Finding Arun (9 page)

Beginning to adjust to the Indian way of doing
things, on arriving at platform two, Aaron was unsurprised to find
it crowded with people standing, sitting and laying wherever they
felt the inclination. It seemed that everyone in Bhubaneswar was at
the station that morning, whether they were making a journey or
not. Passengers huddled around the information boards attempting to
locate their carriage numbers, whilst porters in crimson shirts
skirted by, oversized luggage balanced precariously on their heads.
Narrowly avoiding a collision with one such porter, Aaron jumped
onto one of the second class carriages and squeezed past the
disembarking passengers in search of a seat, careful to avoid
clobbering them with his backpack.

He walked relentlessly up and down the four cramped
carriages, but no seats were available and with reservations not
possible for his class of travel, reluctantly he was forced to
stand. Towering over his fellow passengers, standing only served to
draw more attention to Aaron and he noted that people were freely
staring at him again in wide-eyed fascination. Yet they were unlike
those that he had observed inside the station, appearing less
well-to-do and more plainly clothed. Feeling a little embarrassed,
he smiled nervously at those that caught his eye; a gesture that
quickly seemed to work to his advantage. Before long a young
gentleman had returned his smile and sidled up so closely to his
neighbour that he may as well have been in her lap. He patted the
space that he had cleared beside him on the bench-style seating and
wordlessly encouraged Aaron to sit down.

It was a tight fit with six of them on the bench,
and in the stifling heat of the carriage the skin on their knees
became bound to one another by the sticky dampness of their sweat.
Yet Aaron was grateful for the opportunity to rest his legs and
relieved that he would not have to stand in the stuffy carriage for
the entire two-hour journey to Puri. He tucked his backpack neatly
beneath the seat and nodded appreciatively at the young gentleman,
who rather eerily was still grinning inanely at him. Conversely,
the woman seated to his right barely acknowledged his presence,
before turning her attention to the window, where it appeared that
her entire family had congregated to see her off.

They swarmed around the open window, busily
chattering away and offering her gifts of bananas and sweets for
the journey, much to the envy of the other passengers seated around
her. Aaron settled back against the hard plastic seating and
watched with interest while the family members continued to bestow
gifts upon the woman. He wasn’t able to understand anything that
they were saying, but a tearful, elderly-looking lady at the centre
of the furore seemed particularly concerned for the woman’s welfare
in a manner reminiscent of Aunt Ruby just before he had left
London.

A few moments later the train jolted to life and
commenced its journey to Puri, the waves and shouts of those left
behind on the platform slowly fading into the distance. Two
conductors dressed smartly in navy-blue blazers appeared and asked
to see their tickets, which caused a lot of commotion as passengers
rifled through their many bags and pockets in order to locate their
ticket stubs. All the fussing irritated Aaron, but the conductors
waited calmly, leaving him amazed by their ability to remain cool,
despite their heavy clothing and the heat. He had barely tucked the
thin slip back into his travel wallet, before the smiling young
gentleman who had procured his seat started to question him in much
the same way that the taxi driver had earlier that day.

Where did he come from and where was he going, the
young man wanted to know. What did he do for a job and how much
money did he make? Was he married and did he have children? The
barrage of questions was relentless and their personal nature felt
somewhat intrusive to Aaron, not least because their conversation
had attracted a captive audience in the carriage. He did his best
to answer each question as vaguely as possible, but this only
served to fuel the young gentleman’s curiosity and it wasn’t long
before Aaron’s patience had worn thin. He understood that they were
intrigued by the presence of a foreigner, but he was too hot and
exhausted to care, and quickly beginning to wish that he had stayed
at home after all.

