Bhopal-Sanchi: 20 Years Later

 

The last time I visited Bhopal was during my JICA days, in the early 2000s. My projects were far fron the city, in Sagar, Damoh and Tikamgarh districts. This meant my usual hotel  - Jehan Numa Palace - was only a stopover for rest and recuperation from the long road journeys. 

During those days I remember visiting the usual touristy places in the city - the newly built Bharat Bhavan, the lovely Van Vihar zoo along the banks of the Upper Lake, and, of course, a drive across the Tropic of Cancer to Sanchi and Vidisha, on my way to the northern districts. It was a nice but sleepy city - not a place one would like to visit often.

This time, two decades later - I saw a city that had been transformed.  More lakes, better infrastructure, and a more happening place. The area around the lakes have been beautifully developed with gardens, boating-clubs, lovely roads snaking along the banks. The old city is of course crowded and dirty as it used to be, but the rest of the city looks cleaner and nicer with its new roads, gardens, flyovers, malls, a new airport, and many lovely museums!

Reaching there was a breeze. Thanks to the uncertainties of air-travel in winters (and the recent Indigo cancellation-fiasco), we took an overnight train  (Dakshin Express) from Nizamuddin to Bhopal. The highlight of this trip was the seemingly miraculous recovery of an iPad which we had forgotten under one of the pillows. We realised the loss about an hour later after we had tucked in lots of poha-jalebi and chana-batura from the famous Manohar Dairy & Restaurant. Through the cries of despair and loss (the tab had four years of BTech notes), we connected with the Indian Railway helpline (139) and the new RailSewa app.

Amazingly there was a follow-up call from the Railway Police within a few minutes and the iPad was found and handed over to officers at the next station, Itarsi, which was about a 100km from Bhopal. By evening the tab and its teary, grateful owner were happily united! :)

Now that a potential kill-joy had been averted, we were able to immerse ourselves in the sights, sounds and wonders of Bhopal and the ancient lands along the Betwa river.

Museums

The new Tribal Museum is no doubt the best thematic museum  have seen in India. The main building itself is beautifully designed around a central amphitheatre, with every wall, hallway, nook and corner lovingly decorated with various  tribal art forms. One of these hallways leads you to a cluster of "tribal houses" that tell you how each of the major tribes in MP designed their living spaces using mostly mud but also in locally available sandstones. As our luck would have it we were visiting on a Sunday when the whole building was live with rhythms and songs of different tribal groups performing in the central amphitheatre.

On weekends the museum canteen (again the prettiest i have seen) serves thali's from each region. I treated myself to a wholesome missi-roti thali which came with a jackfruit (katthal) curry, a kadi, saag and pickles followed by a plate of mahua-jalebis - Delicious!

Sanchi Stupa

Sanchi is on the banks of the Betwa river. As you go downstream and north-eastwards, it meets the Halali river at Vidisha. On the narrow strip of land between these two rivers is the white sandstone hillock of Udaigiri.

Further north-east the Betwa marks the border between Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, and feeds two large reservoirs created by two dams - the Rajghat Dam Reservoir, and the Matiala Dam. From here the river broadens out and flows past the historic cities of Orchha (near Jhansi) for about 300km before it joins the Yamuna river at Merapur Dariya (UP)

Two decades ago, Sanchi was a lonely hill next to a small village with the railway line running in the the distance. There were hardly any hotels to stay and the famous stupa hd just a few disinterested staff at the ticket-counter. There were hardly any signboards and you could walk around wherever you wanted. I remember sitting next to the beautifully carved pillars of Stupa-2 (200m downhill from the main stupa) and watching the trains snake around the hills on the plains below.

Now the whole place was super-crowded. Busloads of schoolchildren, tourists from all over India, and a few foreigners. What a contrast from my visit about two decades ago when this holy site had only a few Indian tourists, some pilgrims from Southeast Asia and lots of visitors from Europe and USA. 

UDAIGIRI CAVE TEMPLES

This first thing I noticed here was a beautifyl white-trunked tree clings to the steep rockface over the main entrance to Udaigiri caves. The guards told me that this was the Kulu Vruksh (Sterculia urens). It is also called Bhutya - the Ghost Tree - because that is exactly what it looks like on moonlit nights!

Udaigiri is home to one of the oldest surviving Hindu temples with the earliest known sculptures of Ganesha and Mahishasura-Mardini. For all its fame this site seemed poorly designed and maintained. You approach Udaigiri from the south on a narrow road separating the hills from the village. The parking lot and ticketing office is at the far end, and from here you need to walk back along the same road (this time inside the fence) on an uneven footpath to see the cave temples and sculptures. 

