Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 O B S E RV E R 06told me about the walk from Devon to Chithurst on which he had donehis back in by carrying all his belongings in two of the shoulder bagsmonks use in Thailand instead of a backpack, and how two of them hadshared a tent so small that they had to sit up all night when it rained. Hedid that walk in a pair of rubber wellington boots, without socks andfrom which the heels fell off en route. Then there was the walk on whichhe had worn a pair of boots two sizes too small and had feet so badly blisteredthat the other monks had asked him to stop because they couldn’tstand it. “Jesus,” I thought, “no wonder he is not finding this one hard!”Walking beside the railway line, the one thing which would alwayswake me out of my reverie were the steam trains. I remember particularlythe first one: just after we joined the line it came snorting roundthe bend, and I had Ajahn Sucitto stand near the line to take a photo withit bearing down on him, smoke and steam pouring out and with the passengershanging out of the windows grinning and waving. AjahnSucitto was so close that he was showered in cinders as the enginepassed. The trains would come past every two hours in alternating directions,first one coming down the single line then one going up. The lasttime I was in India steam trains were still pulling some of the main lineservices, the Bombay Mail, the Hadrapur Express, or whatever. Nowthose trains have been replaced by big oily diesel engines. But India wasreluctant to see them go entirely, as they use Indian-produced coalinstead of imported oil. So on the thousands of branch lines all overIndia they were still thundering along belching smoke—which is evenmore impressive and polluting because the coal is brown lignite full ofsulphur and tar.As we walked by the railway line we would pass its various features,still as they were when left by the British. Unlike along the roads, milestonesinstead of kilometre posts lined the tracks. Level crossings wereeach manned by an Indian who lived in an adjacent railway hut, oldfashionedsignals had big wooden hands and worn steel cables leadingto the signal box, and stations were stone with wooden and slate7 1