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Sunday, January 02, 2005
Swadesh
A movie for many of us, A ride in reality for rest
I remember my trip once from Jabalpur to Kolkata.
I was in Shaktipunj Exp, which goes all the way round from chhatisgarh & jharkhand.
Do u remember the scene in Swadesh where a small boy was selling water for 25p. I have seen that kind of scene on that way
The great train was not having any AC coach & even a pantry car.
So the food & water was dependant on stations. Fortunately unfortunately I was traveling with my Sis & two Kids, that too one of few months old.
Fortunate because we had enough stuff to eat drink with us, unfortunate because it was too hot for small kids.
Somewhere in between we were out of drinking water & were waiting for any station to come.
From the time table I saw a big station is about to come, cause the halt of train there is of 5 minutes. I guessed it would be a good enough & we can take stuff from there. It was a station BIG like a small town, where there were only two stalls on station. One was tea & one was having some snacks kinda stuff.
I saw two bottles of packed water over there, so rushed & bought them, it was obviously not cold as they didn’t have any cooling solution, but I needed water for my nieces.
As I moved from the stall another guy from same train reached to his stall & asked for water. “Sahab pani khatam ho gaya, ek din main hum do hi botel pani latein hain”.
I was shocked, but when thought of their situation its OK for them as nobody even bought packed water.
Reason: When I turned back to train a saw a small kid selling water in earthen cups for same 25p rate. I wondered since how long I have seen a 25p coin. But it was reality.
So when I saw Swadesh it wasn’t looking as exaggeration to me, as I have really seen such places, anyway I’m not going to light bulbs but still its reality.
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