The young man's questions were punctuated by the
loud cries of neatly uniformed Indian Railways vendors sweeping
through the aisles selling water, tea and a host of delicacies that
Aaron was unable to identify. Fluffy white balls accompanied by
dark runny sauces, aromatic bread and potato mixtures garnished
with bright green herbs and a strange collection of multicoloured
chutneys all went swinging by. Aaron was hungry and though his
stomach’s interest was piqued by the array of unfamiliar foods, his
head remained wary of the hygiene standards that might have been
used during their preparation. However the passengers seated around
him were less hesitant and everyone, including the woman who had
enough food from her family to feed the entire train, appeared to
be tucking into something.

The myriad smells quickly intermingled with the
sweaty scent of the train’s passengers, until a strong, spicy,
stench perfumed the entire carriage causing Aaron to gag
involuntarily. He covered his nose and mouth with his hands and
willed the feeling of nausea to subside, entirely overwhelmed by
the multitude of aromas. After a few minutes, the vendors passed
into the next carriage and when the stench eased, Aaron found
himself able to breathe openly again. The uniformed vendors were
quickly replaced by unofficial vendors in tattier clothes who
loudly proffered everything from cashew nuts and fruit, to toys,
games and magazines. Still hungry, Aaron determined that packaged
food was a safer option and a few rupees later he was greedily
shoving handfuls of cashew nuts into his hungry mouth.

The train was now hurtling along the tracks at
speed, treating him to his first sights of rural Indian life. Women
in brightly coloured saris could be seen working the rice paddies
or sidling down terracotta dirt paths balancing water pots on their
heads and babies on their backs. Farmers tended lovingly to their
fields beneath the baking sun, whilst water buffalo bathed coolly
in ponds using their tails to swat away feasting flies. Uniformed
schoolboys raced excitedly alongside the train on their bicycles
and gaggles of girls waved shyly at the people passing them by. It
was a whole other world and, transfixed, Aaron felt the buzz of
excitement growing in his veins. Life seemed simplistic, yet wholly
satisfying for the people beyond the train. They had nothing
compared to what he had back home, but as they went about their
morning rituals there was a contentment evident that was rarely
found in the miserable faces of London’s busy urbanites.

Inside the train, the procession continued with a
catwalk of beggars competing for change and food scraps, in a
battle to demonstrate who was the worst off. A scrawny, elderly man
with both his lower limbs missing shuffled through the aisle on his
hands and torso, occasionally stopping to massage his stomach for
added emphasis. A blind man with a terrible voice burst into
religious song and gently bumped his way along the aisle, hands
outstretched to receive whatever was offered. Rag-clothed children
pleaded pitifully with their eyes and mumbled incomprehensibly
while they stroked the arms of fellow passengers, trying to rouse
their sympathy. And then came the more unusual characters.
Transgender men, cloaked in acid-coloured saris and heavily caked
in make-up, stalked haughtily through the carriage clapping loudly
and demanding money, followed by a wild-haired man aggressively
waving a silver tray in passengers’ faces whilst yelling
unintelligibly.

Aaron didn’t know where to look or what to say. He
had never experienced such an abject display of poverty and he
couldn’t decide whether making a donation would help or simply
encourage the string of desperate behaviours he had just witnessed.
His fellow passengers appeared to be ignoring the spectacle and
even the smiling young gentleman, who had so kindly made space for
Aaron to sit down, was violently shooing away the beggars’
advances. It might have been his imagination, but as each beggar
inched closer he got the distinct feeling that they were
specifically directing their pleas at him, as though being foreign
obligated him to donate the most. He couldn’t bear the dismal looks
in their eyes and feeling slightly ashamed, he stared at his feet,
pretending to fiddle with the straps of his backpack, until the
parade passed into the next carriage.

