Dol Purnima (traditionally celebrated in Santiniketan) or Basant Panchami or Holi was the big event which marked the end of season for Santiniketan till even a few years ago. Because after that, in April and May, it got really hot, in June and July really muggy and August and September really wet. Of course, there have always been those who enjoyed the rain but the numbers were not many.
Since we run a cafe, the daily take is an excellent indicator of tourist traffic and for the last few years, the weather seems to have become irrelevant. AC cars, good roads and the availability of AC hotel rooms have ensured the influx of people from Kolkata even off season.
In sync with this trend of higher traffic, the railways have introduced an additional AC coach from this year in all trains between Kolkata and Santiniketan. All the Bengali gentry (the English-speaking, club-hopping types who earlier filled the seats) now zip down in their cars. So the profile of AC coach passengers has definitely changed. While travelling to and from Kolkata, I now get the same feeling that I do while waiting at airports. There has been a sudden change in gear which has brought in a whole host of people into the travel-in-comfort net. And that is a nice feeling.
Unfortunately many of the new members of this club need to draw attention to their new-found status (much like the new owners of big cars who insist on speeding through the mud tracks of Santiniketan). So more often than not passengers get into the AC coach, drop down their tray tables, place their mobile phones on them and start listening to music. Loud. Strangely these music lovers are oblivious to other co-passengers doing exactly the same thing till the compartment is a cacophony of noise. I often then leave my seat to request all music-loving heroes to put on their ear phones. Many of them do not have one, but the realisation that their nouveau-ness has not included ear phones shames them into switching off their music.
In recent times, however, I have been noticing (despite the additional AC coach) that often a few passengers stand in the aisle between the seats. Initially you think they are waiting to get into their seats or just stretching their legs, but as the number grows with every passing station, you realise that they actually intend to travel this way.
Being ever ready to stand up for my rights, I accost the train ticket-collector (TT) and ask him whether railway rules have changed and whether now one is allowed to stand and travel in the AC compartment. The TT then mumbles something about how they will get off soon or how those standing are all railway workers just travelling short distances. But just this questioning is normally enough to make him ask those who are standing to make themselves scarce and often as I doze back to sleep in my seat I wonder if indeed the TT had collected any money for granting aisle-standing rights.
On a journey early this month I had the same conversation with the TT which resulted in him asking those standing to leave the compartment. They stood huddled in the space between two AC coaches. And then suddenly I realised that the TT had become a durwan. He was standing at the door of the coach and holding it ajar so that those outside could get a bit of the AC blast!
I came home to switch on the TV and caught the railway minister on a phone-in show. A viewer called in to ask Didi how she proposed to tackle the problem of increasing number of passengers travelling in reserved coaches without reservations. She smiled her disarming ma-mati-manush smile and said what pretty much meant that the passengers would need to figure out why they those travelling unreserved are doing so, whether it is because they are in any difficulty and then figure out whether they should speak to the railway police.
Now that the onus is completely on us, it makes my two-and-a-half hour travel a lot of work.
