Who walked with Rahul Gandhi in Bharat Jodo Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir?

Penguin Random House India; 200 pages

My first time on the Yatra was, as I mentioned earlier, with a small group in Karnataka. We got a taste of its spirit even before we started walking. Early one morning, we stationed ourselves 2 km ahead of the walkers’ starting point. The GPS coordinates had been sent to me by WhatsApp—the digital age, after all. Ahead, because someone had told us the best place to walk was just in front of the main body of yatris: still among plenty of walkers but not engulfed in a flood of them jostling for space on the road. So we waited there for the Yatra to arrive. I strolled about, taking photos of nearby posters and bunting.

Out of the blue, someone on a truck yelled as I passed: ‘Majjige!’ I showed incomprehension, so he said, helpfully: ‘Buttermilk!’ and thrust a small green packet at me. He was unloading several sacks filled with the same packets, all for the walkers, and must have decided I needed one.

Nearby stood a stall selling coconut water. Out of the blue again, a police van stopped, several men in plainclothes leaped out and asked the stall-owner for coconuts for all of them. With a large machete, he began slicing one. Suddenly perturbed, the cops grabbed the machete and examined it closely: what if the vendor had nefarious intent? But persuaded somehow that he wouldn’t use the machete to leap into the Yatra and start hacking at
humans, they handed it back and he continued slicing the coconuts.

Things got more serious quickly. We were engulfed in a tide anyway, jostling for space on the road. Those pictures of Rahul Gandhi, walking briskly with hardly anyone or anything ahead of him? That’s achieved by a
police cordon around him and stretching for a good 50 metres in front—an actual long rope carried by dozens of cops. They walk on the edge of the tarred surface.

To keep the cordon intact, they summarily push nobodies like me out of the way. So I fell in among plenty more like me, and then further behind because I had no stomach for jostling.

Yet here’s the thing. Not one person I met complained about the jostling. Nor about the hours of walking, not strolling. Nothing. I mean, I had my reasons for walking. But what were some of the other walkers thinking?

Take Chandy from Kerala. He was one of the 150-plus yatris, men and women who did the whole journey from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. The first time I met him, he and two women walking with him did a jig right there on the road, laughing in delight. Then I kept bumping into him—sometimes he caught up with me, sometimes I caught up with him, once or twice we walked side by side for a spell. If he didn’t do the jig again, he was in the same good spirits every time. But get this: he was barefoot. Every time. Yes, he did the whole trek—several thousand kilometres—barefoot. After meeting him, I couldn’t help thinking of him every now and then when I wasn’t on the Yatra—this cheery man, trekking along on his bare feet.

‘How’s the walking this morning?’ I asked him on Monday when I came up from behind and he was hobbling slightly. It had rained overnight, and Chandy said, ‘All fine, except the rain has woken up all the grains of granite. So instead of lying down sensibly, they are poking upwards into my feet.’ And on he hobbled. I walked ahead to catch up with a companion. An hour
later, Chandy overtook us.

Take Meghana from Bengaluru. She came alongside once when I was just ahead of the cordon, walking behind the press truck. In an almost booming tone, she demanded to know: ‘So what brings you here?’ My reply was almost meek in comparison to her apparent sternness, but I soon realized it was just her way of speaking. In the same booming tone, she told me she had worked as a gynaecologist for many years, but then gave it up and joined politics. Specifically, the Congress. Then when this Yatra was announced, she knew: ‘I had to join. I had to walk. This country needs this now.’ I wanted her to flesh that thought out, but was preempted by another booming demand: ‘Have you come alone?’ I shook my head and pointed to my sister-in-law Ramani, striding along a few feet away. ‘She’s a doctor too,’ I said. Meghana promptly lost interest in me, moving over to shake hands with Ramani: ‘Hello, I’m a doctor too,’ I heard her say, and then they moved steadily ahead, chatting animatedly about whatever doctors chat about while on a Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Take Ankit from Delhi. A Congress worker, he had been assigned a specific task: stride in front of the Yatra, walkie-talkie in hand, barking out instructions to sundry vehicles to preempt accidents and smoothen the yatra’s progress. At one point he noticed the two slow-moving press trucks getting a little too close for comfort. I know because I was walking between them at the time, just starting to wonder if I was going to be squeezed. ‘What’s going on?’ he shouted, practically in my ear, but actually at the two drivers. ‘You both want to kiss each other?’ (It sounded far juicier in the original Hindi, not least because of his barking.) Seeing several of us break into smiles, he turned to me and said: ‘See, I’m going to walk like this every day till Kashmir. It gets boring if I don’t find ways to make it fun!’

Then something ahead of us caught his eye. ‘Hey, Fortuner!’ he yelled. ‘Yes, you fat Toyota Fortuner! Move up ahead, at once!’ (Oh yes, it sounded far funnier in the original Hindi.)