Around India in 80 Trains (20 page)

An orderly line of people floated down the escalator which had a sign that politely reminded passengers that, in addition to not sticking feet and fingers into the mechanics, shoes must be worn at all times. The station gleamed. Its neatness had rubbed off on passengers who had formed a real queue, one behind the other, waiting to buy tickets. Only tickets were not used on the metro. Having collected all our stubs to date, in a growing pile of colours and perforated edges, we had to make do with the Ludo token that popped out of a machine and was then swallowed at the turnstile.

Security was high, bags were searched and scanned and cameras forbidden. We scoured the platforms, crouching low on the hunt for discarded sweet wrappers and gum, to no avail. A space age machine slid up to the platform and I braced myself for the big push. It never came. Waiting passengers stepped to one side as the doors opened and they allowed others to descend before boarding. After the group had moved in, I spotted a row of arrows painted on the floor that directed passengers into an orderly queue. With a little bit of guidance, passengers were willing to abide by rules that made their own lives easier. Either that or I was still asleep on the Duronto Express and would wake to find it all a dream.

Before the doors slid shut again, we stepped into train 27 along with a pigeon who hopped in for a ride. Now here was a glimmer of India Shining. Inside was wide and spacious, signs were digitised and above all, the carriages were air-conditioned. A yawning gentleman sat in a seat by the doorway, his topi at a jaunty angle, below a sign saying ‘Ladies-Only’. Another gentleman standing by the doors kept his balance by inserting one finger into a hole for the air conditioning, but the compartment was otherwise empty. Ten minutes into the ride, the train reached Rajendra Nagar and we jumped off, greeted with a hug of humidity on the platform.

Passepartout barely recognised his old apartment, but received a thorough drenching from an old washerwoman who flung the soapy contents of her tub over a top-floor balcony just as he strode past. He pretended not to notice, though his shirt was stuck to his skin, while I squatted behind a parked car and cried tears of silent laughter. I missed Ed.

Just as train 28, the Sampark Kranti Express to Jhansi, creaked and began to move, I panicked and pushed my nose to the window. Passepartout had got off to find water and was nowhere to be seen. A grandfatherly gentleman with soft red cheeks and leaky eyes was staring at me, and had been since we boarded. Pretending not to notice, I watched him go through a laborious process of checking his pockets for his glasses, opening the case, polishing the lenses with a handkerchief, putting away the box and pushing his glasses onto his nose. Once he had finished, he stared at me properly, then beamed, his toothless mouth flopping into a loveable smile.

‘Where is your friend?’ he asked.

Confused, I looked around. He had boarded after Passepartout got off and our bags were hidden away, so how he knew there should be two of us was odd, but quite exciting. I hoped he was a soothsayer. At that moment Passepartout burst in after jogging to catch up with the train. He sat down, out of breath, and grinned, clutching two bottles of water.

‘Aha!’ The man raised a finger in the air. ‘I knew I recognised you’, he lisped, ‘you were sleeping in the cupboard on the train from Pune.’ He laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘I might be getting old, but I’m not senile yet.’

The journey to Jhansi flew by and an auto ride from the station brought us to the town of Orchha, a set of sandy crossroads where the only sound came from the bells of the Hanuman temple ringing in the distance. Once home to the Bundela kings, the palace in the centre of the town looked like a lonely version of the City Palace in Udaipur. Its cream walls were stained with black as though it had endured a great fire, with nobody but vultures as survivors: they slouched on the tips of domes, gathered on turrets, or squatted on balconies like feathered gargoyles, fending off visitors. Beyond the walls, an emerald forest carpeted the land for miles with tips of turrets poking up in between the treetops, the remnants of broken shrines, bouncing back the last of the evening sunshine.

Down the main street, stall-owners had settled cross-legged before pyramids of powders, as though an industrial chemistry experiment was about to take place. A puff of sky-blue powder shot up like a mushroom cloud and ripples of laughter broke the stillness as a group of Rin-soap coloured teenagers appeared from around the corner, reaching out to smear handfuls of turquoise over each other’s hair, faces and necks. A sheet of yellow spray came flying out from behind a wall as two girls darted across the street, splashed like rainbows with white teeth.

And so began the festival of Holi. Despite its Hindu origins, Holi is deemed one of the more secular festivals in India and a celebration of spring. Its raucous and relaxed nature appeals to every faith, class and caste and it is impossible not to be sucked into the tornado of colour and noise. Over a banana lassi, we watched as scores of teenagers ran through the streets flinging colours in the air, heralding the change of season when new shoots grew, buds burst open and winter was forgotten. Despite our quirks, Passepartout and I had ironed out our differences and now seemed as good a time as any to forget the old, wave goodbye to the cold and welcome in the new.

