The Hindu Business Line : Mini universe in a train coach

Milan, Nov. 12 In the Inter City train we take from Venice to Milan, the tiny train coach for six turns out to be, arguably, the most interesting one on the entire train.

At the beginning there is Marie, the Italian woman who has just retired as a sales executive and now wants to travel around the world. Unlike most Italians she speaks good English and questions me about what India has to offer her as a tourist.

As I warm up to the subject, Marie and her daughter, a forensic doctor, are visibly excited. From my side questions soon follow on Italy and the way it is handling recession. Earlier in the week, during our olive oil conferences, a couple of female producers had admitted that housewives are cutting down on their usage of cooking oil as well as other food items.

Nicoletta, another travel companion and an astronomer who is headed for a conference to Innsbruck in Austria, pitches in, “Of course, these are difficult times and we are feeling the pinch.”

In Milan, our guide, another Maria, admits that Milan has become a difficult place to live in... and too expensive even for Milan residents.

“We wait for sales to do our shopping. And the city is so expensive to live in, that around 100,000 people who work in Milan live outside the city and do a daily commute.”

Anyway, returning to the train, soon the passengers change and Jean, an American woman who lives in Germany, boards the train with her two children. Her Chinese American husband is posted at the US military base in Germany and is currently deployed in Iraq, and it might take him another 15 months to come home, as he left only a few months back.

She has voted, naturally, for Barack Obama, thinks the attack on Iraq was a mistake but shrugs in typical American fashion with “Oh, what the heck, its now too late to think about that.”

But not so for Dafer, the Iraqi Chrisitian who enters our coach, but after she has left, to take another connection on her way home to Germany. Dafer is on his way from Iraq to Stockholm to meet his sister.

Originally a resident of Baghdad, the “living hell” that it has now become forced him to shift to a city in northern iraq.

“My house in Baghdad was totally destroyed, my 16-year-old nephew was kidnapped and released only after 6 days after we paid a ransom of $15,000."

So when does he think the mess in Iraq will end?

“When the Americans leave”, interjects Ali, an executive from Senegal travelling to Italy on work, and who had also now boarded our coach. We all look at him in surprise and he smiles, “oh, yes, the Americans create problems everywhere.”

But Dafer shakes his head. “Infinity is more like it... the problems in Iraq will not go away for a long, long time.” He thinks things under Saddam were much better... “Now Iraq is finished.. everyone there is finished. Shiahs, Sunnis and Christians will all fight.”

The sixth occupant of our coach, Matteo, an Italian neuro-psychoanalyst, now joins the dialogue. “This talk is so interesting. Thank god, I understand English because I work at the University. I can’t believe there can be such an interesting dialogue in a train coach on such a wide range of international issues.”

“Our coach is a melting pot of countries, religions.” says Ali, who admits that many people from Senegal come illegally to Italy and without valid papers. Matteo talks about his practice and says that it is relatively easy to treat people after strokes as their movements return slowly. “But then I also have to be like a priest because people are confessing to me about their family and marital problems.“

But he said that he cannot find solutions for them.”All I can do is listen.”

I wonder how he has psychoanalysed the occupants of the coach, including the journalist who initiated and moderated the dialogue.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

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