Around India in 80 Trains (4 page)

‘Hey, we’re going to a wedding. Coming?’ he asked.

‘Whose wedding is it?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know the girl, he knows her,’ he said, pointing behind to a friend who was on an unnecessarily loud phone call. ‘Come, we’ll all go.’

‘We can’t show up uninvited to a wedding.’

‘What’s there? We’ll go, have some good biryani then go to one more at the Taj Connemara for a drink.’

‘You can’t leave in the middle of someone’s wedding!’

‘That girl’s father is a recovering alcoholic, they won’t serve liquor at the wedding. Connemara is a Punju wedding, nicely they’ll stock the bar,’ he slobbered.

Bored friends often wedding-hop in the evenings. It is a cheaper alternative to going to a bar, then a restaurant, followed by a club. It does not matter whether or not you know the bride and groom, they are unlikely to know at least 90 per cent of their own guests. Someone among the gatecrashers can always offer a tenuous link to the hosts, even if it is simply that their maid once worked in their house.

‘Stinking rich that family, I tell you.’ Bobby peered at the map, then pulled a face, ‘Assam? Eh! You’ll get shot!’

Weddings in India are a place to showcase wealth—for both the hosts and the guests. If generator-run floodlights and the equivalent of a football pitch are required to accommodate your guests, so much the better. People will talk about you—at least until the next wedding. A friend from Norfolk had once accompanied us to a wedding in Hyderabad and observed a guest who had arrived looking as though she had just raided Mr T’s jewellery collection:

‘They must open their cupboards and think, “Gosh, what a lot of nice jewellery and clothes I own. Let me wear all of it.”’

As much fun as it would have been to spend the evening exploiting a stranger’s hospitality, we declined Bobby’s invitation and returned to the map. It seemed the most sensible way to spend the last night in Chennai.

Thursday 14 January heralded the first of 80 journeys and we were showered, packed, and foraging around for bottles of hand gel, paracetamol, pencils, pens, stamps, chargers and adaptors, that would no doubt remain buried at the bottom of a bag to be discovered at the end of the trip. There was too much to remember to even consider having last-minute cold feet. Sweetie had packed dinner for us, making me promise not to eat the food served on board the train. I ducked into the kitchen where I found Govindamma, the oldest member of staff, glowering at me from her corner on the floor, where she was chopping onions like an angry gnome. Her white hair was slicked into a low bun and her nose stud gleamed and glared at me.

‘She’s very cross with you.’ Sweetie explained, shaking a finger in my face.

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re not married!’

‘Don’t want to do marriage, baby?’ Pushpa asked. Pushpa was Govindamma’s daughter. She was head maid, perpetually pregnant and wore more jewellery than a temple deity.

‘Not this minute, no.’

She looked through me then turned on her heel, her anklets jangling as she stomped off. I promised Govindamma that I would get married, but that I just needed to take a few trains first. She glared at me and set to work torturing a handful of carrots.

In the driveway I found Passepartout inhaling deeply on a cigarette, with the bags nowhere in sight. He shrugged and raised his eyebrows with resignation as Thomas the butler appeared. While looking for a light switch Passepartout had pressed a bell, inadvertently summoning Thomas to his room, and he was still feeling guilty. Thomas had been with the household for over 50 years and had developed immunity to the process of ageing—with the exception of his tufts of ear hair, which had bloomed into great orchards. Now the ruler of the roost, he had delegated the job of fetching our luggage to an apprentice, who staggered behind him carrying both rucksacks like a pair of bin bags. Our send-off involved the gathering of the entire staff, including Govindamma, who hauled herself up from her corner long enough to come outside and smirk. Even the local dogs had sauntered up to the gate and were sniffing around, amid barks that sounded worryingly like laughter. As the car pulled out of the driveway, the staff waved, ominously covering their mouths with the edges of saris as though we were going off to war, never to be seen again.

Chennai Egmore station could be heard before it was seen. A cacophony erupted as we made our way under the arches, running after Subbu who, much to Passepartout’s despair, had been instructed to come with us to the platform. Whether this was a display of Imthiaz’s diligence in his surrogate role or his lack of faith in our ability remained unclear, though my suspicions leant strongly towards the latter. Indian stations are not designed for running. An assault course lay between us and Subbu, who was winding deeper and deeper into the sea of boxes, briefcases and body parts. We ducked and wove around the slalom of wooden carts wheeled by men with no sense of urgency, strings of hand-holding children, hobbling dogs, stacked hessian sacks, Aavin milk stands, nose-pickers, watersellers, booksellers and red-shirted porters. Subbu now stood by our train, under a digital sign reading B2, his face powder dry, as we bent double, sweat running down our bodies.

