INDIA part I. "South To Cape Cormorin"

It never occurred to me that I had any insight into India. I worked here for 3-4 years, ten years ago, and so much has changed since then. Nothing stands still. Politics change, cities are rebuilt and people die. The world moves on. The expericences I had a decade and a half ago would be irrellevant in todays new world.

And then there is India. Great, glorious, corrupt, democratic India. An amorphous and diverse mass of humanity, mountains, beaches and fields. Feeding more than a billion people, projecting force around the Indian Ocean, and yet still reliant on its poorest peasant farmers for the basics of life. A land where buildings shoot up faster than Dubai, people are massacred for their faith, and a land where nothing real has changed. The system may be slightly easier, but the system "is there". The India of the 1990's may have been a different place, but my experiences here are as relevant now as they were then.

The ministry of Tourism advertise with the slogan: "Incredible India". For all its faults, the advert does not lie.


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In the 1970’s my friend Rachel Fulton used to live in Qatar, She said that when flying home, she would often get a plane that carried on to India. “The Plane was so chaotic, we used to beg mum and dad to try and get us a flight that terminated in Doha, but Doha was so small that there simply wasn’t enough traffic. Nearly all British Airways flights carried on to India, You could tell, you were going to India when you boarded the plane”

Rachel’s distaste for the Indian flights was familiar to me. I remember sitting on many a Lockheed Tristar that stopped to re-fuel at Bahrain or some gulf location. In my childhood and youth, I flew everything to India. Swiss Air via Zurich, Lufthansa via Frankfurt, British Airways via anywhere, but the longest was Pan Am. London to Frankfurt to Istanbul to Tehran (Sometimes) to Karachi (Sometimes) to Bombay. My favourite was the Lufthansa DC10, with movies, comfortable seats and food in a plastic box. We left Frankfurt late on one occasion because of dog on the runway, the bundespolitzei chased it off with motorbikes. I distinctly remember a middle class Non resident Indian dancing slowly down the aisle pursued by a teutonic air stewardess. He was wearing a bandana around his neck, a cigar one hand and glass of whiskey in the other. Clearly worried about his first arrival in India in many years he was singing “where I go, I do not know…”

Bombay is no longer the only gateway to India. International flights serve a dozen Indian Airports. Even if the destination of the plane was not announced by the aircrew, the average traveller should be able to could guess where the plane was going purely by its passengers. And so two decades after my friends had left Doha, I found myself sitting on the tarmac in Doha watching the passengers board. Most of them were youngish men from Kerala, dressed smartly in check shirts and creased trousers. They looked a little stressed, and many carried chits with them for their oversized hand luggage that had been taken off them at the air stairs. These men were the builders of the Arab Gulf States. Without them, shops would not open in Dubai, high-rise towers would remain plans in Doha, and hospitals would be shut in Saudi Arabia. These men, looked down upon by their hosts and expatriates alike, were the backbone of the Arabian Gulf. I smiled at them as they boarded, for even the parking mat that we sat on, was probably laid by them. North Indians prepared the aircraft for departure, and signed off to the Spanish Pilot and Arab first officer, the Chinese purser closed the door and told us all to strap in.

The Qatar Airways A321 took off heavy. It was carrying a near full load of people and the possessions that a man could accumulate in two years. For many of the guest workers in the plane were going home on leave for the first time in 2-5 years. My newspaper told me that some of them would be going home for good. As the world economic crisis hits the Arabian Gulf, construction stops and Indians are sent home, with their pay if they are lucky.

The Aircraft battered its way through storms in the bay of Bengal. Indian Air Traffic Control had allocated us a 31,000 ft corridor. 10,000ft lower than the operational ceiling of our airbus, but this was India, and precedence always went to the National Airlines. As we thumped our way through the clouds, the Keralans sat quietly, watching a film in Malyalam and causing no trouble. This was a far cry from the rowdy flights to Bombay of my childhood. I declined dinner, put my seat back and snoozed until we were circling Trivandrum. Palm trees flashed in the landing lights, we crossed the perimeter wall and landed solidly with a normal degree of reverse thrust. Upon disembarking, we felt the humidity and heat even at four in the morning. The plane was surrounded by armed constables of the Central Industrial Security Force, a union police force with long heavy 1950 era automatic rifles. Strangely, they were looking in at us, and not out at a threat.

Trivandrum is a sleepy city which goes about its own business in its own way. There are very few foreigners in town and we are generally ignored. The city has a fort at the east end with a large temple and a small museum full of Hindu statues. The temple is closed to non Hindus and the museum is utterly boring except for its architecture. The railway station is an imposing British building built out of grey granite.

