Around India in 80 Trains (19 page)

Edwin shook his head, laughing. ‘Five hundred rupees? Is he mad? That bed guy is pulling a fast one!’

‘I know, but he’s letting Ed share with me, and now he has nowhere to sleep,’ I replied.

‘Five hundred rupees is crazy, he shouldn’t indulge that dirty fellow.’

‘But he has to sit up all night, at least we get to share one.’

‘You don’t have to share, you can take mine. I always work at night and I have plenty of stuff to get through, I don’t mind sitting up.’

‘That’s really kind, but not fair.’

‘
Cheee
cheee
, it’s okay, really I don’t mind. I have my lappy, I can work.’

Ed was eyeing me with a look that said, ‘shut it, woman, this way we can both sleep comfortably.’

Through the windows the terrain had transformed in the last hour, flattening into a red stretch that shimmered in the heat. White pyramids shot past in succession—salt mounds drying out in the sunshine. By teatime the train galloped past cliff faces and over canyons, where the outlines of once thick rivers wormed their way along, now just streams waiting for a monsoon to restore their health. Since the Kerala Express, few other journeys had included such varied topography, so the Pune-Nizamuddin Duronto Express ranked highly in our esteem. Even the interiors were upgraded. Nifty bottle holders replaced net pockets and LED panels had ousted the rusty metal light fittings that often scraped the back of my head.

At Bharuch, a soft-spoken man with a boyish face came to the doorway with his hands behind his back and watched as the Gujarati town sailed past. Nitin Das was a filmmaker who had made a film called
The Magic Feather
, which featured seven short stories
set in Mumbai
.
Deliberately showing a side to Mumbai that rivalled the pessimism of
Slumdog Millionaire
, his film included short, spunky tales about magic and mischievous kids, that revealed a lighter, brighter side to Danny Boyle’s city, which reeked of evil. He had released his film online to raise money for NGOs helping street children, many of whom acted in his films.

‘Did you visit Mumbai?’ Nitin asked.

I described the rush-hour incident and he giggled.

‘Did you go to see the slums at all?’

For a few years now, a tour had been running through the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, Asia’s largest, which allowed curious tourists to witness the inner workings of the district and learn that there was a lot more to the community than open sewers and despair. From biscuit-baking and pappadum-making, to pottery and leather tanning, visitors could observe the small-scale industries of an area whose annual turnover was approximately £410m. Eighty per cent of the profits after tax from the tour tickets went towards a community centre that provided schooling for Dharavi’s residents. It was a worthwhile venture in erasing misconceptions about slum dwellers, but I had personal reservations about paying for the privilege to pry, then leaving in an air-conditioned car.

‘So where are you travelling to next?’ Nitin asked.

‘Well, after Delhi we want to get to Khajuraho for the classical dance festival.’

‘You know there’s one direct train now from Delhi? Just a while back it started.’

‘I was told you had to go via Jhansi, then drive?’

‘No, I assure you there is a train, but you may have to check as it might be booked for the festival.’ He smiled, ‘Have you heard of Orchha?’

‘No.’

‘You must visit, it’s a quiet place on the way to Khajuraho. When you approach it, it’s completely covered in green and if you look closely you can see the tops of temples and shrines for miles. It is so beautiful.’

Orchha was now on the list.

Ed was beginning to look restless just as dinner arrived, which proved a timely distraction, and he made his way happily through chicken curry and dal, but made a great show of edging away the tub of ice cream. For his own good, I had forbidden Ed from eating ice cream for fear that he might fall ill. Not ill with a sore throat and cold—which Indians seemed to think were acquired, not through viruses, but by drinking cold water and eating ice cream—but ill with a bad stomach. During power cuts ice creams often melted and were then refrozen and melted again on numerous occasions, making them potentially lethal to weak stomachs. On my way back from the toilet, I caught him quietly licking the lid and he flicked it away. ‘My tongue needed cooling after that curry.’

