BY KSS PILLAI
Though I had decided to visit Indore soon, where I had spent the 1960s, it happened after a long delay.
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My elder brother, employed at Indore, had asked me to accompany one of his friends on leave to Kerala. One morning in June 1960, we started our journey. We had to change trains at Cochin (now Kochi), Madras Central (now Chennai) and Bhopal to reach Indore on the fourth day.
As few trains had reserved seats and berths, porters at the stations where long-distance trains originated doubled as seat-grabbers. At Cochin and Madras Central, they went to the railway yard to ‘reserve’ seats by spreading our towels on them.
Passengers carried their luggage in steel trunks. The windows had no bars, and the youngsters used them to enter and exit over-crowded compartments as reaching the doors was difficult. Beggars, singing current popular cinema songs, beating their stomachs with their hands, approached all passengers for alms. So did ticket checkers and hawkers, who sold different things. The overcrowding was no deterrent for passengers to play cards or sleep on the floor with the trunks as pillows.
As all trains had steam engines, our bodies and dresses became black with coal soot when we reached the destination.
My brother had official quarters near the seven-storeyed Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital. A stadium was under construction before our quarters. It was there that I saw a cricket match for the first time.
Three-wheeled rickshaws plied between the hospital and the city’s western part. Few motorised personal vehicles existed, and people usually travelled on bicycles, which cost about Rs 200, a large sum. I remember buying one under the hire-purchase scheme and a company representative coming to my workplace to verify my statements.
That was the period of shortages. There were long queues before ration shops and grain merchants when stocks arrived. Water, among many other things of daily use, was also in short supply. The water’s flow was so slow that it took a long time to fill a pot. Fortunately, the district collector’s bungalow was only a little away from our quarters. Water tanks used to go to his bungalow, and the driver was kind enough to allow us to fill our pots.
There was a considerable number of people from Maharashtra in Indore, thanks to the Maratha kings who ruled the area for a long time. I used to have my breakfast at a restaurant run by a Gujarati. My barber was also a Gujarati. Indore was an education centre with prominent colleges running night and morning classes. It was a textile hub with several famous mills.
When I visited Indore after many years, it had changed. Old cinema houses had disappeared, giving way to different business houses. New housing colonies had come up. The city had spread on all sides. It ranked the cleanest city in the country with wide roads, multi-storied buildings, modern transportation, and everything cities had.
Most textile mills had declared themselves ‘sick’ and closed. Many of my friends and colleagues had died. Some of the remaining came to meet me, had a nice time reminiscing the past, and left.
The old city had disappeared, and an unfamiliar one stood there.
