We went out to the platform to catch our train which ended up being 30+minutes delayed. While we waited a pair of starving dogs walked by and one was injured and limping. It was a sad sight. It is best not to be born as an animal in Asia. The dogs were just skin and bones. I wanted to feed the dogs but I didn’t. I think they will manage to find food, it probably won’t be much. In India it’s hard to find scraps of food chucked or wasted. There is always someone else near by who is eyeing your food and will finish it for you as soon as you walk away. There just isn’t enough to go around. Nothing gets wasted here because there just isn’t enough to go around to being with.
Children came by and begged for food and money or anything, they performed for us without our request. These children were no older than 7 years old. Linda and I then began a conversation centered around psychology and sociology. It may be for a 7 year old to not notice where this is leading them. It’s fun now like a game to play with friends and do this but what happened when you grow older. In India you can never shed the identity as a beggar, everyone will treat you as so and remember you to continue to do so. What is gained from this experience for a seven year old other than a momentary moment of fun. It was sad to see.
We got onto our cart and there were men already in our seats. They looked at me while I looked at them and being the Sagittarian Tiger that I am, I pointed my fingers at all these men and then moved my fingers to signal them to move. They did move and make room for us. Finally the stories I heard about traveling in India was showing up in front of my eyes. I used to hear stories about this having a seat ticket but no seat anyways when you get on to the train because there are other people in your seat and they just won’t move and there is nothing you can do about it. They told us that they had a thing called pass and with it they can sit wherever they wanted. These passes have no number. But really I think it’s more like if there are available empty seats then they sit wherever they want but not take over other people’s assigned seats.
Across from us an elderly grandpa sat in the middle where all these young men sat. His hair was all white and so were his beard. He leaned over to the window and he looked troubled. Well, being on a long train ride is like being on a long bus ride, and what do you do to entertain yourself, talk. So I didn’t mind my own business and decided to talk to my neighbors even though there is language barrier, but that wasn’t gonna stop me.
I asked one of the younger man to ask to ask the grandpa how old he was. I learned he was 65 years old. Somehow he looked much older than his age. He looked 15 years older than his age in my opinion. Linda asked if it was safe for us to be riding on the train like this. One of the young man with the brush of his palm sided his shirt and showed us the tip of his dagger and said, “safe, yes safe, we are all safe.” Referring to the fact that everyone is armed so no one is the under dog and if anyone is in trouble, there will be plenty of help around. He meant well and tried to comfort us with sightings of his weapon. I’m not sure how I feel about it all, surrounded by men and surrounded by weapon armed men.
I continued to not mind my own business and probed the grandpa some more. He like most marriages were arranged. And in Sikh tradition you can only have one spouse. He said he didn’t like his wife to begin with but they managed to have 4 children two boys and two girls. Although he didn’t like who he got through the arranged marriage, but he whole heartedly believes in the system of arranged marriage and so all his children were married through that system. It was all quite funny to me. He got so fired up about the topic and went on and did a very old person thing, shoved his belief down everyone’s throat. It got so heated that the young men on the train refused to stand down with the debate. It turned kinda ugly actually as the jokes and humor went away on the topic.
