Every year, we have the same boring faces reading out from a little piece of paper what is a totally "out-of-the-world plan" to make the Indian trains and stations an absolute beauty.By now, India should have been in the list of top 5 countries with world-class Railways, if not the first one. It's infrastructure should have been 100 times swankier than the T3 airport in Delhi.
Plush railway stations with floor tiles so clean we could see our faces in it, and sleep in the train washroom if we liked to - the idea was sold to us many times. How we dreamt of a spick and span mode of travel..aaaaaaah. But, every time we got onto one of those bogies, reality struck us hard!
Soiled toilets, rat-infested platforms. But, words echoed - "India will soon get bullet trains".
Whennnnnn, we ask? Is there a deadline or is the deadline FOREVER? We have been getting one of those bullets for the last 5 years now, except that we don't have one till now.
Yet, we sympathize with our ministers who claim to be working so hard in trying to getting us the cleanest platforms and wifi-ed stations and bio-toilets and........ so many more great things, you see!
It will all come to us..*sigh*.. one day. Perhaps.. For now, here's a quick dose of the reality on the ground: