The Bhagalpur-Surat Express rolled into Patna station and the human mass sprawled on the platform lifted and moved into compartments already dense with men.
Most trains in India are gender skewed, but those originating in Bihar are particularly so.
The passengers are overwhelmingly men of working age headed to distant places to earn and send money back home.
Among the migrants to Gujarat, I expected to hear much praise for the state and its chief minister.
But the young man seated next to me had little to say.
“They say Gujarat is very developed. Shor mach raha hai,” I said.
"Machata rehta hai…” he said. "We don't know much. We have no time for anything else. All we do is go to work, eat, drink, sleep, get up and go to work again. Bas itna hi."
He wasn’t interested in talking about larger things, but he was happy to talk about his own life.
Growing up in a family of ten in a village in Bihar’s Katihar district, he had studied up to class 10 before his father, a landless worker, told him, “Beta, now take care of yourself.”
So, he went off to Surat, where he found work in an industrial stitching unit that adds lace borders to saris, and a room to share with four other men. But he didn’t give up on his studies. He came back this year to appear for his 12th standard board exams.
“I was a very good student…No one in our village has studied as much. I wanted to study science or commerce, but because of our financial situation, I had to take lighter subjects…history, political science, sociology."
How was life in Gujarat, I asked. How much did he earn? Dressed in denims, a pale yellow shirt and a sleeveless grey jacket, with a faux-smartphone tucked in his pocket, he looked like someone who was doing reasonably well.
“Depending on the kind of sari – single border or double border – anywhere from Rs 8,000 to Rs 15,000 a month,” he said.
But the earnings were neither easy nor certain. "I work all seven days. The payment is per piece and per day. Missing one day would mean losing money." People from his village had gone as far as Jordan, Muscat and Mauritius to work – if they could afford a visa agent.
What does he think of Gujarat? He screwed up his nose and said, “There is a lot of pollution there.” In the village where he lived, the textile industry had left the drains choked with effluents.
Meanwhile, a parallel conversation was taking place between two men seated near the aisle. The subject was the same – Gujarat’s industry.
"Jaante ho,” a young man was telling his friend. “Gujarat was the first state where modern industry was set up in India. Textile mills came up as long ago the mid-19th century. It is natural that the state would be more developed than others. Par halla ab mach raha hai…"
I jumped into the conversation. “You mean to say Narendra Modi is being given undue credit for Gujarat’s development?”
"Yes, there is a lot of propaganda in the media and people have fallen for it. In my constituency Ara, the former home secretary RK Singh is contesting elections on a BJP ticket. No one even knows his name. But they are voting for BJP because they say they want to make Narendra Modi the prime minister."
The young man, Ajit, was not a migrant worker. He was studying law, while simultaneously preparing for banking exams.
"Who are you voting for?" I asked.
"BJP,” he said, without losing a minute. “The main thing is that Congress must go. It has inflicted such a great deal of corruption and inflation. We need the BJP because there is no other party."
"There is JD(U) in Bihar…"
"Oh, we have given enough chance to JD(U). Nitish Kumar has done nothing for young people. He said he would create fresh vacancies. Nothing happened. He said he would hold a rozgaar mela. Again, nothing happened.…Kuch log ko naukari mil raha hai lekin pen ka power waala baitha hua hai… The meritorious students are not getting a chance at jobs."
The reference to "merit" was a sure enough indicator that Ajit belonged to the upper castes, among whom there was a sentiment that Nitish Kumar had favoured Dalit and backward caste groups at their expense.
The man seated opposite me was coming from Jharkhand. He said he worked in Gandhidham in Gujarat’s Kutch region, “in a factory that makes rubber parts for foreign cars".
"Which cars?"
"We don't know."
"Where do the parts go?"
"We don't know."
Ajay Singh was happy to be part of the dismembered global automobile chain as long as he made his Rs 300 a day.
"Who are you voting for?”
He gave an indirect answer: “BJP ki havaa chal rahi hai.. Modi ke naam ka halla chal raha hai.”
