Wheels of Verse

Couplet Express

by Nirupama Dutt

THE romance of a train journey is hard to get over and it is an experience that I just cannot resist and the longer the distance the better it is. So I was not intimidated by the 48 hours the train would take from Nizamuddin to Madurai. I had to make this north-to- south journey to fetch my daughter home from her school near Kodaikanal in the Palni hills.
The ticket counter man looks up the computer and books me into a train that leaves Nizamuddin every Saturday. The train is called Thirukkural Express and I get into it early morning.
The plan is to get off at Madurai, see the Meenakshi Temple, spend a night there and head the next day by bus to Kodaikanal. In the train I get talking to a professor of English from Chennai. He advises me that instead of Madurai, I should get the ticket extended to Kanniyakumari. “If you have not been there then take the journey. The last halt of the train is Kanniyakumari,” he says. While I am still wondering if I should do so or not, it suddenly occurs to me that If Kanniyakumari is the last halt, then why is it called Thirukkural? The professor satiates my curiosity and tells me that “Thirukkural” is a two-line verse or couplet.
The journey suddenly takes a poetic turn and it feels very good to be a traveller of the Couplet Express. And then I learn that Thirukkural maxims were the work of the great Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar who is believed to have lived some time between 300 and 600 A.D. And it was his statue that was installed at Kanniyakumari in January 2000 by Dr. Mu. Karunanithi, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Well, the same statue that caused some ripples for it had been done with parochial sentiments to have something southern juxtaposed against Vivekanand Memorial at the confluence of the three seas. But at that moment I was not thinking of the east-south divide or coming together. The magic of verse had been cast.
Poetry has its own ways of getting round one. Once it lays its snare, there is no getting away. So the ticket was extended to Kanniyakumari and six hours more from Madurai so it was to be 58 hours in the Couplet Express.
As the train moves on to reach the land’s end, it starts emptying out. There are a few passengers left and pantry car staff that had served delicious chilli bhaji, spicy chicken curry and masala vada during the long journey. One of the more friendly waiters tells me that they will spend the night at Nagercoil which is one stop before Kanniyakumari and Tuesday afternoon they will start their journey back to Delhi’s Nizamuddin. And I find myself humming my favourite train song, vintage Kanan Devi: Yeh duniya, yeh duniya Toofan Mail…
But once at Kanniyakumari, the mad race of life comes to a halt as does the rough and tumble of the journey. Just a handful of passengers, railway staff and the vendors who had got in at Tirunelveli to vend neatly-packed halwa by the kilogram are greeted at the beautiful railway station by the fresh sea breeze. Into an autorickshaw and then in a spic and span room of an inexpensive seaside lodge. I remain indoors only for a quick bath and a cup of coffee, and then I am out to experience the beautiful coming together of the three seas.
Waiting for the boat jetty, I see the horizontal and aesthetic contours of the Vivekanand Memorial and by its side the monumental statue, all of 95 feet, of poet Thiruvalluvar. Well, the detractors of this installation were right in that it alters the skyline and intrudes somewhat with what must have been the secluded serenity of the historical memorial. But a statue has been put at a pride of place. And then I suddenly get parochial too. What about our great poets back home? Punjab has a tradition of poets. The greatest of them all is perhaps Guru Nanak but now we know him more as the first sage of a religion well institutionalised. But the two Punjabs, on either side of the barbed wire, are linked by many other minstrels. The great Sufi poets: Waris Shah, Sultan Bahu, Bulle Shah and others who wrote verses that we call kaafi. And I wonder if one day I will travel to Lahore in a train called the Kaafi Express!