The train spat me out of its humid, hot, steaming belly. Not really sure what had happened within the last 30 hours in this train, pictures rushed through my mind. Standing on the station platform I quickly had to pay my dinner to the kitchen compartment. Memories passed by like flickering lights: The same particular smell many Indian villages and cities with open sewage systems disseminate; the dripping warmth of heavy monsoon rains stopping the train and pouring into the compartment; the taste of Chai, chapatti, and melting sweaty heat; roaring ceiling ventilators close to my night bench; the chatting craziness and laid back attitude of my compartment companions from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal…
The sleeper class is a place to meet and see India. One train coach accommodates 72 travelers. In open compartments, eight people share about eight square meters to sit, eat, sleep, chat, and travel. I had hour long conversations about Europe, India, trains, food, live in general and food in particular. Interested travel companions ask many questions- marital status, family composition, and income from occupation being very frequent but not unusual ones in India. The memory of Andhra Pradesh’s and Orissa’s beamingly green rice fields brought my thoughts back to where I was, at Bhubaneswar, Orissa the main stop for the coming four months.
I expected a student from my supervisor’s institute to pick me up by autorickshaw but things turned out differently. Two young ladies from the 'International Relations Committee' at my hosting institution slid into my field of sight hastily, asking, slightly out of breath, whether I was who I am. Their looks seemed concerned - maybe I was looking a bit shabby standing on the platform by the side of the train, exchanging some last words of ‘Good Bye’ with my Tamil and Bengali travel companions with a sweaty face and dusty backpack, happily smiling due to the relief I felt having left the rattling iron worm full of bodies and live.
The ladies took me to an air-conditioned Jeep which turned out to be my hosting institutes’ property. I wondered what it would mean for me to be based at a management institute for my research internship. Innovation, agriculture, and development in India being my supervisor’s expertise, it remained mysterious to me why he teaches at there.
Late evening darkness made my arrival at the 600 student hosting campus a mysterious one. First, I was taken to my “room”. It was in a hotel like building, the rooms spacious, with marble floor, a roaring air-conditioning, big bathroom and TV. I was afraid I would have to spend my private time the next months in this hotel environment - like a European prince being separated from Indian reality through the kind of luxury offered to and taken by him. I was eager to ask questions, explore, inquire, get to know, understand - I was here for research at least, and as a social science and cultural studies student, any setting could be a plethora of insights I thought before falling into a deep sleep. My rattling mind could not wait to get things started…