Around India in 80 Trains (22 page)

I watched the butter dribbling down the dome of rice before me. Raising my eyelids up to him was exhausting, but I did not need to see his expression to hear the smugness melting into his voice.

‘Look, I feel like shit already, I don’t need you sitting here and telling me how terrible it’s going to be. I’m fully aware of that.’

He fixed me with an even look.

‘You don’t have to be a bitch, all right? I get that you’re sick, but if you’re going to be like this we can get the bill and leave.’

After a half-hearted poke at the bowl, we paid up and left. Passepartout strode on ahead to the hotel while I wobbled behind like Bambi, pausing briefly to vomit quietly into an open concrete bin full of cats.

Train 31, the overnight Somnath Express to Veraval in Gujarat was scheduled for a 10pm departure, but before we flagged down an auto, Passepartout stopped to buy himself a watch. Grave warnings of theft on the railways had prompted us to relieve ourselves of watches and jewellery in Chennai, but it all felt a little unnecessary. Our farewell party, filled with forecasts of doom and foreboding, smacked of the Indian tendency to exaggerate the dangers of anywhere that lay outside their own immediate surroundings, which were, of course, perfect in every way. We had promised not to take the train through Bihar, where as recently as seven years ago, kidnapping had been the most lucrative industry. In turn I was promised that dacoits would sneak on board at night and apply oil to my wrists to remove my grandma’s gold bangles from my arm. But I liked carrying a little part of her with me, and if anyone had the gall to try and twist the diamond stud out of my nose, I would happily give it to them, along with the bangles, as a commendation for bravery.

We were both watch-less and our movements were, more than ever, reliant on punctuality. Trains were rarely delayed and using phones to tell the time was risky in case the batteries died, while asking a passerby was as reliable as using a sun dial. Ahmedabad’s backstreets sold a bizarre range of goods from boxed underwear, advertised by tanned Americans wearing banana hammocks, to frilly dresses and shoes for toddlers, and fake jewellery. Pleased as punch with his new faux Rolex, Passepartout swanned off to hail an auto. This smelt like a recipe for disaster. Roving magpies were unlikely to believe that a Norwegian carrying two Nikons and a MacBook Pro would be wearing a 300-rupee piece of junk from Ramanlal Sheth Marg. However, contrary to horror stories, Passepartout would later leave his credit cards, money and passport in the toilet of a train to Varanasi, only to have them returned by a fellow passenger who then refused a finder’s fee.

A sandy, sharp-eared dog picked her way through a pile of wicker baskets covering the platform and sniffed at each one in turn, licking gingerly at a wet patch. Overhead the sign read 9221, signalling our train to Veraval. She cowered as we neared, her ears flattening as we heaved ourselves up the steps and into the compartment. Pulling my feet into a cross-legged position, I dug out my redundant logbook and thumbed through the stacks of ticket stubs, hotel receipts, menus and business cards, as a colourful image of the journey formed an unfinished jigsaw in my head. Certain names made me smile, others made me sad, but overall I was touched by the number of people who had offered help, advice, food—and even a bed for the night. My body was now fixed in a perpetual state of rocking from side to side and I barely noticed the occasional cockroach or mucky floors. The compartment was my safe-house and it was beginning to feel like home.

Threading deeper through Gujarat brought a new dynamic to our undertaking. With the exception of Jaipur, I had until now, never ventured north of Mumbai. Gujarat was home to the last sanctuary for Asiatic lions and the island of Diu, a Portuguese colony relatively unknown to westerners infatuated with Goa. But above all, reaching Dwarka was the highest priority. Along with Rameshwaram, Badrinath and Puri, it was one of the four
dhams
, or abodes of the Gods, regarded as the holiest places of pilgrimage. Dwarka was revered as the home of Lord Krishna. By the time the Somnath Express pulled into Veraval the next morning, it was barely 6am and Passepartout’s new watch had already stopped working.

The skies were yet to lighten in the fog, which clung to my sleeves and hair in a layer of sparkles. Passengers vanished quickly through the murkiness, leaving nothing but rows of empty carriages that soon merged eerily into the darkness, like a ghost train. Unsure which way to go, we stared up and down the platform, when a nose suddenly appeared in the doorway of the next carriage. It was followed by a sandy body that gauged the situation carefully before hopping out of the door and onto the platform. It was the dog from Ahmedabad. She began to trot confidently towards the exit, and seeing as she knew where she was going, we followed her and came out at the front of Veraval station.

Within minutes the sky whitened and shutters began to snap upwards on shop fronts. There was a two-hour wait before the passenger train to Talana, which connected the mainland to Diu, so we looked around for a good coffee spot. Across the road was a handpainted sign for Somtirth Guest House, so we ventured up the stairs where a man in bright blue pyjamas and a matching T-shirt was sitting at a desk. He looked up and smiled with an endearing overbite.

