Take the Wrong Train.
In the world’s largest democracy, reason is nothing short of unreasonable, time is folly, and your gut is too busy working overtime on a bacterial masala to be trusted. Unlike an all-inclusive Caribbean vacation, tidied up in Percale’d predictability, you do not take a trip to India; it takes you.
For decades the region has left me breathless for all the right and wrong reasons; it’s the price you pay — and trying to separate the good from the bad would be as feckless as shaving the face off a coin.
A few steps off Chowringee Road, and several steps back in time, barely stands the nearly 150-year-old New Market. Navigating the dark ramshackle halls I find a chai stall and order a cup when I feel a tug at my kurta. I shrug off the clinging children in Hindi and then in English, “Sorry, no rupees for you. Excuse me.” The counterman shushes them away to no avail as he warns me not to look at them.
I pay for my tea, turn toward the exit — then something in the haze of my peripheral vision freezes me in my tracks. There, a little boy, no older than six, is facing up at me. I stop a breath in my throat, staring in disbelief at the voids where his eyes should be. There, in the open sockets are dark red holes of flesh. My hearing muffles as his soiled face mouths “money, mmmmoney, money, please.”
I look away and rummage for my wallet. The chai wallah calls back to me, “No madam, please! Don’t give them money. This is the mafia, a scam. They will keep doing this to the boys if you give money. This is what they do to boys. Don’t, madam!”
I look back at him; I look back at the boy, my heart thumping. I kneel down offering to buy them a cold drink or sweets but they insist on money, while tugging and yelling, the bigger one reaching into my purse as I push him away, their grease-covered hands grabbing at me. “Please, money! Please, money! Money!”
I want to give something to help — to make it stop — but I counter my instincts and obey the counterman.
I pull my bag tightly, shoulder through the crowd and back out into the blinding dust-filled chaos of my first morning in Kolkata. And breathe.
I arrive at the Old Delhi Railway Station in the pitch of a shivering morning. Wrapped in my oversized shawl, I navigate the iron staircases that bridge above the maze of moonlit tracks looking for the Shatabdi Express to Agra. Up and down from one platform to another. Searching frantically until I finally find my train, I check and double-check the compartment number, and then the seat number, back and forth.
An hour into the ride, I’m lost in my guidebook, so thrilled I’ll finally see the Taj Mahal — “begun in 1632… ‘pietra dura’d’ in semi-precious stones… twenty-two years and 20,000 men to complete…” — when the conductor comes by to check the tickets.
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” He scrunches his face and calmly shows me that the car number matches, as does my seat number. I look up at him, “They match, yes? Do I have to move?” He jabs at the destination on my ticket, panting in Hindi, while wildly gesticulating around the train. I stare, bewildered.
A schoolgirl in the seat ahead of me turns around to translate. She looks at the ticket and back at me quizzically. “Madam, this train is not going to the city of the Taj Mahal. This train is going in the opposite direction. It is going to the border of Pakistan.”
The blood drains from my face and my stomach drops. “But the car and seat number match. How? I even asked someone before getting on board if this was the correct train and he nodded, yes.” The girl calmed me and told me to get off at the next stop and change trains there. “Don’t be upset. Everything will be fine; it is your destiny.”
I disembark at Panipat, and with a resigned huff I ascend the stairs that creak above the width of the tracks below. As I descend on the other side toward the depot I look out, and there, perhaps 200 pairs of eyes are all staring at this very pale, very tall white girl. This is clearly not on any other tourists’ agenda.
Once on the ground, onlookers crowd around, barely giving me enough berth to pass. I quickly exchange my ticket, and then I walk to the farthest end of the outdoor platform and light a cigarette.
No sooner does the first puff plume skyward than I hear the shuffling feet — maybe twenty men in total. They encircle me and, sheepishly, I greet them with “hellos” and “namastes,” and they stare back mouths agape. When it’s clear that my salutations will not be volleyed back, I thump my smoke toward the track, roll my eyes, and head toward a small group of women.
“Come with us, Madam. Come over here,” the largest in the group yells as she twists her rope of braided black hair back atop her head. “Men are disgusting. Don’t look at them. Where are you headed? Delhi? Oh, very good. There is a women’s car on that train so you come sit with us.”
The compartment, with its wooden pews and cageless metal fans bolted to the ceiling, feels like a working-class relic from the Raj. The train grinds slowly through the bucolic landscape, occasionally letting out a metallic wheeze around tighter bends. Outside on the trailing dirt road, a girl in a green sari switches the hind of a water buffalo and waves.
“Madam, would you mind to please smoke a cigarette for us? The girls would like to see this.”
I was now learning the reason why I had recently been gang-circled by gawking men earlier. “You see, only prostitutes and low women smoke. This is funny,” she explained.
The young girls in their school uniforms crowd around me, giggling and covering their smiles as I take one out, tap the butt against my Gold Flakes pack, light it, and in my best Catherine Deneuve, deeply French Inhale. I blow the smoke out the window and stub it out on the clapboard floors to the applause of the entire car.
And now, I’m asked to autograph their school books. I don’t even flinch; I go further and actually draw cartoons of myself, and a map of America, and what ends up looking like a severely disabled Lady Liberty.
The mothers in the group offer me their breakfasts from battered tins: spicy potatoes and curried peas with bits of naan, and from a thermos I’m poured steaming chai into tiny clay cups. Conversations overlap and addresses are swapped.
Then about eight or ten of the girls all turn to face me, jockeying into place, preparing for something. One of the older girls steps forward, just a couple feet away, and begins to sing. The other girls join in unison, a rolling Hindu hymn in perfect soaring harmony. The train is clacking along the countryside, past the crumbling temples, the morning smoke from kitchens rising. A temple bell clangs.
And this singing. And the mothers looking proudly on and beaming in my direction while arching their brows for approval. I smile broadly and nod humbly.
I glance out the window and back to the girls, and to the mothers, and to the wobbling ceiling fan above, and I try to hold it all in.
I choke out a nervous laugh and wipe my eyes. The larger woman pats my knee, “Don’t be sad, madam, we’ll arrive in Delhi soon.”
“I’m not sad, Shivani; I’m grateful.”
“There’s so much to take in,” I explain. “I don’t want to forget this.”
In my mind, I’ve clacked along those rails more times than I can count. Moments like these are the golden threads in the embroidery of our sackcloth existence; the rest of life is spent in search of more.
With any luck, or someone’s idea of providence, I’ll hop on the wrong train and end up in the right place.
