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III. End of an Era for India or a Tryst with Destiny?
We had been lucky in Lahore. The station master of Lahore main station had stepped out of line and hosted us for two days and shown us around Lahore’s landmarks and finally put us on a train to Quetta as a starting point for a long unending train journey to Zahedan in Iran, bypassing Afghanistan altogether. We carried no tickets, just the verbal authorisation permitting us to travel up to Quetta and find our own way to the weekly train to Zahedan. Quetta was indeed a heavily evocative name for us..
At nearly 6000 feet above sea level, surrounded by formidable mountains, Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan, the gun province, as it came to be known. Quetta is one of the most important military outposts in Pakistan. The borders of Iran and Afghanistan meet here.
Before the massive earthquake of 31 May 1935, Quetta was a bustling city, with large multi-storied buildings.. After the great disaster which killed almost 40,000 people, Quetta houses were generally rebuilt as single level dwellings. The name Quetta is evolved from kwatta, which means a fort in Pushtu, the Baluchi language.
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I vaguely remembered what was almost a nursery rhyme, Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The Story of Uriah which began:
Jack Barrett went to Quetta
Because they told him to.
He left his wife at Simla
On three-fourths his monthly screw.
Jack Barrett died at Quetta
Ere the next month's pay he drew
Lahore mainline station is a Raj monument and so was our steam train. If you did not have the travel bug before, the sight and smell of one of these great trains would make you weak at the knees with an angst for travel on one of these dinosaur beasts snorting steam. The train was predictably packed with Baluchi and Pathan families equipped with with an assembly of kitchen utensils and often goats and sheep. They preferred largely to squat on the floor of the train and use the seats for their cargo of pots and pans. A sort of grim hostility pervaded our carriage; perhaps I was imagining it. Quetta held its own compelling terrors. A wild West town, I imagined , populated by an ungovernable constituency of gun totting warlords and their entourage.
We arrived in Quetta, to a deserted platform hours later. Our weekly train it seemed had been delayed and would not depart till the next day, an auspicious Tuesday. This was going to be our first experience in finding a safe sleeping shelter on a narrow bench in the station for the night. We were dismayed that we had not thought of carrying a minimum of bedding. I reassured myself that this was no worse than a scouting trip in to a jungli wilderness and therefore full of excitement and not danger. None of these reassurances helped. A self appointed station watchman came in the middle of the night and poked our sleeping human forms with his long barrelled gun to discharge some obscure duty he had to observe.
The day dawned, the train arrived and we were on board. Very soon we realised that this was not going to be a free ride. Our last remaining forex funds were used paying the ticket inspector for two 3rd class tickets to Zahedan. We were pleased and surprised to see an English speaking German young man and his girl friend in our carriage. The German companion remarked how very unusual it was to see a couple of Indians doing an overland journey. He mostly saw young Europeans and Australians and New Zealanders.
I cannot recall if this was another steam train or diesel. Early sight of a barren mountain strewn landscape with moon craters was the beginning of an unending vista of more of the same to come. We saw no villages, towns or settlements along the way.
No wonder it took us two days to reach Iran border: I do not recall our train picking up speed beyond a gentle trundle with frequent unexplained stops. What sustained us was good conversation with our German fellow travellers. I seem to remember my pulling out Thomas Mann’s novel and discussing its hidden meaning and allegories and symbolism. He described to us how Europe was emerging from a chrysalis of moral inhibitions into an uninhibited sixties of free love, humanism and political liberalism replacing the right wing establishment. There was a renaissance and return-to-nature movements. These conversations left me in a state of high excitement and I felt that I had a tryst with destiny that had somehow taken me on the crest of this wave and would land me safely on the shores of this new era.
We spent some time wandering up and down the winding train, intrigued and unable to work out what our fellow travellers were doing on this train. Almost all of them seemed to be carrying a vast load of baggage, wrapped into unusual shapes, occupying every nook and corner of the train. It was as if the shopkeepers of Quetta were on the move.
As we approached the Iran border it became clear suddenly who our fellow travellers were, as the train slowed down as if on a secret signal and human bodies with their baggage started rolling out of the train, protecting their baggage as they trundled safely off the train, completing the remaining border crossing on foot, running with their backs bent parallel to the ground. Here were traditional cross border smugglers, risking their lives in the great name of free enterprise.
We arrived at Zahedan – a modest outpost station and hummed to a halt with half the passengers already gone. We bade good bye to our German friends and wished each other good fortune and safe travel ahead. We checked in our bags at the left luggage office and walked into the town. I caught a glimpse of Subhash and myself in a large mirror in the market we were traversing on foot and was shocked to see two unrecognizable dusty human forms, much in need of a shower and food and drink and a comfortable bed. A few halting enquiries revealed that there was no local newspaper and therefore unlikely to have a contingent of Iranian journalists willing to look after us. Still, we found out that there was a local radio station and headed straight for it. We were soon to be on air as two Indian guest journalists delivering our thoughts on Indo-Iranian relationship going back in to history. These were the days of the Shah of Iran. Our host, a young dark red haired Iranian kept hushing us with a silent gesture of a forefinger on his lips if our conversation wandered off line and it soon became clear that there was an overwhelming sense of paranoia as if every word spoken indoors within walls and behind closed doors was being monitored and listened to by the Shah’s secret service and by informers. Once the interview was safely out of the way, our young host made further gestures to indicate clearly that we were going to leave the building with him and we were going to have lunch with him. As we entered the bustling market again, our host relaxed and gave us a potted history of how the Shah had stayed in power by unseating the elected democratic government led by the legendary figure of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh. The majority of the population yearned to have Mossadegh out of prison and back in power as their leader.
The street market was heaving with fruit and cheese and rumali roties – a famous Persian bread which the shop keeper slung over his shoulders in large batches, and the smell of aromatic Iranian tea sent us into paroxysms of hunger. Soon we were in the safe haven of our host’s private apartment eating succulent stew with our fingers, mopping up the juices with a piece of this smoky rumali roti, followed by fragrant pilau rice, cucumber salad, fresh yoghurt, fruit, coffee and Iranian sweets that would easily outclass their Punjabi equivalent. We picked up courage and acquainted our host with our financial predicament and he happily let us have a shower and change of clothes. We were to spend the night at his wonderfully decorated apartment talking candidly about our mutual history and cultures. Next day he put on a bus that was to take us all the way to Teheran, some hundreds of miles away.
Our host intimated to us that he had spoken to the driver of the bus, and as guests of his country our journey would be free. We had no money left to pay for such a journey in any case. Our driver, a theatrically sneaky looking character had other ideas and let us know 30 minutes out of Zahedan... Our host had also reassured us that he had already sent a radio message ahead to the Ministry of information about our arrival, saying that we would be met on arrival. Subhash reassured me that he had an Indian diplomat friend he had met and looked after in Delhi and we would be staying in his luxury flat in Teheran. But little did we know that we would be homeless and penniless and hungry in Teheran!