I managed to ride on the Bande Bharat express after all. Once was a trip from Delhi to Jaipur and the second one was a to and fro between Howrah and Santiniketan. In the latter case, the train was attended royally in the prime platform close to the car parking alley inside the station but in case of Delhi it got the Cantonment station where one needed to cross over rail tracks to board the train from the far end of the platform reserved for the goods train. Clearly, while Kolkata honoured the Bande Bharat, Delhi shunned it with a turned-up nose.

Bande Bharat, represents the new India, all show and brag without foundational achievement. Unlike the Rajdhani and the Shatabdi, which revolutionized train travel, Bande Bharat is at best a pretense of progress. Its speed is pathetic, the so-called rapidity is only because stoppages are drastically reduced in number and since it runs on pretty much on the same tracks it leaves us with nothing new to relish. The washrooms are as pathetic as any other train with cosmetic application of vacuum flushes which take so much time to turn on that most passengers have resorted not to flush their excreta at all. The passage doors are equipped with sensors to facilitate the physically challenged, there is brail on the compartment boards and a display board announcing stations for the deaf which are encouraging. Apart from this, there is little else to bat for.

Also, it is better never to travel by the C coaches of Bande Bharat. These are as cramped as Go Indigo planes with barely space to move about. Shatabdi and Rajdhani are heavenly by comparison. Travel only in executive class if you must.

The train serves food which is without imagination. There are puffed laminated packets of aluminum foils with air fried corn and chire. The kachuris drip in oil and packed in butter paper foils found at the street corner chaiwallah shops, except that the ones served on the train are worse.

The propaganda has been so deeply ingrained that passengers travelling on board have ingratiated themselves to imagine that they are having a wonderful experience. This reminds me of a story we read in class VI about a rich Arab who invited a beggar to a feast only make his guest imagine that he was having a great meal. So strong was the storytelling that the beggar also burped in satisfaction. Same with Bande Bharat and its passengers.

Bande Bharat strikes those who have never been on the Rajdhani or the Shatabdi; it attracts the Volvo passengers who rarely ever take the train except the passenger trains to travel short distances. These are the passengers who have not known the high maintenance Rajdhani express, they have not known the Duronto, nor even the Shatabdi. They have avoided these trains as being costly when on purposeful travel and have boarded the Bande Bharat as an experience and not as a necessity.

The high point of Bande Bharat is the staff. Congenial and caring. If we are to look for something to take away from the train ride, then it is the excellent workforce.

Postscript: a post in Face Book complained that while the writer was traveling on a Bande Bharat, a group of non-Bengalis climbed up on the train and loudly started to pay Antakshari. This raised the noise levels to annoyance of the co-passengers. Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly this public nuisance is created by a set of uncultured but socially upwardly mobile people who think that creating chaos in public life is smartness. BJP politics is a haven for this kind of low class of people, who through access to some signs of equality and progress have just about made it to the status that they aspire to be in. The train belongs to a class, a class that is fascinated by Modi just as Miranda was by Ferdinando, or Shakuntala by Dushyant; for they have never seen the world, awakened only now, salivate at whatever they get, without discernment or discretion.