Day 14, Pune [Monday 17th December 2007]
Previous day: Day 13, Pune [Sunday 16th December 2007]
Next day: Day 15, Pune [Tuesday 18th December 2007]
We go to see the Divisional Reservations Manager to check what's happening with our train ticket.
We have some trouble finding his office. We ask around. We get sent one way. We find the dormitory, with people asleep outside in the corridor on cardboard boxes. We get sent another way. Eventually we find it, a few minutes' walk from the train station. "Ah, you need the new DRM office!" says the man behind the desk. He then sends us on a journey which takes us down an alley parallel to the train tracks, across the tracks themselves, through a building site where men in their underpants are washing themselves with buckets, and finally to an abandoned platform. All the way various characters have seen us coming and waved us on knowingly, so this is obviously standard practice.
But all the while I find it truly astonishing that a country with ambitions to be a world superpower conducts everyday activities like buying a train ticket in such a haphazard, disconnected, nonsensical manner. and all the while we keep telling ourselves that this is India, it's how they do things here etc. Central Railway is the country's largest employer. We speak to one man. He dismisses us, saying he has no quota. We ask again. He tells us we need to speak to Mr Mishra. Mr Mishra is busy. We take a seat. This goes on for some time. Again we are told there is no quota for this train. Frankly I don't know what a quota is, or what it's for. But I don't want a quota, I just want two train tickets to Goa. Please.
By a stroke of luck the Chief Ticket Inspector happens into the office. He takes one look at the crowd of 8 or so people around us, takes a look at the tickets, says something in Hindi to the effect of "no problem" and suddenly everything is okay. We get a telephone number to call to check where we are on the waiting list tomorrow. If we don't get tickets we are to go and see the Chief and he'll sort us out. Hurrah! I think.
They try to blame their appalling system on what they inherited from the British. 150 years ago.
We try to upload some photos to Flickr but the connection is so slow we only get a few done before giving up. We'll urn a CD and send it home instead.
We go the the Gandhi National Memorial, the other side of Kalgaon Park. It's an amazing building, also known as the Aga Khan's Palace. Even more amazingly, they imprisoned Gandhi, his wife Kasturba and his secretary Mahadev Desai here. There's no information about anyone else who may have been interned here, or if such an impressive location was chosen to reflect the status of its impressive guests. It's a dignified memorial - quiet, tidy, sedate. All three have some of their ashes kept here.
We stop for bhelpuri on the way home. It's the single, most inefficient snack for a vendor to prepare and sell. It must be made to order as it goes soggy very quickly, and it has about 20 ingredients, depending who's making it - a pinch of this, a sprinkle of that, a dollop of something else. It's a marvel to watch them make it, and the smooth, repetitive actions become hypnotic.
Today we spent Rs. 735.
Next day: Day 15, Pune [Tuesday 18th December 2007]
Previous day: Day 13, Pune [Sunday 16th December 2007]