Lessons from the Taj Express

“In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.”

-       Phillip Gilbert Hamilton (American author)

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Moist blackness, staring out through bars dirty, paint peeling; widows.  Rhythmic rocking accentuated with metal over imperfect metal punctuated by arrhythmic rattles.

Doppler harbinger suddenly swooshes one long continuous horizontal light window as a passing train sucks by then disappears with two red glowing orbs vanishing into more moist blackness leaving behind a horizon of distant twinkling lights that fall in and out of the black hole of trees.

9pm Monday evening Taj Express from Mathura to Delhi is standing room only.  A black greasy ceiling fan intermittently whirls invisible caresses of hot malodorous humid air upon us.

Chai wallahs snake through the isles: a legless beggar drags by with eyes at seat level, out stretched free hand cups several paises, beckoning for more.  An elegantly sari-clad women leans across my space and in very practiced English says, “Excuse me” and tosses an empty chip bag into the rushing void outside…

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When the train had pulled into the station at Mathura, I clamored from the cold damp cement floor with the rising masses preparing to be alternated swept and then push-and-shove into the coach already packed with people spilling out.  I was stopped dumbfounded in my tracks by a man at the entrance who hesitated, and with a swoop of his hand, bid me enter the train before he stepped out.

This gentle step out of his cultural norm signaled to me that he understood and acknowledged mine.  I was not part of the collective Indian society, nor could I successfully act the part.  Doing so only made me look arrogant and ugly. Accepting the foibles and follies of your own family are one thing, but often are not looked upon favorably when an outsider tries the same thing.  Such encounters with their subsequent tweaks of consciousness are a welcome nudge forward in personal knowledge.