Sreekanth Bhaskaran
St. Paul, Minnesota
2009-01-05 14:06:06
I got to know India first hand during a pan-India tour in the final year of college. It was a rail journey that took me from Trivandrum, Kerala to the historic Delhi capital region, to the foothills of Himalayas in Simla, to the magnificent palaces of Jaipur, the sandy beaches of Goa and the overflowing commuter trains...
more... of Mumbai. The trip lasted only about three weeks. More than the monuments and the landmarks, true India was revealed to me on the train. The golden twilight bathing the mustard fields, a group of gypsies waiting on the platform at some station in Rajasthan, a cup of tea sold in an earthen cup at some village in Madhya Pradesh, farmers with bullocks plowing the fields until dusk, a long line of ladies in Vijayawada waiting with pots to collect water from a well, a seven year old with no shirt and dusty hair loudly singing some popular Bollywood number, the jingle of the coins in his hands, his eyes as he looks at you for a fleeting second, vendors on platforms selling everything from boiled eggs to cigarette lighters - these are some images that still endure after more than ten years. India is still a mystery to me. So I can’t wait to watch the PBS show on it.