Living (in) Encyclopedia of India

by Dipti Jain (India)

Making a local connection India

The thing about things in places you dont live in is that you are looking for words to define how they felt to you. So the thing about Sikkim was that it truly had my back. If a place could hug and offer you a glass of whatever it is that you like a glass of, that place would be Sikkim. Its nice old person always wanting have people over, to entertain them and to look/ be looked after. While my travel to this land was nothing but a series of stories, it is my journey here that prepared me to see what I was in for. IRCTC, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, is an introduction to authentic India. A map comprehensible only to its makers, tries to simplify an overly complicated network of railway systems and track that connect the Himalayas in the North to the Indian Ocean in the South and Thar desert in the West to the magical Himalayan Forests in the East. This is the Living Encyclopedia of India, simply because you don't meet one type of person. You meet a confusing array of extremely different people talking in different languages all the while passing through cities, towns and village of India. My train from Chennai would take me to Kolkata from where I would catch a bus to Sikkim. The journey from Chennai to Kolkata would take two days to complete and it gave me plenty of time to finish a book I had been wanting to read. However, on seeing a a family of four enter my compartment all thoughts of completing my book vanished. The family consisted do of a young mother and three little daughters. The mother was a tactful mixture of kind and sharp. How do I know this? While the kids were fun, funny and vivacious they were extremely well behaved. Now, how do I know would that? I was able to complete my book. I became friends with the family though. The kids did the most peculiar things and came up with all sorts of elaborate and ridiculous entertainment for their mother. One of them was to plate the left over food they carried with them and garnish it with salt and sugar. Except the salt was really detergent. The other was to make an impromptu swing from one seat to another. The family was going to visit their mother's parents in Sikkim. They kids were looking forward to swim and the mother looking forward to rest. She had already started on that matter though. It seemed like she was catching up an entire years worth of sleep because she napped through most of the train ride. That surprised me a little. Because in this day and age most parents are extremely vigilant when it comes to watching over their kids. However, I soon came to know why. While the mother napped, the children were confined to do whatever it is they wanted to do in the compartment. They were careful not be loud and wake their mother. While she was awake, they would parade the entirety of the railway block stopping to chat with random strangers while the mother sat on the edge of her seat watching them. This seemed to be carefully executed intricate routine that had takes years of practice. On the rare occasion that the mother was not napping, she and I would have the famous IRCTC tea. I learnt that the family cam from an extremely humble home but the mother was a fierce feminist when it came to her daughters. Not so much for herself though. On the last day, the mother laid out papers on the seat (so as to not dirty the seat during meal times, she did this for all the meals) and took out four neatly packed boxes of food. The family ate, and just as they were winding up, the youngest daughter flung out her neat little box and spoon out the window. The mother visibly irritated asked her why she did that. And the little, little kid replied ever so nonchalantly, 'the world is my cupboard Ma, the tiffin will be back when you need it'.