The only bit of Berhampur I had seen ever (before I landed here on November 6) was the washed-out train station platform bearing that mandatory concrete signpost of yellow and black with the city's name (Sanskritised to Brahmapur) -- in three languages, Odia, Hindi and English. Between 2003 and 2006, the highlight of each sleeper class journey from Bangalore (where I was enrolled for graduation in a college in the suburbs) to Bhubaneswar (where my parents stay) would be ten or so minutes of Chilika – silver in the moonlight or a powerful, moving blue-grey on moonless nights. I would be at the
window or the closest exit of the bogey right from Berhampur, waiting for nearly half an hour before the ‘lake’ (that’s a misnomer, it is actually a lagoon) would be in sight at Rambha and Balugan. That’s all the association I had with Berhampur.

On the morning of the 6th, after a day’s delay thanks to reports of trains being cancelled due to rains caused by a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal (Berhampur is in Ganjam, a coastal district of Odisha), I started out from Bhubaneswar buying an unreserved ticket on Visakha Express. Thankfully, the train was on scheduled. I had a vague memory from my graduation days of superfast trains taking a little under three hours to cover the distance from the state capital to Berhampur.

I had no intention of standing for three hours with two reasonably heavy pieces of luggage. Now, in most of the other cities I have been in (leave alone cities, in far flung Manoharpur in Jharkhand), there are usually a couple of lathi-wielding railway constables herding the unreserved passengers into a queue. Not so here. There were no LED signs flashing to indicate the position of the bogeys but there was a large crowd fanned out at the entrance of a coach at the tail-end of the train. I walked towards it, seething with resentment at no one in particular, a bag straining at each shoulder. Once in, I found out to my surprise that the crowd that had seemed unruly and chaotic a few seconds back was arranging itself in a well-ordered manner. Heavy pieces of luggage were being lifted up with enthusiastic help from all around and stacked on the top berth (well, not so much a berth as a shelf) leaving space on the side to sit at least one. Nobody had to jostle with anybody else to get further into the coach. The only thing jarring was that consideration in giving up a seat was only accorded to the elderly. Young women were expected to slug it out like the men if they hadn’t managed to find a seat. So, there was no way that I, a 20-something guy, was going to get a seat anywhere after having boarded the coach last. I hung my laptop bag from a hook and shoved my travel bag with as much force I could muster under the seating berth.

The seat, by the way, was numbered for four but had six people precariously perched, some at the edge and some with their limbs sticking out at odd  angles. And it did not seem funny (had I not been standing I would have given it at least a chuckle) when I realised what a sin it was to be fat and seated – you would be depriving at least one deserving guy from sitting on a journey that could last anything between 17 minutes (the first stop was Khurda Road, some 35 km from Bhubaneswar) to 19 hours (the terminating stop was Secunderabad in Andhra Pradesh).

Standing, however, did give me a better view of the compartment, the aisle of the coach and of the great outdoors that the train sped past. Not that I intended to do much with it but it was the only consolation available then! As I looked around, all I could see were characters from train journeys that had become personal clichés of sorts – a balding, pot-bellied man, hair probably dyed poring over a newspaper with intensity through ugly-framed glasses, a teenaged guy with his bag slung from his shoulders (even while seated) with earphones connected to his mobile firmly planted in his ears, young girls having to bend and lean at uncomfortable angles to make way for people passing through, paan-gutkha-chewing, silent brooders, men of all ages dozing off within minutes of the train moving despite their combed crowns slick from the oil bath they probably had an hour or so ago. I wanted to talk to them but got nervous wondering what conversation I could make. It wasn’t as if the people were just bodies rocking to the train’s motion – there were those who were in conversation, probably daily commuters who passed time chatting up familiar faces – but I felt my disconnect grow with each passing minute. It was as if I had forgotten to be a part of my people, to speak in Odia, to make small talk about the festival season that was on. So, I looked outside to make myself feel more settled. I knew Chilika would soon be here and I could lapse into nostalgia again.

It is not until after Khurda Road that the monotony of concrete houses by the railway tracks is broken. Of course, the other, of green fields and rustic settings begins, but it is infinitely more bearable.

November in Odisha is a pleasant time – the air is crisp with a certain cool but there is abundant shine from a distant sun. It is the pre-harvest season when the paddy in the fields are at their luxuriant greenest. But not so this year. The crop had been flattened in large patches in most of the fields I saw. Winds and rain from the cyclone (named Nilam) had ruined a year’s labour for some of the poorest farmers in India. And this stretch of the state contributes a chunk of the total annual produce of rice in the state. Disaster from the sea has always been the bane of coastal Orissa. The field reminded me of the 1998 super-cyclone. A two-day rage of the Bay of Bengal had left thousands dead and even more helpless. It is always that governments everywhere wake up to disaster management only after disaster has struck. Odisha had been no different then. Now, I am told that the disaster-readiness of the state is a great deal better. There are early cyclone warning systems in place and everything. Apart from the best that helps save lives, there is little that can be done to save crops or property. All losses must be taken in stride by those who can barely afford to incur even a fraction of it.

An hour and a half later, Chilika broke into sight. In a cosmic conspiracy, the sun also peeped through the grey clouds and shone for a fleeting while. With the coast not very far from the tracks at places, I could see garbage bobbing at the shore, in larger quantities than I had seen before. Irresponsible tourism and over-commercialisation of resources of the lagoon, especially licences given to large fishing industries, are wreaking havoc on the Chilika ecosystem. The garbage is merely one symptom. As much as I wanted to look at the placid lagoon, I could only focus on the bobbing garbage.

I even tried identifying what particular pieces were in the few seconds I got to make out their shape. So, now even Chilika is lost to me. Great. I looked out at nothing in particular and stayed silent for the rest of my trip, all the while acutely aware of the stench that surged through the open door of the toilet. For the nth time in my life so far, I was grateful that Berhampur arrived, two hours and forty minutes after we started from Bhubaneswar. If there was nothing
beautiful to wait for, at least something painful had ended.