‘Come-come, sit-sit.’ He gestured to the couch in his reception, which was little more than the tiled hallway of his home, with a few posters of the Somnath temple on the walls and a couple of faded cushions. Exhausted, we decided to give the temple a miss. The room rate was less than the normal price we paid for breakfasts, so I asked if we could have a room for a few hours to nap and shower. He brought out two frothing glasses of coffee.

‘I am Vijay. There is plenty of time for the train. You’re very welcome to stay here.’

Vijay disappeared, then returned with a bunch of keys. Wrestling with bolts and padlocks, he opened up one of the rooms so I could clean my teeth and shower, after which he sat with us both, perched a pair of well-thumbed glasses onto his nose and pulled out a map of Gujarat.

‘Diu is a very nice place. Very calm, quiet. But you will see many people …’ he pointed a thumb into his mouth and rolled his eyes back into his head. Gujarat was a dry state but Diu was a Union Territory and alcohol was tax-free. The little island was used by Gujaratis—much the same as the English used Ibiza—to go and get hammered.

With a blunt pencil, Vijay made a shortlist of the best spots in Diu and tore the page out of a child’s exercise book, handing it over. As I counted out the payment for the room and the coffees, he held up his palm and screwed his eyes shut.

‘No ma’am, this is being my pleasure. No need.’

Reaching Diu was awkward, but this made the journey all the more fun as it involved two more passenger trains: one from Veraval to Talana; then another from Talana to Una—the second of which we only discovered while on the first. Wedged in between a farmer with magnificent tufts of white hair winding out of his shirt, and a lady with earlobes that swung low by her chin, we began another sign-language conversation with our companions. As train 32 paused at Talana, a bow-legged man boarded with a set of old scales over one shoulder and a basket of sapotas balanced against his hip, small round fruit that tasted faintly of caramel. The farmer bought a paper bagful and passed them around the compartment, smiling with a set of teeth that looked as though he had cleaned them with beetroot. Licking juice from my wrist I muttered that we were going to Diu, prompting the compartment to wave and point across the track at a train that was about to move. Grabbing our bags, a couple of teenagers on mobile phones helped us off the train and I stumbled across the rocks, trying to reach the ladder to the doorway. My wet fingers slid from the railing and halfway up the ladder, I felt the weight of my rucksack tipping backwards, taking me with it. I lost my footing and one handhold and began flailing like an upturned beetle, when two pairs of hands shoved my bag from below, boosting me up through the doorway, where I fell onto my knees as train number 33 began to move.

10 | Oh My Dog!

An empty packet of Parle-G biscuits blew across the ground and came to rest by my bag as our auto driver saluted, yanked the rip-cord and put-putted his way up the street. We looked around. Shutters were down, padlocks in place and the dusty streets deserted. The biscuit packet lifted briefly on the breeze and came to rest in the middle of the street. Its creepy picture of the little girl with a missing finger was the only other face around. We had stumbled upon a technicolour ghost town, or at the very least the set of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, where the whole town would suddenly fling open the bright orange shutters and leap through the pink doorways in chorus. But for now there was no sign of human activity. It was late afternoon and the sun blazed down from a low, china-blue sky, chalk-marked with wisps of cloud, as we set off on a hunt for signs of life.

Since the early 16
^th
century, after their occupation of Goa, the Portuguese had been eyeing the tiny island of Diu, which they saw as key to controlling the northeastern Arabian Sea. In 1535, after several unsuccessful attempts to find a foothold, they spotted a way in. Bahadur Shah, ruler of the Gujarat Sultanate, was embroiled in a battle against the Mughal emperor Humayun, so the Portuguese waged an alliance with Shah and were given Diu as a reward for their support. However, it became a violent struggle to rid the island of its Mediterranean settlers, and for over 400 years Diu remained under their control until December 1961, when the Indian government reclaimed it along with its sister island, Daman, both of which are now governed by Delhi as a Union Territory. Though the majority of Portuguese had left, one legacy remained, which explained the seemingly lifeless town: the siesta.

Salty wind followed us down the streets, past low-roofed houses painted like sugared almonds. Although their walls were faded and stained with patches of decay, their original pastels perked up the crumbling façades, suggesting that the town was once a jolly place to live in. Now it looked in need of a good wash.

Diu was originally home to a number of Catholic churches, but as the island’s Christian community had dwindled, they had reduced to three: St Paul’s, where mass was celebrated every day; St Francis of Assisi, now partly used as a hospital and St Thomas’s, a small museum displaying wooden relics. It was at this third and final house of God that we chose to seek sanctuary. Built into the back of the church was a handful of rooms run by George, a gentle Goan who now lived on one floor of the conversion with his two children and his wife, who was standing at the corner of the church, waving us over.