Around India in 80 Trains (31 page)

‘Deal.’

Anusha handed me the ticket to Amritsar, scribbling the details into her logbook and then, remembering it was missing, fixed her scowl back into place. I stuffed my tickets into my bag and waved.

‘Be careful,’ she warned.

A colleague in London had put me in touch with a friend of his who lived in Delhi. Dan was a television reporter for a well-known American network. That night we arranged to meet in a bar in Sundar Nagar. A steamroller of a man sat at the bar with a buzz cut and beard, his shirt sleeves rolled up and a whisky in one hand. If he stretched too hard his pecs would have split his shirt in two.

‘Hey, I thought there were two of you?’

I dumped my Fab India clutch bag on the bartop. ‘How much time have you got?’

‘Man, this sounds good. What are you drinking?’ Dan slapped a stool. ‘Hop on up.’

Over a healthy dose of Bombay Sapphire, I jogged him through the previous two months, skimming over the intricacies. He rested his chin on his fist.

‘Come on, tell me the good bits.’

I recounted the Sai Baba debate in Madurai and his face lit up.

‘There are a lot of intelligent people who have relevant things to say on these subjects, but others are just so incredibly boring. I mean, jeez I’m Jewish, but barely. Who cares?’

He ordered a pizza with rocket and parma ham and swirled the dregs of his whisky, raising one finger to the barman. Pointing at my empty glass, he raised an eyebrow. I wrinkled my nose and he swiped his hand.

‘Ah c’monnnnnn, God knows you need it.’

Six whiskies and two pizzas later, Dan had recharged his journalistic charms enough to twist out the details of my journey, which, loosened by six gins, was not such a hard task. I relayed the IPL conversation and he roared and slapped the bar top.

‘Oh my God, that is hilarious!’ He put his head down on the bar and wiped tears with the edge of his palm. ‘Tell me more, I can’t get enough of this!’

I started to laugh and he rocked back on his stool, swinging around in a circle and hooting with laughter.

‘So you’re a cricket fan?’ he asked.

‘Hell, yes.’

‘India or England?’

‘England. I’ll support India if they play anyone else, but if there’s a face- off, it’s always England.’

‘Wow, controversial.’

‘Well, I grew up in Edgbaston and supported Warwickshire at school, so it would have been weird to then start rooting for the other side at international level. Besides, I was born in England, bred in England and don’t see why I would suddenly start cheering for another country.’

‘Fair play. You know Kapil Dev lives just around the corner.’

‘Really?’

‘Yup, I can show you his place. But first I need a cigarette.’

We walked outside and across the square to where a tobacco wallah was dozing in his hut.

Dan raised one finger again and a single cigarette was pulled out of a packet and handed over.

‘I didn’t know you could buy single cigarettes!’

He sparked up and squinted through the cloud of smoke.

‘You can do anything you want in India.’

Just around the corner was a fenced green with swings and slides surrounded by a series of sprawling houses set back from the road. Dan stopped in front of a gated home flanked by two pillars and guarded by two chowkidars—one asleep inside the gate, and one asleep outside the gate.

‘How do you know this is his house?’

Dan pointed to behind the chowkidar’s hut, which obscured a backlit plaque that said, quite simply:

K. DEV

For a few moments we watched the two security guards sleeping, one with his chin on his chest, the other with his head rolling back over the rim of the chair. His arms dangled to the sides and a blanket slipped off his knees. Having had our fill, we began to walk down the road as a pack of pye-dogs followed, bored with their usual nightly jaunt and up for a fight. Dan waved them off and stamped after them. They scampered backwards, growling from a safe distance.

‘Wow’, I began, ‘he must have the shittest security in all of Delhi.’

‘I know, right?’

We walked on in silence. Crickets and the occasional bark broke the stillness and our footsteps crunched over the rocks and uneven tarmac. I could not stand it any more.

‘I bet I could climb over that gate without either of them waking up.’

‘Give you 500 rupees if you do.’

‘Done.’

Filled with a renewed sense of purpose, we raced back around the corner, tailed by the pye-dogs who could sense something was afoot. Both chowkidars were still asleep. Dan hid beneath the shadows of a gulmohar tree next to a car, holding my handbag, already bent double in anticipation.

‘Fuck, my wife would kill me if she saw this …’ he groaned.