The most beautiful Varaha-Bhudevi sculpture is on a cave wall that is just about two meters from the boundary wall. On top of this space constraint you have a thick wooden barricade that prevents you from taking in the full view of the magnificent panel. As if this were not bad enough ASI has also blocked the view to the oldest Anantashayana sculpture with a wall of plastic venyl that is so dirty that you can barely see the sculpture behind it.

BHIMBETKA

This place is surreal. On the walls of caves carved by the elements millions of years ago you have an entire complex of rock niches and shelters that served as home to people who lived 12,000 years onwards!

BHOJRAJ TEMPLE

A massive, incomplete temple that stands next to what was once the largest lake in central India. What a sight it must have been in those days! 

The present temple is the result of a great renovation effort by the ASI. It seems when the temple was originally found, the roof had collapsed and split the massive Shivalinga. The roof was subsequently reconstructed albeit partially.

Why did Hoshang Shah destroy the Bhojpur dam in the 1400s?

REFERENCES -------------

. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoshang_Shah

. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabandha-Chintamani -- Sanskrit-language collection of prabandhas (semi-historical biographical narratives). It was compiled in c. 1304 CE, in the Vaghela kingdom of present-day Gujarat, by Jain scholar Merutunga

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhojpur,_Madhya_Pradesh

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihira_Bhoja - Mihira Bhoja's epithet was Srimad-Adivaraha (the fortunate primeval boar incarnation of Vishnu) -- adivaraha dramma billon coins

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teli_ka_Mandir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterculia_urens

Under the Shadow of Covid: Train Journeys Across India

Paravur Kayal (lagoon), Kerala

Has the Covid Pandemic changed the way Indians travel? What has been the impact of the cascade of lockdowns  imposed across the country since March 2020?

An opportunity to seek answers to these questions presented itself a few weeks ago. A bunch of old friends had planned a get-together in Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu and it had been nearly two years since I met my folks in Kerala. So at short notice, I decided to travel across the country to these two states in the cheapest way possible: Second-Class Sleeper on the Indian Railways.

Thanks to the pandemic and the lockdowns that came with it I had grown nostalgic about the magic of unhurried traveling. The joy of settling down with a nice book on a long train journey, of watching the shifting landscapes float by, feeling the rush of wind through the open windows and the occasional explosive rush of a passing train, tasting different foods (and drinking the awful tea!) along the way; the chance to meet and travel with all sorts of different people... just about everything that seemed the opposite end of a lockdown spectrum :)

My two-week itinerary was fairly simple - a 2400km train ride to Bangalore (Train 06528), to be picked up by friends for a drive across the border from Karnataka to Krishnagiri district in Tamil Nadu. A couple of days later, another longer road trip to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, a week with the family, and finally,  the 3040km long rail journey (Train 02625) back to Delhi. 

Two train journeys ~ 5,500 km

Traveling under the shadow of an impending "third wave" of the pandemic, I had expected to see a lot of restrictions along the way. Sure enough, railway stations along the route were a lot less crowded than usual. This may have been because access to the platforms is now tightly controlled, visitors are no longer issued "platform tickets", nearly all hawkers were in designated uniforms and everybody was wearing a face-mask, at least to avoid getting penalised. 

However once the train rolled out of the platform in New Delhi, ticket examiners were not checking to see if passengers had been vaccinated. Hygiene and safety standards had improved though - cleaning of the coaches and mopping with disinfectants was more frequent, a couple of armed police officers patrolled up and down the trains, reminding everybody to keep the doors closed and even warning us to down the shutters and stay away from the windows at a place in Maharashtra because "children pelt stones in this area!".

All along the journey across multiple states, only at one station did RTPCR test results become an issue. At Bangalore Cantonment as soon as passengers disembarked, all of us were lined up for a quick health-check: 

"Are you coming from outside Karnataka? Where are you going? Do you have an RTPCR negative report? If not, what is your mobile number?"

Straight, simple questions. I had not taken an RTPCR test 72 hours prior to this journey. For a moment I though they were going to send me off to a week-long quarantine but quickly realised that this was just a precautionary measure. The staff who noted down my mobile number checked with the national database accessed through the CoWIN app. Once it was confirmed that I had taken both shots of the AZ-CovidShield vaccine, my destination details were logged in and swab samples were taken for an RTPCR test. By the time I stepped out of the railway station, a message had come in, reminding me of the precautions to be taken, and within the next 24 hours, I had a digital certificate confirming an RTPCR negative report - all for free! Totally understated, efficient and super impressive.

On both the long distance journeys - from Delhi to Bangalore and from Thiruvanantapuram back to Delhi - one big change was that there were very few people travelling all the way. On the onward trip, most of my co-passengers were migrant workers - mostly travelling from the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to serve factories, malls and the gig economy for sending money back home. There were also a few tech workers - interns or trainees taking up their assignments in Bangalore and discussing the finer points of Java and Python along the way.

