India, May 30 -- There are many ways to build character in life. Parents insist it is through waking up early in the morning. Schools vouch for 10+2 years of education as the route, and, now, fitness influencers insist it is pumping iron and consuming two scoops of protein powder every day, especially if it's the brand they recommend. All of it is nonsense.

A 36-hours-plus journey in an Indian Railways second-class sleeper coach in peak summer is where real character gets built. Thanks to the freight equalisation policy of 1952 that subsidised movement of natural resources away from my Indo-Gangetic home-state - leaving no incentive for industries to set shop close to the resources - five decades later, students like me had to make this ...