Many Mini Indias

It is a known fact that traveling is an intrinsic aspect of a salesman's life. Prior to the sales travels or travails (depending on your preferences), i had never considered India as a place of places. It was a given that this is my country, my nation. But did i know it? I had grown up in  Lucknow, traveled to Delhi on occasions to meet "not so happy to receive relatives", hardly studied in Roorkee and seen a bit of Bombay. Train journeys, back and forth from university, had taken me through small stations and junctions but they just came across as strange names, such as Laksar, at that time.

It was when i traveled on the job, for meeting clients or would be clients or would not be clients, that i really discovered some of the smaller Indias. The many mini Indias of Khetri, Mandhar, Lalkuan, Durg, Beawar, Bhilai, Modipuram, Renukoot, et al, presented a completely different and compelling view of India. People were always approachable. I never got robbed or shouted at. Dust was omnipresent. You never felt like bargaining probably because you never felt that anybody would try to cheat you. No two places were similar, each had its own cultural nuance, own dialect. It would be next to impossible to find an English newspaper or magazine. Electricity was generally not available nor promised, and airconditioning was a rarity (if available, proudly advertised as such). You could walk long distances out of duress or otherwise, and be happy about it. You would not fall ill just because mineral water was never offered.

One of my journeys took me to Mandhar. It will be fair to assume that 0.001% of India's people would have ever heard of it. The journey from Delhi, my base station, vide train took several days before i reached Raipur, at that time a part of the drier than dead leaves' state of Madhya Pradesh. From Raipur it was another hour and half journey, by a combination of cycle rickshaws and tempos. The new generation possibly would not know or imagine what i mean by tempo. It's a piggish looking, longish vehicle which chugs along noisily but proudly, bellowing black smoke furiously, coloured black with a little yellow, having a capacity of 7-8 people. It was another matter, that it would or could never move without at least 12 "sawaris". Nobody was in a hurry anyways and beedis came cheap. Over the 35 days i spent there, i got used to it and even started to enjoy. Also, one must remember that its one of the hottest places in the country (i had decided to be there in peak summer) although after a few days, it did not seem to affect. I felt free.

I was visiting a cement plant for the first time in my life. It was an amazingly beautiful sight that awaited me -  a huge and long rotary kiln, gyrating on an inclined axis. It was a manmade marvel to my young and impressionable mind. Most of my working hours were spent two and a half storeys above ground, trying to rectify one of our supplied equipment, the end objective being to ensure that what the chimney lets out is not black but white.

The overall Mandhar experience, almost decades old, is still quite fresh in my mind. My India has its centres of opportunities (read money making) in metros and bigger towns, but the many mini Indias are in many ways a reminder of how to live life simply.