The return journey from Kerala was quite different. Most of my travel companions from Kerala got off just across the state border in Coimbatore, an industrial city that attracts a lot of workers and students; those who boarded from Tamil Nadu were again traveling a short distance to Tirupati, a centre for pilgrimage. My coach was practically empty when it passed through the states of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh. 

The fear of Covid had transformed many of the landmark stations along the way. The famous stalls selling fresh fruit juice had disappeared from Vijayawada station; Chilly chicken was no longer on the menu at the Warangal station canteen. Hygiene seemed to have become an overriding concern - meals were now being sold in sealed plastic trays. Flexible pricing was also in - an egg biryani which cost INR 90 at 12:00 when the train reached Warangal would be available for INR 50 when the train reached Vijayawada a few hours later. If you were not in a hurry to pick up a packet as soon as the train stopped the price would go down still further to INR 40!

Another great transformation was the near seamless availability of broadband internet through the journey. Except for a few uninhabited areas of Telangana and Madhya Pradesh you can use the net to check the news feeds, catch up with old friends on WhatsApp, watch YouTube videos and, most importantly, see your own train moving across the country as a blue dot on Google Maps. This not only allows you to read up on the history and geography of the places you are passing through but also be well prepared to compose photographs of the fleeting yet stunningly beautiful landscapes of !ncredible India!

The Covid Pandemic seems to have changed not only the way in which Indian Railways operates  but also reduced the sense of chaos and uncertainty associated with train travel. If this trend continues I will be looking forward to my next long distance train ride - maybe from Gujarat to the North Eastern states for a change!

Godavari River, Andhra Pradesh

Paddy fields, northern Andhra Pradesh

Windmill farms and cloudscapes, Tamil Nadu

Thiruvanthapuram Central Station, Kerala

Palm plantations, Tamil Nadu

Paddy fields in coastal Andhra Pradesh

Sunset across Wardha river, Maharashtra

Cattle grazing at Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh

Chambal Ravines, Madhya Pradesh

Zzz..

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Journey Map - https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/2/edit?mid=1SpiOwFl7nMqDxqKgqBYHsQ9ZiduMZ49u&usp=sharing 

* Kerala Express (02625) - https://www.cleartrip.com/trains/12625/

CAG on Railways: Death by a Thousand Cuts

 Today is the last day of one of the most unproductive sessions of the Indian Parliament.

Over the last three weeks, the Indian Parliament has been paralyzed over the CAG Audit report findings. The opposition - mainly the BJP - has been stridently demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. Their focus has been on the CAG report on allocation of coal blocks. This, unfortunately, also served to divert public attention from other equally scathing CAG reports on the Delhi Airport (DIAL), Nuclear Energy (AERB), Power (UMPP under SPVs) and the Indian Railways.

The CAG report on railways (2010-11) appears, at first glance, one that is least glamorous but I found it particularly interesting.  It gives you a glimpse into the kind of routine mismanagement behind the losses being reported by IR every year. Here are some examples --

* Container Operations (p11): Haulage rates fixed by railways for CONCOR and other private players has been below their operational costs. For instance, the haulage rates fixed for 40-feet containers was only 27 tonnes as compared to 21.5 tonnes for 20-feet containers. Total revnue loss - Rs. 1,175 Crores  (p11)

* Manipulation of Computerised Reservation System (p34): Just as we suspected, the audit finds numerous instances of "Tatkal" tickets being issued before the stipulated start-time of 8AM. Also, at precisely 8AM on the day of the 'advance reservation period', not less than 363,700 passengers were booked on the system!

* Incomplte Lines (p77): Indian Railways committed resources of Rs. 8,549 crore on 50 incomplete new lines for an indefenite period with no certainty of the objectives being realised.

* Stoppage of work due to planning lapse (p 103): A new bridge was planned next to a protected national mornument, the Red Fort, without informing ASI. Loss - Rs. 33 Crores.

* Contract Mismanagement (p107): CAG notes that frequent extensions were granted to contractors, ignoring the target period for completion. Loss in anticipated savings - Rs.19.44 Cr

* Awarding contracts without site-surveys (p121): For doubling the track between Cheppad and Kayankulam in 2005, a new bridge was needed. Only after the award of contract did the authorities inspect the site of work and discover that the use of pre-set concrete slab and girder would result in a level difference of 1.6 meters!  The contracter then backed out and the project was stalled for six years!

* Excessive delay in maintenace of locomotives (p128): 99% of maintenance work on diesel locomotives has been delayed by North Western Railways. Loss - Rs. 92.89 Cr.

* Loss due to non-procurement of critical parts which were (p129): Rs.85 Cr.

This seems like a classic case of  'death by a thousand cuts'...