unknown people, language and food habits to chase their dreams of employment. They work hard, live simple lives in shared accommodation and send home as much money as possible. They run the Kerala economy from bottom up – constructing buildings, manning restaurants and private security services.

They are finding ways to make themselves comfortable in the new land. Recently, in a wayside restaurant the young man spoke with me in Malayalam without hesitation. “Midukkan” (smart boy) was my surprised compliment. Malayalam is not an easy language to learn. And to be able to converse in it with reasonable confidence requires far more than an average effort.

They are here, but not here in the Kerala society. Everybody is aware of their presence, but prefer to look through them. Interestingly, this is being perpetuated by the very Keralites who are at the receiving end of similar treatment in the emirates such as Dubai. Much of the workforce that migrates from India (or for that matter Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh or the Philippines) in the Gulf countries is treated as invisible part of the society. Theirs is to work and not be seen. And certainly not be heard. 

The tragedy is when a similar behaviour is perpetuated within the country – among fellow countrymen and women. As long as you and I see somebody from a different part of the country – from a village or town as real as ours – as a generically-labelled Bengali or Madrasi, we are abetting crimes of discrimination. We cannot then be outraged on social media over attacks on taxi drivers in Mumbai or on students from the north-eastern states in New Delhi.

Greener than we care to know

One evening on my street in Cotonou, Benin, I found four children playing under a table. The boy was pouting "brrruuuu", turning an imaginary steering wheel and shifting imaginary gears. The girls were passengers. 

The scene was similar, though a generation and a continent away. I have taken turns to be the driver and the passenger in imaginary cars in my childhood. I have had cordial as well as quarrelsome companions during my imaginary rides.

My primary ambition those days was to become a bus driver. It filled me with power thinking about it. On bus rides I would sit as close to the driver as possible, and keep his actions under constant surveillance. Back home I imitated his body language - reaching out with the left hand to shift gears or stretching with the right to press the bulb horn outside the door. I used to be particularly impressed with the power that his high position on the road gave him; he could look down at other erring motorists and shout.

My father worked with the then undivided Madhya Pradesh Government, and travel to Kerala on holidays involved long train rides. Steam engines had rhythm in their voice. In the early 1970s, in Bhilai steel township we could hear the engine coasting into the station over the sound of neighborhood gossip. The pistons clunked to a stop when the driver shut off steam. Clunk, clunk, clunk.

However, the diesel engine drivers impressed me more than their sweaty, black-with-soot, bandana-headed counterparts in the steam engines. Electric engines, which I saw only when we came close to Madras Central, were too quiet and smooth for my imagination. The diesel engine drivers were a picture of authority as the train came into the station, one hand on the window and other on the bright-blue control panel. The diesel engines embodied power, even when idling, when the silence was interspersed with ghud-ghud-ghud of turning motors.

I did not know, then, that more than the "authority" that a young boy saw in these occupations, these men did an environment-friendly job, transporting more humans and material spending minimal resource.

Imagine a long-haul train from Chennai to New Delhi - 25 coaches with 70 passengers on an average in each coach would mean transporting 1,750 men/women/children with one engine. There is one mouth to feed with fuel and one exhaust to take care of, i.e. if we assume that it is a diesel engine that is pulling the rakes. Since most of the main lines are electrified in India, the power to pull the train comes from a grid originating from a centralized power plant, thereby making it easier to deal with the exhaust.

We Indians take our rail and train network for granted. There may not be a man or woman of my generation who hasn't played train with friends in childhood – koo-chuk-chuk. Steam engines were mostly eased out by the time my son was growing up, but I did see him and friends snaking their way through our apartments. However, what we take for granted as a convenient and affordable means to move from point A to point B in our country does not exist as an option in many other parts of the world.

The rail line between Lome and Kpalime

in Togo disappears into the bush

Though the colonial masters laid the initial foundation for the rail network, Independent India systematically worked to strengthen and expand the infrastructure. In the past 30 months, I have lived in and traveled through four countries in West Africa. These countries too had gone through a colonial past – three under the French and one under the British. They too have had a few rail lines developed during the colonial period. The colonial motive was the same as in India – the railways were primarily designed for moving resources and troops that could be used for moving ordinary people. However, unlike in India, the rail system has not grown in these countries post-Independence.

Connecting urban centers and even villages with each other with a rail network is no more a challenge in India. The challenge is to see how the railways can be used to transport people within cities.

With the exception of Chandigarh, Lutyens Delhi and industrial townships such as Bhilai, most of the urban centers in India have grown organically from villages or cluster of villages. Laying rail lines through these unplanned urban centers and running trains through them is not an easy task – not only as an engineering exercise, but also as a political decision.

Trains for intra-city transport have the greatest advantage that any commuter can ask for in a city. They travel through secured passages and thereby have control over their running times.

During his three-year study in a college in Tambaram outside Chennai, my son knew exactly how many minutes his train travel from Kodambakkam would take. What he could never judge was the time needed to drive a scooter from Virugambakkam to Kodambakkam to catch the train. And since he knew there were trains every five minutes, it was something like stepping onto a conveyor belt at Kodambakkam and getting off at Tambaram.

Mumbai grew because of its suburban trains. So did the urban corridor between Guindy and Tambaram in Chennai. People bought property, built homes and offices along the rail corridors. The reverse challenge today is to create rail lines and run trains through areas where people have built homes and offices.

Delhi has done well with its Metro. Even in the late 1980s, a bus ride from Janakpuri to the Inter-State Bus Terminal would have taken hours. Today that travel time by Metro can be counted in minutes. Bengaluru took its first baby step recently. Kolkata, of course, prided itself for its Metro network since the 1980s.

Economic mobility in India has happened in the past two decades. Even as late as mid-1990s, there were not many families in the cities that owned cars. For most members of the generation that started their employment with the IT boom, a car (A-, B- or C-segment) has become their personal vehicle.

There is a historic and generational resistance against giving up the convenience of driving your car downtown. So if these young men and women are opting to take the metro or the suburban train, it means that they find it reliable, convenient and affordable; also environment friendly, though the commuter may not necessarily know it. The process has begun.