The Nylon Bus

Reds, blues, oranges, shocking pink, parrot green , people garbed in bright synthetics rushed around on the Nagpur platform. The train was pulling in at the station and I stood at the gate gazing around at the crowd. Synthetics and nylons,cheap durable fabrics everywhere.

The conductor besides me answered a co-passenger's query," The train halts for 5 minutes " and I made a dash to buy oranges on the platform. The oranges from Nagpur are known for their flavor.

Nagpur , a town in Maharashtra was en route my journey to Delhi to visit my parents. A long journey of 28 hours, peeling oranges and eating them slowly piece by piece seemed like the perfect diversion. It would keep my devilish mind semi occupied at least for a while. I had slept for ten hours and now even the oblivion of sleep wasn't possible. Grabbing a lower berth to sit , I decided I was through with being courteous and hence being stuck the whole of the morning on my upper berth just because the passenger on the lower birth had decided that it was a great time to sleep in late.

Now as I sat gazing out of the window, the visuals that I kept seeing were more than an eyesore. They were jarring. I had been traveling since I was a kid with my parents across the breadth of India but the slow degeneration had never quite struck me as much as now. Maybe this was the side effects of seeing the pristine Alps, the serene coast of California and now my mind jumped to compare. However, deep down I knew that wasn't the case. Plastic had arrived much earlier in Europe and America than it did in India but the degradation in India has been terrible.

Fifteen years ago things were different. In Punjab where I spent five years I still remembered the riot of colors, there used to be gorgeous cottons embroidered in the phulkari style, men with their colorful turbans everywhere. If one were to give a birds eye view of a market place in Punjab it would be of vibrant colors bobbing up and down. The memories were a sharp contrast to the visuals that bombarded me now. Beautiful vs garish, natural vs synthetic, I felt sad to see that synthetic was winning the battle.

The nylons and plastics seemed omnipresent,invading every nook and corner possible. Looking for one person clad in cotton comforts seemed like looking for a needle in the haystack.Like trying to find an anachronism..

Everyone seemed to have caught the cheap nylon bus. As the train gently moved out of the station, the dwellings near the station didn't make me any happier. Drains clogged with plastic and refuse, people living in squalor. Why? Why did they abandon their green field and clean surroundings? Materialistic things suddenly seemed to me like drugs that people had become addicted to, unknowingly killing their aesthetic sense by embracing all that is cheap and plastic.

The train moved on towards greener areas, the interiors of our beautiful country where there are still no people. No people , no polluters!Wide open spaces,no plastic anywhere.I sighed with relief. The colors are once again beautiful. The bright red of palash flowers which bloom to herald spring and shed their flowers to give kids the material that they need to make colored water for the festival of colours, Holi.

The complete palette of greens, the golden green shades of crops ready for harvest, the pale green of new tender spring leaves. Even the brown and sepia made me feel good when I saw them.

All is not lost yet! I wish I could reverse the trend with a clap of my hands,but I am no Harry Potter. I will do whatever is in my hands to make sure plastic usage decreases and the cottony comfort comes back to embrace the country. The colorful and natural India that I crave!!