A saga of different worlds outside and inside a train

Squalid shanties and ‘defecation parades’ along the rail tracks are one of the first views as one’s train rolls into or out of Delhi early morning. And back home in Gurugram we have mounds of garbage piled up along swank avenues in the millennium city. So, I thought I had seen it all.

But I was wrong. What I had not seen yet was the abysmal poverty and utter filth that greets any passenger as Vande Bharat from Chandigarh enters India’s capital. This train avoids the bigger Delhi stations and stops at Delhi Cantt.

A little beyond Samaypur Badli, one of the terminal points for metro yellow line, the train slows down. This is because it has now entered the area which, on the right side of the tracks, is home to migrants from some of the poorest states in India, who saunter or sit all over the tracks at will, stepping aside only when a train from either side comes close. In some stretches, their houses are barely a meter away from the train.

Rather, to call these small huts, built of mud with a plastic sheet for cover or roof, and some bricks stacked on sides for walls, as ‘houses’ would be a travesty. A grown man would find it difficult to stretch or stand up. The ‘roof’ leaks copiously during rains, and the ‘floor’ turns into sludge. There is no protection from the elements in the summer or winter.

Worst still, filthy sewers run alongside and trash is piled all around them. A large number of citizens of the Republic of India live, cook and expend their lives here when not toiling as underpaid daily wagers. There is no question of any of these huts having a toilet. The few women who live there have no option but to do their business in the dark.

And not too far in the background, huge neon signs on high-rise buildings shine bright. We do know how to co-exist!

The sealed train windows protect the olfactory senses of the passengers, who probably wish that the train should speed up.

On my part, after my first journey on this route, I came back with two very disturbing thoughts. One, that it was shame that even after 78 years of Independence, and despite claims of progress all around, a large number of our population still lives in such abject misery.

And worse, if this is what these migrants have come running to, what must they be running away from?

Lalit Mohan, Gurugram