9 | Sunburn and Spasms

A skinny figure crept against the wall, darting from shadow to shadow, then peered over the balcony. He ducked and slowly peeked through the bars.

‘Fack!’ he cursed, jumping back into the middle of the terrace, where he took a packet of Davidoff cigarettes from his pocket, pulled out a Gold Flake and parked it on the edge of his lips. Thinning his eyes, he blew a smoke ring into the air, then edged back over to the balcony and looked down again. The boy was wearing a baggy T-shirt and drainpipe jeans that hung off his ballerina-sized waist. It was as though he had shrunk in the wash and his clothes no longer fitted.

‘What are you doing?’ Passepartout asked.

‘Fishing,’ came the stony reply. His racoon eyes followed a movement below the balcony.

‘Oh, I didn’t realise you could fish near here, where do you go?’

‘No’, he smirked, ‘
fishing
’. He made a reeling-in motion as two European girls in vest tops walked by below. I looked down to where the main street was quietening for the evening. Hurricane lamps and bald bulbs dangling from wire lit up stalls curtained with beads and stacked with pottery, lamps and statues of Hanuman. A girl with bleached hair coiled at the nape of her neck was turning over an oil lamp, her shoulders shining in the light. Her friend paid for a necklace and put it on, allowing the pendant to slip into her cleavage. The boy’s eyes gleamed. Both girls turned into our hotel and he leapt back again.

‘Ah fack!’ he cursed, tottering around in a circle and rummaging in his pocket for his phone.

‘What’s the matter?’ I frowned.

‘I’ve double-booked a date tonight.’

He looked no more than sixteen. Passepartout spat a mouthful of beer back into the bottle.

‘So, which one is first?’ he asked.

‘The bald one,’ the boy grinned, referring to the girl with cropped brown hair and the motherly bosom. ‘European girls are easy, they sleep with one guy one night and then another guy the next night. I love being here, I have a different one every night —but I didn’t know those two were friends. I’m doing the other one later.’

Ricky Joshi was 22 and lived in Khajuraho, but his ‘business’ brought him to Orchha. He claimed his father was a retired cardiothoracic surgeon and his mother an ex-law professor, who now ran a shop in Khajuraho. Ricky was pally with the owner of our hotel who allowed him to lurk on the terrace at night, supplying potent charas to grateful guests, a couple of whom were flopping about in the shadows.

‘So what do you do for a living, then?’ Passepartout put down his bottle and dragged his chair closer to listen.

‘This and that … everyone knows me in Khajuraho. You just have to say “Ricky Joshi” and anyone will tell you where you can find me. So, Indian girl’, he winked, ‘what are you doing here?’ He pointed his cigarette at Passepartout who was laughing behind his laptop. ‘You two a couple or what?’

‘No.’

He briefly leered at me, then ignored me and turned to Passepartout.

‘Indian girls are a nightmare.’

‘Why?

‘They just want you to say you love them. You have to say that shit to them or they won’t get into bed with you. They’re a pain in the ass.’

I looked up over my book. ‘Maybe that’s because once you’re done, you bolt to the next blonde you can find.’

He took this as a compliment, bobbing his head and lighting another cigarette. ‘So how long are you staying here for?’

‘We’re leaving tomorrow for the Khajuraho dance festival.’

‘It finished last week.’

‘What?’

‘Yeah, they moved it.’

Suddenly the little town drowned in blackness as a power cut hit. Dotted along the street were halos of light from candles in doorways and stoves browning late-night rotis. A cloud sailed by overhead, revealing a milky moon that spilt a patch of light across the terrace, as the resident Roadside Romeo began a story about his night with two Cathay Pacific air hostesses. I took the opportunity to bid goodnight to Mr Joshi, while Passepartout amused himself for a little longer.

No trains ran between Orchha and Khajuraho, forcing us to take a shared taxi. It was apparently owned by Ricky, who was skulking under a nearby tree watching two girls with rucksacks climb out of an auto. The long car journey made me realise that my growing clinginess to the comforts of train travel was pulling me towards professional laziness. It had also allowed me to develop an affinity for poking my nose into strangers’ affairs, a habit less sustainable in taxis and buses. An Indian train ticket was a permit to trespass on the intimacies of other people’s lives and certain improprieties became instantly acceptable: tearing strips of chapatti from a man I had known for five minutes; sticking my fingers into the masala potato his wife had lovingly packed that afternoon; lying in bed watching a dishevelled stranger mutter and twitch in his sleep; eavesdropping on boyfriend troubles and mother-in-law disputes; or joining a wedding party, clapping and singing along as their gifts of glass bangles slipped over my elbows. Finally, my destination would tap at the window, rudely interrupting and heralding a curtain call on the show. Cramped, thirsty, carsick and bored, we arrived into Khajuraho after three hours of pining for open doorways, tea and a couple of bent paperbacks.