Bit by bit, ladies in the compartment began to button up their cardigans, and much to Ed’s delight, pull on woolly hats and knee socks. Bedtime was approaching and they were preparing themselves for the ‘chilly’ night. Outside in the foyer Passepartout was in the middle of his own bedtime shenanigans. The linen cupboards had been emptied of bedding, now distributed to passengers. A few sheets remained, lining the base of the cupboard that resembled the kind of box magicians’ assistants were sawn in. His bag was already in one end and now he placed one foot on the edge of the door and tried to haul himself in without banging his head. He slotted one leg in, then carefully drew in the other and lay down. He looked like he was in a coffin. I drew the door up to his neck just as an elderly man came to clean his teeth. He bent over the sink and cleared the back of his throat and nasal passages before hacking out the contents and gargling. As he looked up in the mirror he caught sight of Passepartout’s head poking out of the cupboard, where he was now propped up holding a torch and reading a copy of
A Fine Balance
in Norwegian. The man’s eyes flew out on stalks and he began to choke and laugh at the same time. I smiled politely and the man walked wordlessly towards the door, looking back over his shoulder until he was gone. The door flew open a second later and two children came tumbling through looking for the Crazy White Man in the Cupboard. Once the show was over, Passepartout fished a warm Kingfisher out of his bag and waved me off to bed.

Ed and Edwin were deep in conversation when I came back, trying to work out how three people could take it in turns to sleep in two beds through a period of eight hours. Given that, among three of us, we had three undergraduate and three postgraduate degrees, none of us could work out the answer.

By the morning I had slept for less than an hour. Climbing down from the berth I found Ed, his body contorted into an unnatural coil, his head resting on a copy of
Intimate
Adventures of an Office Girl
. Edwin was sliding off the end of the seat, his chin on his chest and one elbow across his face. Passepartout was hunched by the door and looked like he had died during the night and then been frozen. The doors were wide open and the train was rolling quietly past the backs of Delhi’s slums on approach to the station. It was nearing 7am and it was too early to consider complaining. As we hopped down the steps, Ed shivered.

‘Bloody hell, Delhi’s not warm, is it?’

At least he was still talking to me after his first proper Indian train journey, so I considered the feat a great success.

From the auto we peered between the bags on our laps, watching Delhi’s roadside activity. Mothers soaped children under water butts and young men wound up their lungis and washed using no more than a few metal pots of water. They might have been oblivious to general filth and squalor, but Indians’ morning cleansing was a religious rite. Cleanliness came next to godliness, but most Indians consider baths disgusting and you would struggle to find a tub in an average home in India.

At home, Indian mothers blanched as English mums dumped their entire brood into shallow water before bedtime, allowing their children to wallow in their own dirt. In the morning they would be bundled straight out of bed and into their clothes, then sent to school with little more than a wet flannel across the face. By contrast, Indian kids woke up to thunderous showers, or baths using a mug dunked into a huge bucket. The grand finale involved filling the bucket to the top and tipping the entire load over your head, yelling as the cascade tumbled mostly over the side of the tub. Ed took one look at the bucket in my cousin’s bathroom in Delhi. ‘What do you do with that?’

Ed’s flight to Sydney departed mid-afternoon, after which Passepartout and I went to visit an old friend. She was seated at her desk, her head bent over a prayer book in her lap. We crept up, slid into the opposite seats and waited until she had finished her page. She closed the book and looked up.

‘Oh my God, you are here again!’ Anusha Thawani laughed and slapped her forehead, though I detected an undertone of fear pricking her voice. It was only 3pm, so she had no excuse for abuse and seemed to be in a perky mood.

‘Here, take some forms, fill them in and give me.’

Nitin, the filmmaker, had provided useful information and there was indeed a new train travelling directly from Delhi to Khajuraho that Anusha tried to reserve. But as he had predicted it was fully booked due to the dance festival and we would have to travel there via Jhansi. After Khajuraho, Orchha and Jhansi, our plan was to swing west to Ahmedabad and snake across Gujarat to Dwarka, the westernmost tip of the railways. Anusha booked us onto the Bhopal Shatabdi from Jhansi back to Delhi so that we could experience the fastest train on the network. Anusha was a good sport. Our lack of knowledge gave her the chance to feed us titbits of information that gave the journey a good shake up. She handed over a new stack of tickets and waved us away.

‘We’re coming back again, you know,’ I called over my shoulder.

‘Oh God,’ she wailed, fanning her dupatta across her face.

Ten years ago, Passepartout had lived briefly in New Delhi and he was now itching to visit his old house in Rajendra Nagar. A long, dusty auto ride was unappealing, as was the prospect of sitting in traffic for two hours. Even though it was not a member of the Indian Railways, the Delhi Metro provided the perfect mode of transport and more importantly, meant that one more train could be ticked off the list. In terms of position, Central Secretariat seemed to be the equivalent of Oxford Circus and a sensible place to start. The metro was also one of the few bits of Delhi that truly functioned. Most of central Delhi was under tarpaulin or behind barriers in preparation for the Commonwealth Games. If preparation meant scratching bellies and strolling between inert cement mixers, swinging a child’s bucket and spade, then they were doing a fine job.