he only alternative to co-existence is co-destruction."
- Jawaharlal Nehru

This quote from India's first Prime Minster is inscribed somewhere on Platform No 1 of the Kharagpur railway station (which, for the uninitiated, has the world's longest railway platforms).

And on this platform, for the first time, I had coffee in a kulhad (a mud cup).

My surprise knew no bounds as I asked the shopkeeper, "Yeh kab se shuru hua (When did this start)?"

He cryptically remarked, "Sahab, yeh Lalu raj hai (This is Lalu's reign)," -- saying a few words and leaving a lot unsaid.

Here is a country of contradictions if ever there was one. I find them all along my 24-hour journey from Hyderabad to Kharagpur on my way to Ranchi.

Rail journeys have all the disadvantages of air travel and none of its advantages. But rail journeys build memory, lead to events that makes one smile many years down the line.

Rail journeys help see this country of ours. The sunrises and the sunsets. The greenery that our cities have lost in the midst of concrete that we all live in. The buffaloes bathing in small lakes. The mud huts. The emaciated cows on the fields and the equally emaciated farmers, sans clothes. The paddy fields with the wind blowing hard at them. The kids squatting in a line in line with the railway line for their morning duties, staring in awe at the train they look at daily and waving to indifferent passengers.

I had boarded the Falaknuma Express from Secunderabad at 1740 hours the previous evening.

In these days of Re 1 fares of low cost airlines, I still have a thing for traveling second class on the Indian Railways.

And, as usual, I was looking forward to the experience. An experience that would rattle me in its own way and make me aware of all that is not right with my country.

I was looking forward to the asphyxiating heat during the day as the train would pass through the state of Orissa. It is the kind of heat which, through the nose, goes into the head and gives a feeling that the head might burst any moment. And if you have the upper berth, you have really had it.

Right across me was a woman travelling with her two teenaged sons who, from the way they behaved, made me believe that they had not got AC tickets, and so had to travel second class sleeper.

I thought -- for once -- I was lucky with no crying babies in my coupe (one of the recurring things that happen to me whenever I travel). But the brothers with their fights in American accents more than made up for it.

On my right was a guy travelling with two cell phones. One was really hi-tech camera phone and the other was a Reliance [Get Quote] India Mobile. The hi-tech phone was used for receiving official calls and the RIM to get romantic with his girlfriend Yes, I am guilty of over hearing. But then like most of the Indian males he was very loud on the phone.

The train started on time. No sooner had it left the station, the first pantry wallah appeared. In the good old days, Indian Railways used to have its own pantry. Now, the pantry is usually outsourced to a contractor.

Once, people used to wait for stations to come to fill up their water bottles or carry huge flasks with ice cold water inside it or even go to the extent of travelling with a surhai. I remember travelling like this with my parents more than once.

Now, one gets cold bottled water for Rs 10 with the pantry guy crossing the coupe (a second-class sleeper compartment is made up of nine coupes with eight berths in each coupe), every five minutes.

It might be an entirely different issue that, at times, he is trying to sell you a substandard brand and not the 'Nitish Kumar' launched Rail Neer.

Similarly, dip tea and coffee (usually their diluted version) are also available. New additions to the list include tomato soup before meals, hot milk after meals and sweet lassi in the late evenings.

Eatables of various forms are also served. From vegetable noodles to hot samosas to Chilly Chicken. Meals are also available in various forms. There is a lot more choice as far as the menu of Indian Railways is concerned than there was a decade ago.

Lest it make us conclude that travelling in Indian Railways is easier in comparison to the past, the state of the railways reflects the state of the country.

Indian Railways has more people piggy-backing on it than ever before. Every few minutes, a beggar comes begging for small change. Most beggars tend to be old or people with some deformity. You have weak old women begging, and young boys taking out their shirts and trying to clean up the filth that the passengers manage to create and coming back to beg for a rupee or two.

By giving them small change, you might be encouraging begging. But one look at them and you know there is no other way they would be able to make a living. What is one expected to do in such situations? And by the time the journey is to end, so many of them have passed by that you are completely indifferent to their presence.

Then there are the bottle collectors regularly doing the rounds of compartments. They are on the lookout for empty plastic bottles. The labels of goods brands of bottled water clearly mention, Please crush this bottle after use.

Even so, travellers hand over these bottles happily instead of crushing them. These plastic bottles once collected are filled with tap water, sealed and labelled. They then find their way back into the market. So the next time you have an unknown brand of bottled water, do remember this.

"Ae chikne, chal dus rupaiya idhar kar (Hey handsome, hand over ten bucks)!"

The moment you hear claps in the background, you know they are there. The biggest piggy-backers are the eunuchs (hijras, in colloquial terms). They frequent compartments demanding money from passengers.

They are not satisfied if you give them anything less than ten rupees. Women and children are also not spared. If you do not pay them, be ready for a round of choicest abuses in their native language. If they are the really persisting type, they might even lift their saris.

Earlier, they used to get into second-class compartments only. Now, since nobody really takes them on, they have been getting into AC compartments as well.

The story goes that most of them are males dressed as eunuchs trying to make a quick buck. But how does one figure out whether they are the real thing?

Then you have the illegal hawkers trying to compete with pantry wallahs, else selling local snacks -- from Jhaal Moori in West Bengal and Bihar, to Vada Pav in Maharashtra and  Mirchi Bhajji in Andhra Pradesh.

They add to the experience of travelling on the Indian Railways.

And what is a rail journey without 'timepass'? That's what peanuts are referred to. And these hawkers sell them. Travellers really enjoy this timepass, but end up creating a whole lot of filth on the floor.

Tu kissi rail si guzarti hai,
Main kissi pul sa thurthurata hoon.

- Dushyant Kumar

(You pass like a train,
I shudder like a bridge)

Every time the train slowed down while crossing a bridge, it would give me goose bumps. It would remind me of when the Rajdhani Express fell off from a bridge near Gaya, a couple of years ago.

The railway infrastructure is stretched and is creaking. Every year, more and more trains are started and more and more of the older ones meet with accidents.

The railway ministers, over the years, have used the railways as their personal fiefdom, doling out jobs to their supporters and starting more and more trains to their constituencies.

From Abdul Ghani Khan Choudhary to Ram Vilas Paswan to Mamta Banerjee to the present incumbent Laloo Prasad Yadav, each one has been guilty of the same.

The passenger is the last thing on their mind (the fact that second-class travel is subsidised doesn't help).

The coffee in a kulhad syndrome is the symbol of our times. Doing something about nothing, tom-tomming about it and leaving the larger, more complex problems, unaddressed.