Engines hissed and thudded as they began to move, high-pitched announcements singing out in breakneck-speed Tamil, while the smell of dried fish and urine crept up my nostrils. Subbu gently moved me away from the carriage, where the produce from an occupied toilet was spilling onto the tracks and splattering onto the back of my legs. Passepartout leapt about, clicking away, and I smiled weakly for the camera before boarding the Anantapuri Express to Nagercoil.

Inside, a scene from
Dirty Dancing
was unfolding. The aisles were jammed with a mass rubbing of chests against backs, and thighs against backsides, as passengers’ friends and families (none of whom was travelling) refused to move. Subbu had already found our seats and placed our bags on each by the time we squeezed through, drenched and violated. Thanking him, we dug out bottles of Aquafina water, notebooks, pens, toilet paper, flannels and flip-flops, much to the amusement of our companions who had already chained up bags, hidden shoes, plugged in phones and sat down crosslegged, watching us. At 7:20pm the train jerked. Subbu bowed and slunk off as the train glided out of the station. Through the tinted window he was soon no more than a saluting silhouette.

We were on the move.

Passepartout and I had been allotted the side berths and we now sat face-to-face by the window with the kinds of smiles that accompany pre-wedding jitters and trips to the dentist.

With a sigh I touched my head against the glass and pushed back the curtain. A romantic evening haze hung over the treetops that sped past. I soon realised that it was due to a layer of filth on the window and Passepartout pointed out that an insect had laid eggs on the sill. In just under 14 hours we would arrive in Nagercoil. Another short train ride would take us to Kanyakumari, giving us an hour to settle before the solar eclipse began. After Kanyakumari the plan was to work up the western coast of the country through Kerala and Goa, along the Konkan Railway to Mumbai. From there we were due to board a newly launched luxury train, the Indian Maharaja-Deccan Odyssey. Luxury trains were not considered to embody the true Indian train experience, but it was foolish to ignore the one set of trains that so many swarmed to India to enjoy. After ending in Delhi, we would then worm our way back down the centre of the country to Kerala, and then temple-hop across Tamil Nadu. It was an awkward detour, but the Indian Maharaja had no other availability until March.

‘Could I have a look at the map?’ Passepartout asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Where is it?’ he asked, unclipping the top of my bag.

‘On the dresser in the bedroom.’

‘Oh. Useful.’

‘Yup.’

The train had now picked up speed and was racing through the outskirts of Chennai. I looked around. It was a comfort, if not a concern, that in 20 years the trains looked no different. Limp curtains shielded the windows, miniature cockroaches flitted across the seat backs and the fan still blew ineffectual wisps of air. A sign on the wall stated that between the hours of 9pm and 6am bunks must be put down for the comfort of others and passengers soon began to obey the rules. Paper bags of bedding were shaken out, sheets stretched and tucked in, and cardigans pulled on. Ladies jammed cotton wool into their ears and men stripped down to singlets. They flipped off the lights and soon began to snore. Passepartout, extending his role to valet, had made up my bed for me by the time I picked my way back from the toilet clutching a packet of Sainsbury’s wet wipes. Clambering up the ladder I rolled the covers up to my chin and lay back, staring at the ceiling as the blanket itched my face. A part of me had feared that I would board the first train and instantly regret my decision. What if I hated it? Four whole months within these blue walls lay ahead. My body rocked gently from side to side as a reassuring ‘da-dum … da-dum … da-dum …’ began to lull me to sleep. It was so peaceful.

And then it began.

At first it was low, then it began to grow. Someone in the compartment was snoring over the noise of the fan. Now the cotton wool made sense. After three sleepless hours I climbed down to check that the culprit was not choking on his own tongue and dying. I now wished I were dead. Tiptoeing in my socks, I stood by his berth and stared at him through the darkness, wondering how such a minuscule man could produce a noise of volcanic proportions. A Korean girl in the berth across from him sat up, her hair spiked like a porcupine, and began rocking back and forth as a baby in the middle berth began to whimper. The compartment was starting to resemble an asylum. Suddenly he rolled onto his side to face me and I ducked. The snoring stopped. A smile touched my lips and I climbed back into bed, just as he coughed and started up again.

Half an hour from Nagercoil I awoke to a polite nod from the Human Bulldozer who had folded away his sheets, thatched his hair over his bald patches and was now sitting next to his wife, who was painting a large black dot onto their baby’s cheek to ward off the evil eye. She had also painted in two eyebrows and drawn around her daughter’s eyes so she now resembled a cartoon character. I glanced in the mirror at my own reflection. I looked like I had slept in a bin. Passepartout had been up since 5am and was standing in the doorway watching the morning activities with a cup of coffee. As the train rolled towards the town, women dried laundry by riverbeds, boys covered in soap showered under hosepipes hung over branches of blossoms and a man handed out snacks to a herd of goats, giving a greedy one a quick slap across the face. Our bags were stacked in the doorway and as the train pulled into Nagercoil passengers pushed the load aside and jumped off while the train was still moving.