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Somewhere Between Kalamazoo and New Delhi
by Rajika Bhandari
Excerpts:
I had never heard of the town of Kalamazoo until I got the opportunity to visit Western Michigan University. At the end of the trip, I go to the Kalamazoo Amtrak station to catch a train to Chicago. Small and unassuming, the station could easily be mistaken for an office building. Inside the waiting room, which has an old-world charm spoiled only by the flashy colors of vending machines, I find eight other people waiting for the clerk to arrive at the ticket window. The station is imbued with an almost deathly calm that no hurtling train could shatter.
The ticket clerk opens his window ten minutes before the anticipated arrival of the train. By then, the number of passengers has increased to a mere 12. I purchase my ticket and step outside onto the solitary platform. As I settle on a bench to wait for the train, I am once again surprised by the sterile, deserted atmosphere of the station. It is a very different place from the Indian railway stations of my youth.
I come from a nation where the railway system is a gigantic, intricate web that is fundamental to the conduct of everyday life. Brought to India by the British, the Indian train station has been described as the ocean where all rivers converge and where life begins and ends. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can imagine the sights and textures of an Indian railway station and the acrid odor of thousands of anxious travelers.
As a child, I knew we were approaching the station by the smell of soot, an almost indelible substance that would lodge itself beneath fingernails and in the crevices of the body. As we got closer, the air would become increasingly polluted and difficult to breathe.
The topography, too, begins to change as one nears the station. Fruit and snack hawkers lounge alongside a road lined with sleazy, low-budget motels. Tucked away in a corner is the inevitable low-budget cinema hall screening an obscure porn flick . . .
