Many years ago, a couple of friends and I visited Kanha National Park in Madhya Pradesh. Among the most backward and undeveloped regions of the country at the time, Kanha had very few hotels and almost no connection to the rest of India. The trip itself was enriching, but the return journey — even after all these years — remains far more vivid, etched in my mind like a tribal tattoo.
The nearest railway station was Jabalpur, from where our train to Mumbai departed late in the evening. To get there, we had to take a bus from the Kanha gate to a small town, and from there, a jeep to Jabalpur.
When we inquired with the staff at our government-run lodge, we were told: “Aap subah gate pe khade ho jayiye, bus aa jayegi.”
Being Mumbaikars — conditioned by trains that leave precisely at 8:43 AM and 9:26 PM — we insisted on knowing the exact time. The staffer shrugged, as if time were a vague, philosophical idea.
Not wanting to risk missing our train, we reached the gate sharp at 7 AM. And waited.
And waited.
Alongside a dozen patient locals who seemed entirely unbothered by the passage of time — so unlike us city folk, trained to respond to client emails in milliseconds.
Finally, after two and a half hours, the bus — which I shall henceforth refer to as The Tribal Express — trundled in. Less a bus, more a travelling village. It was packed tighter than a Bombay local at peak hour, with people wedged inside, balanced on top, and clinging around the sides. Goats, chickens, bicycles, sacks of vegetables, and even a tiny buffalo calf were hitching a ride.
Time had no hold over the Tribal Express. There were no official stops — just stick out your hand and wedge yourself in. Unlike Time and Tide, the Tribal Express would wait. For every man. And his goat.
There was also a rule among boarders. Since the bus had no ventilation, those standing at the rear suffered the most: suffocation, the punishing jolts of its prehistoric suspension, and the weight of every human in front. So, every new entrant had to assume the rear-most position.
To enforce this, at each stop, all standing passengers would disembark, allow the new entrant to climb in and take the back, and then re-board.
Spotting our city clothes, a few sympathetic passengers guided us to the most coveted seats — next to the driver in the front cabin. The only discomfort: an overheated engine right under our seats that slowly cooked our behinds. But compared to being mashed into the back of that tin can — which made a tractor feel like an E-class Mercedes-Benz — this was luxury.
At some point, a curious fellow passenger struck up a conversation. He asked what we earned in the big, bad city. At the time, we were cannon fodder in the corporate world — still in the four-digit salary club. We told him, sheepishly. He smiled and asked, “Per year?”
When we said it was per month, his expression changed completely — as if we were Bill Gates and Warren Buffett rolled into one. We didn’t know whether to feel proud or ashamed.
The Tribal Express chugged along over forest trails, cattle tracks, and the occasional strip of tar. Forests, hamlets, and sky passed by at the pace of a toddler on a tricycle.
At one particularly desolate yet scenic point, a figure waved at the bus. It stopped. A tribal man in colourful traditional attire — ears and nose pierced with elaborate ornaments — appeared. Then vanished into the jungle. Fifteen minutes later, he reemerged with a younger man and a woman wrapped in a coarse shawl. She looked unwell.
All this while, the bus idled and passengers waited patiently outside.
It struck us then — the Tribal Express doubled up as an ambulance in this forgotten world.
Later, in another village, we encountered a small crowd and a band — gathered to see off a young man, clearly off to make his mark on the world. Rituals were performed. Drums were beaten. Blessings were offered. After fifteen minutes of noise and ceremony, the boy was folded into the bus, and off we went again.
By now, the slow, trance-like rhythm of the land had seeped into us. We no longer cared if we missed our train.
But even in this lotus-eater’s state of mind, we couldn’t ignore the commotion that broke out soon after. Voices were raised. Tempers flared.
Turns out, in the chaos of the farewell, the boy’s father — who had no intention of leaving the village — had also been absorbed into the bus. In the melee, his protests went unheard. Once inside, the cacophony of the Tribal Express made it impossible for him to be noticed.
Only when he began shouting threats did the bus finally stop — ejecting him like a piece of food stuck between teeth.
The Tribal Express resumed its odyssey. But not for long.
At the next stop, another chaos broke out. And this one had a more immediate effect — the bus screeched to a halt and emptied with leopard-like speed.
Apparently, someone had stepped on animal dung before boarding. And brought it into the bus on their slippers. In a bus already gasping for oxygen, this was the final assault.
The passengers spilled out, scraped their footwear clean, waited for the stench to dissipate, and boarded once more. The journey continued.
As we neared the end, something happened that completely altered my sense of perspective.
One passenger had tied a sack full of wild tomatoes outside the bus. Not the red, plump supermarket kind. These were green, flat, and wild.
At some point, the sack tore. Tomatoes scattered across the forest road. The man wailed. The bus stopped.
And the passengers?
They ran — out of the bus, into the bushes, across the road — grabbing tomatoes like gold coins. Then vanished.
Here we were in a place where people had travelled six hours in suffocating discomfort to reach what we assumed was an important destination — and yet, they gave it all up for a few rupees’ worth of wild tomatoes.
The man sobbed for his loss. The entire sack, he told us, was worth a couple of hundred rupees.
We returned to Mumbai as changed people.
Yes, we brought back memories of beautiful wildlife.
But we also carried something else — something more haunting: the silent heartbreak of a place where a tomato can mean more than a train, more than time, more than the journey itself.