At the next stop, the law student and his friend got off.
Three men took their place. One of the them was young, another middle-aged, and a third slightly old.
The middle aged man, Sunil Kumar, was tall and lean, and looked very excited. For the first time in 13 years of living and working in Gujarat, he was taking his family with him. “Ghomaane ke liye, naaki rehne,” he said. “For a leisure trip, not to stay.”
But the railways had acted as a killjoy, splitting their seats across compartments. Sunil wanted to get people in this compartment to move and make way for his family. But since no one was willing to oblige, he sat down grumpily – until I brought up the subject of Narendra Modi.
"Narendra Modi pyaara ho gaya hai sabko." Narendra Modi has become dear to all.
"Why so?"
"Because of his work."
"What has he done?"
"What has he not done?"
"No, seriously, tell me what has he done."
The older man intervened. “Road, bijli, paani, bathroom, sab to kiya hai. He has done everything. Road, power, water and toilets.”
His name was Ram Kumar and he had lived in Surat for 17 years. He claimed that the development of Gujarat picked up speed after Modi took over. What was even better, he said, was that the regular cycle of rioting had stopped. “Ek hi baar hua. Ab hamesha ke liye khatam.”
Sunil Kumar also spoke of "feeling safe in Gujarat". As for economic prosperity, he said, inflation had dented everyone's earnings. "Ek kaam se pet nahi bharta. It is not enough for one person to earn which is why I am taking him along," he pointed at a young man with hair cut and flicked somewhat in the style of Salman Khan in the film Tere Naam. “Isko sabzi market mein laga denge.” The young man, Basant Raj, who said he was called Raja by his friends, however, had other ambitions. “Are you a reporter?" he asked me. "Even I am an artist. I dance very well but I have not got a chance to show my talent,” he said.
“Go to Bombay,” joked the old man.
Raja was a fan of Salman Khan. And he was a fan of Narendra Modi. "I saw him in Sasaram at a rally…I really liked his shaili, his style and manner of speaking. He is the only one who can remove corruption and inflation. Pakistan attacks us and throws bombs. The government does nothing. But Narendra Modi would retaliate and get us justice. Parts of Kashmir have been lost to both Pakistan and China. He will get them back.”
“If you don’t mind I would like to know your caste? Only for the reason that I am told people vote on caste basis in this state,” I told the group.
Sunil Kumar and Basant Raj were Kurmis, the caste group that Nitish Kumar belonged to.
“You have left Nitishji?”
“Should we worship him like a god?” Sunil shot back.
Ram Kumar was a Paswan. He said he would have voted for the BJP even if Ram Vilas Paswan had not joined the NDA. Paswans in the state were unhappy with Nitish creating a sub-category among Dalits, called Maha Dalits, excluding them from certain government benefits.
Ajay Singh, the auto parts workers, was a Chadravanshi, a Dalit sub-caste, and while he was not cheering Modi as much as the others, he wasn't averse to him either.
Ajit, the student who had gotten off at Ara, was most probably upper caste, and had expressed unequivocal support for the BJP.
“Everyone else's chance is over," said Basant Raj aka Raja, pleased with the cross-caste support that his favourite leader was drawing. "We need a Dabangg neta to rule India.”
The boy seated next to me had tuned out of the conversation, or so it seemed. He was watching the sixties film, Ek Phool Do Maali, on his phone.
“You like old films?” I asked him.
But he didn’t want to discuss films. This time, he had something to say about politics and elections.
“Dada hai wo. His left hand and right hand men carry out murders. Pehle ulta sidha kaam karega phir wahin bhalaiyi karega. First, he would do wrong and then he would cover up by undertaking welfare work. Neeche se katega upar se paani daalega. He would first cut the roots and then water the plant.”
He was the lone voice in the compartment opposed to Narendra Modi and his name was Sageer Ahmad.
Click here to read all the stories Supriya Sharma has filed about her 2,500-km rail journey from Guwahati to Jammu to listen to India's conversations about the elections – and life.