I crept forward, kicking my Havaianas to one side and hitched my skirt above my knees, gauging the potential for footholds. It looked relatively easy. Pulling myself up, I fixed my toes between the wrought iron swirls, and worked my way up the bars, reaching the top in under a minute. I edged across to the pillar and then squatted on the top, waving at Dan as a neighbouring chowkidar came over to ask what was going on. Dan chucked my handbag behind the car, pointed at me, then made drinking gestures. The chowkidar nodded in acknowledgment. They shook hands, clapped each other on the back and he walked off. Just as I was about to climb down, the guard inside the driveway woke up.

I froze and looked at Dan whose eyes had become a pair of saucers. He backed further into the shadows and I sat like Rodin’s
The Thinker
, propped up on my elbow. Stretching both arms out in front of him, the guard leant forward and cleared a volume of phlegm from his lungs. He bent forward to pick up the blanket, then stood up. Shuffling across the driveway, he stopped below me as the gins began to fill my bladder with fear. One glance upward and he would have seen me trembling above his head. Looking around he caught sight of the other Sleeping Beauty, snoring against the hut. Vindicated, he sat back down, pulled the blanket across his knees and scratched the back of his neck. I had almost stopped breathing and my legs had fallen victim to an army of mosquitoes thriving off my paralysis.

Within a few moments a croaking came from below.

‘Crggghhh.’

‘Crgggggggghhhhhhhhh.’

‘Crgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh.’

Convinced that he was finally asleep again, I waved a foot around the gate, looking for a hold and inched my way down, just as the curtains in the bedroom began to twitch and a light came on. Jumping down the last metre or two, with a stripe of grime bisecting my front, I grabbed my flip-flops and we fled around the corner, collapsing on the ground with relief. Dan pulled a wad of notes from his breast pocket and peeled off a 500-rupee note.

‘You earned it. Though I’d have paid a fuck load more to see you get caught.’

Sunshine blazed around the rim of the curtains, desperate to push its way into my room. It was 6am and the Shatabdi to Amritsar was due to depart at 7:20am. Sweeping back the curtains I looked down across the gardens. Walkers were powering past in salwar kameez and trainers, girls bounded by in baggy T-shirts, their ponytails flying from side to side and the koels were cooing in approval. With a cup of tea slicked with skin, I sat down to check my emails before leaving for Amritsar.

One jumped out.

An invitation.

Dear Monisha

Please find below your train ticket.

Hope this is in order.

Best regards.

The Golden Chariot

Attached was an itinerary.

Bangalore-Mysore-Hasan-Hampi-Gadag-Goa-Bangalore

(Check In time is at 12:00pm at Leela Palace.)

That settled it. Chennai, skinny jeans and burning my rucksack could wait. Services had been temporarily suspended, but now all lines were up and running as normal.

14 | Monty Python at the Wagah Border

Over the previous two months, while Passepartout had been playing mute, ranting or simply ignoring me, I had still enjoyed the pleasures of fine company. Jhumpa Lahiri had stayed up with me one night when I could not sleep, Paul Theroux had grumbled to me from Trichy to Chennai and Amartya Sen had detailed the Hindutva movement and India’s history of heterodoxy. Books had been my saviours, but I was now carrying a library on my back. A Kindle would have been kinder to my spine, but these books were now my friends, and they had shaped the curves of my journey. Arundhati Roy had beckoned me to Kerala, Suketu Mehta to Mumbai and Kiran Desai was soon to entice me to Darjeeling. Swapping books with fellow travellers and rummaging through bargain basements to find a well-chewed copy of a classic was a joy that no Kindle could match. On a train to Hyderabad I had opened a copy of
Maximum City
to find a handwritten note:

To the one I love

14
^th
Feb ‘05

Lexxy

PS: Enjoy …’

Whether the book had been traded in because it had not been enjoyed, or because Lexxy’s love was not reciprocated, added an extra layer of intrigue. How far had the book travelled? Why had its owner underlined those sections? What were they eating when they spilt food across those pages?

While waiting for the Amritsar Swarna Shatabdi, I went in search of a new friend to come along for the ride. Towards the end of the platform, a yawning youth manned a hut strung with comics and magazines. He stood with one hand wrapped around his back, clutching his opposite elbow, and with his free hand rearranged the rows of magazines like a game of Solitaire. Scouring the covers, I realised that they were mostly in Hindi. Chetan Bhagat’s books were the only English choice but I had finished them all. I stood on my tiptoes to peer inside the hut hoping at least to spot a faded Agatha Christie or two.

‘Ma’am
Two States
very nice.’

‘Thank you, but I’ve read them all,’ I said, waving my hands at the stack.

Still holding his elbow he passed me another book and flicked the cover in approval. It featured a shiny man biting the lacy underwear of a woman who had lost key items of clothing on her way to a polo match. I passed it back.

‘Can I come inside and have a look?’