But Trivandrum has charm and is pleasant. When not on the outside of a temple, or seating profusely, we spent our time, recharging local sim cards and administration, drawing rupees and writing. Our one adventure was to buy a train ticket to Cape Cormorin. This involved taking a ticket in an air-conditioned room, and waiting 15 minutes. Then our turn to Q up cam up. And we diligently Qed up. Three people went before us, and a nice lady in Sari greeted us and asked for our form. We had duly filled in our request form which went something like this:

Name: M.
Sex: Male
Medical Doctor (you can help in emergency) : NO
Concession: No
Senior citizen: no
Train no: 6832
From: Trivandrum
To: Kanakumari
Date: 29
Veg: no

The lady then told me that only 3rd class ac was available. When I asked about seats she looked at me and said
“where do you want to go?’
“Kanakumari” I said using the new Indian Name for Cape Cormorin
The woman looked at me and started nattering in Malyalam at her comrade. Not wanting to miss this opportunity to get a train ticket I whipped the form from her and drew a map of India in 4 seconds and marked the cape and said “Here”
“Oh, “ she replied “ You mean cape KanYAkumari”
“Yes” I said, not noticing the subtle tonal difference.
“Wrong train” She said pushing my form back at me.
“What do you mean? I checked it”
“6832 is UP to Bombay. You want 6831”
“Fine fine, please see if I can have a seat?”
“First fill in form correctly” She stared at me. So I rapidly changed the one digit and smiled as I passed it back.
“Write 2 A/C” and she pushed the form back for me to amend the class.
At this stage Cisca started to giggle.
“For fucks sake don’t laugh, this is deadly serious. If she gets the arse, we’ll be in 3rd class to Jabalpor!”
Cisca knew where Jabalpor was and kept a very straight face with a big effort. Eventually when every field was filled in correctly including our address and ages and signatures, our form was endorsed and two berths issued to us. I smiled and paid and smiled again and we walked out of the office. Above us were the railway offices. Each door had a slogan daubed on top of it. One read: “Signals are sentinels when obeyeyed and satans when ignored”

“Vigilance prevents fear. Fear brings more fears”

The next morning, we found ourselves on the platform waiting for the Bombay to Cormorin express. The station staff were exceptionally helpful. The Kerala Railway Protection Force constable spoke English, knew which platform the train was coming in. When a platform change was announced, the porters took our bags long before we knew about it. The atmosphere on a Kerala Railway platform was so different to the ignorant, aggressive Hindi of the north. People wanted to help, and knowing that most people did not speak Malyalam, many Keralans had learned English to a greater or lesser degree.

After two days on the rails I expected the train to be anything up to two hours late. In 1992 when I had first started taking long distance trains on my own, backpackers calculated that an Indian train, rather like a bad watch, usually lost an hour a day. So I was rather surprised when, with a squeal of brakes, a huge American locomotive arrested the 20 carriage train, only ten minutes late.

Second class A/C is really a form of first class. I dislike the A/C and the brown windows that do not allow for photography, but I appreciate the slightly greater space offered by the open compartments. So I often spend hours by the permanently open doors, looking out at India sliding past. Here I met the Bombay Doctor From Tennessee.

Dressed in Scrubs and a baseball cap for the train tide, he was on a tour of Kerala with his wife and a group of other Indians. He had left Bombay after doing a medical degree and had moved to Tennessee. He had a curious American accent that was 90% southern and 10% Bombay. He was a nice enough chap, but he and his group insisted on speaking to all the Kerala Railway workers in Hindi. Some of them did not understand what he was saying.
“You know India needs a unifying language” He said to me.
“Of course, it should be English” I replied automatically. I thought, logically that this was a non confrontational language that also made Indians employable throughout the world.
“No, it needs to be Hindi,” he went on “English is not in these guys culture.”
“Nor is Hindi” I replied tartly. “I think you’ll find that Tamil and Malyalam culture has been around for a bit longer than Hindi. I think you’ll find the Hindisaation of India merely degrades people’s education. People who would have spoken Hindi and English now only speak Hindi.”
“Yeah, but that’s like the Hispanics in America. You gotta get with the program, if you want to be Indian, you gotta speak Hindi”
“So you’re saying that Hindi is the only language for India”
“Sure”
“I respectfully disagree entirely” I smiled at the man, trying not to say something rude about North Indian arrogance. He was simultaneously insulting, the entirety of South and west India. While every democratic country in the world leans towards embracing diversity, the most diverse nation in the world leans towards linguistic fascism. Being a proud (but very bad) speaker of Hindi, I can say these things quite righteously. Indeed, we Hindi speakers should be learning Tamil, an ancient language full of poetry.

By the time the good doctor had expounded his right wing views, the train had stopped at Nagercoil Junction, been cancelled, and then as I packed up my stuff, it was recommissioned by the powers that be, and we were on our way again. Fifteen minutes later, the Bombay Express huffed up the minor incline to platform number one at Cape Cormorin. The Doctor and his group all said goodbye pleasantly enough and headed off to their tour bus. We shouldered our bags, walked up the station, out of the small ticket hall and into the burning sun. In front of us was the sea, and all around were low clean white houses.

We had arrived at a destination that I had dreamed about for 20 years, Cape Cormorin, the southernmost point of the Indian Subcontinent.

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