A trip on the Maitree

A trip on the Maitree is another of those gems of armchair travel in the Indian Sub Continent.
From the rickety trains that ply through Nepal to the transcontinental rolling stock that thread their way across the inexplicably complex society which makes up this human patchwork quilt of a nation.
The films reveal the cocoon like existence of the employees working on the railways, their job is their life and the railway company a unforgiving taskmaster. The complex public service administration is a hard road to progress upon and there are a hundred just waiting to take your place. Like no other you are married to your work, living on the train or within the station the hours long the heat almost unbearable. The trains serve a public like no other. The simple numbers would set them apart but it's more than the numbers it's the continual struggle to make a living, not a living in the western sense but a daily toil for a few Rupees hardly enough to stay afloat but with the dogged determinism that knowing no other way, they commit themselves each day to more of the same.
The entrepreneurial spirit of selling and bartering every minute of the day, the pressure to offload what ever you sell and make a tiny profit is there constantly as they slip on and off the trains looking for business.
The journey from West Bengal into what was called East Bengal now Bangladesh is a reminder of the relatively recent history of Partition and the separation of Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan with the terrible war that occurred between India and Pakistan over East Bengal.
The boarder into Bangladesh is reminiscent of some of the boarder crossings in Europe during the Cold War. Bureaucracy rules and the delays are interminable as the compliant passengers are herded out of the train with their luggage for some official to pour over their papers as if they were some virus which needed eradicating. There is of course, it's called Politics !
Setting off into Bangladesh after a three hour delay, which will be repeated when the train emerges out into India again, the speed limit is 20 miles an hour. Bangladesh is a poor country and the upkeep of their infrastructure has to be guarded where at all possible.
The train which connects West Bengals capital of Kolkata with Dhaka the capital of Bangladesh runs through the Ganges delta threading it's way through a massive labyrinth of waterways that make up the delta.
The mass migration on the celebration of Eid at the end of Ramadan swells the number of passengers to such an extent that there are as many clinging outside the train and on top of the carriages, as there are inside the train. Heaven only knows how many fall off and die. I suppose no one has bothered with a "risk assessment".
Politics aside, the human touch is what is so intriguing. Millions of people barely making ends meet, 50 million below the poverty line engaging in a life with such stoic perseverance that it makes our own issues in this country seem simply childish.