Worried Kate

Catching my second train was another ordeal yesterday. The train I caught was 50 minutes late. As soon as I boarded, I argued with a man over my seat, which was in an open compartment he booked for his family. I was sure it had been double booked. 30 minutes later we realized that I had boarded the wrong train. A railway employee had told me to wait at the wrong platform.

A few people near me argued, passing my ticket around, about how to fix my situation. I watched the family man, a PhD student and an old man banter for a while. They told me that the train I was on was headed for Kolkata, not Delhi. Eventually they figured out that I should wait two stops, get off and catch my train there.

Distant fluorescent lights dimly lighted this second station. I wasted some time shopping for chai and snacks, making sure to shop around. The first vendor tried to inflate the price of his bottled water by 400%.

Strolling up and down the platform, I was interrupted by the call of a man with a shaved head. He wanted to chat, and our conversation progressed whimsically from obtaining basic biographical information.

“That’s my brother over there,” he said, pointing to a man crossing the tracks between platforms. “Why does he have hair and you don’t?” I enquired. (As a Bengali Muslim, I though there could be some religious significance to his shaved head).

“Dandruff”, he replied.
“What?!”
“Yes, I have too much Dandruff, so I shave my head”
“Why don’t you use special shampoo; it works for me”
“I Tried that, it didn’t work”
Our conversation stopped abruptly with the arrival of the train he had been waiting for. My train came a few minutes later.

Boarding the train was like climbing into an ant farm. The corridor at the end of the car was crowded with people sitting on the floor. My movements were nothing short of acrobatic getting around them. I forced my way through a similarly crowded aisle halfway up the neighbouring car. A ticket office stopped me and informed me that I was in the wrong car.

Heading back the way I came, I sifted through the jungle of passengers. Boxes and luggage in the aisles left very few footholds. Chai and snack vendors flew past me compromising my balance. If I looked up, feet hung over the edges of the top bunks creating a canopy of body parts.

When I arrived at my compartment, it was set for daytime mode. The middle bunks were folded up making the bottom bunks into seats. I was assigned to a top bunk, which had been filled to capacity with luggage. There were six assigned seats in the open compartment, though eight people sat on the converted benches, and one man lay in the top bunk opposite mine. There was no room for me.

The occupants tried to convince me that I should sit up with the luggage. Having a ticket in my hand, I wouldn’t stand for this. I deserved a seat on the bench (my seat number was written there). I demanded my seat for a few minutes, after which the seat’s occupant acquiesced.

I was uncomfortable; it was hot and stuffy in the carriage; but I was happy to be on a train to Delhi. I did not have to buy an expensive plane ticket to Delhi. I was not stranded in Northeast India.

Hours later, I cleared my bunk and went to sleep. The humidity and temperature were suffocating. I had to lie on my side to feel like I could breathe. I made a pillow by stuffing dirty laundry into my pillowcase and chained and locked my bag to the steel grate that separated the neighbouring compartments from mine.

I woke up at one point to find myself squished into the foetal position with my bag at the head of my bed and a man stealing space from the foot of my bed to sit on. I had to yell at him twice to kick him out. I felt the increased comfort instantly and went back to sleep.

When I woke up this morning and rolled around semi-conscious as long as I possibly could. I knew I would be on the train all day, so I sat and though about life, my trip, my job, about anything really, until I was bored of thinking. Sore from lying so long, I relocated to an open seat below (the train had emptied significantly).

The men who shared my compartment turned out to be members of the armed forces going on or returning from leave. We chatted for a while about the casual dating that was possible in western counties, and their eyes and ears were wideopen at the idea of being able to live with a girlfriend without being married. One of the soldiers, named Ujjal, had a MA in English literature. We had studied different genres and authors, but that didn’t stop us from having a long and interesting conversation.

The only other noteworthy event from my trip was running into the same man dressed in a green sari that I had seen on the train days before. She (he?) was looking for money and tapped me on the shoulder as I brushed my teeth in the sink at the end of the car. I shrugged in confusion and she walked away. No one else seemed to give her money this time.

After 28 hours on the train, we arrived at New Delhi station. I was covered in dirt and I felt as though filth had permeated my skin. My last shower was two days earlier in Gangtok.

My new friend Ujjal didn’t have to board his onward train until the afternoon of the next day. We resolved to meet at 8:30 am outside the cloakroom on platform number 1. We would then spend the morning sightseeing together, perhaps with Kate. Ujjal helped me get to my hotel, which had us drive us past an army of news vans and up an empty market street. In the hotel lobby, I shook hands with Ujjal, saying goodbye for the night, and was led up the stairs to meet Kate in our room.

Kate was so happy to see me; apparently she had been worried all day. She had decided to rest in the room all day, as a 48-hour bus trip from Kathmandu to Delhi had worn her out. At some point she turned on the TV to watch the news. The live broadcast was covering a major train derailing that killed 100 and injured many more. Fearing for my safety, she enquired with the front desk staff, who turned on the news in the lobby, and watched until they determined it could not have been my train as it was on another line altogether.

Mayhem reappeared later in the day when a series of terrorist bombs ripped through the city. The first bomb went off at around 5 pm just 100 metres past our hotel. That was why the marked had been closed. All of the bombs together killed about 60 people who had been shopping for an upcoming holiday. Because of my train delay, I was nowhere near the danger. Kate was lucky that she stayed inside all day. She was reading her book at the time and didn’t take the loud bang seriously, not finding out what had happened later in the evening.