More questions, food vendors and beggars later, the
train finally began to slow its pace on the approach to Puri. When
it pulled into the station it was greeted by yet another huge crowd
lining the length of the platform. Eager to be reunited, people
could be seen craning their necks in search of their loved ones and
jostling one another to get closer to the arriving train.
Retrieving his backpack from beneath the seat, Aaron braced himself
for the mass exodus and stood to join the long queue of passengers
waiting to disembark the train. There was a lot of commotion coming
from the stretch of platform immediately outside of the carriage
window and out of the corner of his eye Aaron spied someone
frantically jumping up and down, trying to gain his attention. He
leant towards the window for a closer inspection, much to the
annoyance of the woman beside him, who was now being greeted by a
crowd twice the size of the one that had seen her off in
Bhubaneswar. A small, impeccably dressed man was pointing and
waving something animatedly at him from deep within the crowd, but
he couldn’t make out what it was. By the time he finally stepped
off the train, the small man had wrestled his way to the front of
the crowd and, beaming up at him, proudly presented a small white
placard bearing the words:

MAYFAIR BEACH RESORT HOTEL

MR RUTHERFORD, AARON

‘YOU really shouldn’t have.’

‘It’s no trouble at all.’

‘I would have been fine staying somewhere simple;
this is too much.’

‘Simple is not the same as secure. It’s important to
make sure that you are safe out there, especially since you refused
to take the phone that I gave you.’

‘It’s a nice phone; I didn’t want it to get damaged
or stolen.’

‘And I don’t want you to get damaged, or worse. At
least this way I know exactly where you are and how to reach you.
I’m told the Mayfair has a very good reputation.’

Aaron sighed to himself; it was pointless to
argue.

‘Thank you, Arthur.’

‘You’re welcome. Now, make sure you look after
yourself and don’t forget to call every few days.’

‘I won’t.’

There was an awkward silence at the other end of the
phone.

‘Bye then.’

‘Bye,’ finished Aaron, the dialling tone sounding
before he had replaced the receiver on its base.

He sat back on the king-sized bed and looked around
the immaculately presented room; Arthur clearly had more money than
sense. The hotel was far more luxurious than he needed or deserved,
and he dreaded to think how much the nightly rate must be. The
thinly veiled look of surprise on the receptionist’s face when he
had checked in was enough for him to know that hot, sweaty
backpackers were not their usual clientele. Still, if it kept
Arthur’s mind at ease and meant that he wouldn’t harangue Aaron on
a daily basis – the real reason that Aaron had rejected the mobile
phone – then perhaps it was for the best. And if nothing else, the
air-conditioning and comfortable bed were welcome benefits after
the hours of travelling that he had endured.

It was early afternoon in Puri and though physically
Aaron’s body demanded rest from him, mentally he was too excited to
sleep. He took a long, cold shower, in part to freshen up and in
part to distract himself from the growing anticipation in the pit
of his stomach. After the unexpected events of the previous few
weeks he had finally arrived in Puri, his birthplace and the home
of his biological mother. It was a long shot, but the day could yet
yield their first meeting in nineteen years and Aaron was conscious
of making the right impression, whatever that was. He opened up his
backpack and, already sweating profusely from the heat, held up
various items of clothing in front of the mirror, agonising over
what to wear. After much deliberation, he settled on a
loose-fitting, white cotton shirt and a smart pair of
stone-coloured shorts, a compromise between his desire to appear
well-groomed and the need to keep cool.

For several minutes he fished around in the top
compartment of his backpack, until he found the neatly folded
notepaper on which Arthur had written the address of the refuge. He
tucked it protectively into the top pocket of his shirt and
continued to rummage through his effects in search of the small
selection of Kalpana’s letters that he had brought with him. He had
reread them several times since his initial discovery and there
were so many more questions that he now had for her, but his real
reason for bringing them was fear. Fear that Kalpana wouldn’t
recognise him, fear that she wouldn’t believe that he was anything
more than an imposter, and fear that she might reject him now that
he was finally there. The letters were present as much for evidence
of his identity as for reassuring himself that Kalpana wished to
see him. Rationally he knew that she had expressed that desire, but
every now and then the niggling doubts would overwhelm him to the
extent that he would question whether the whole saga was a huge
misunderstanding.

Eventually he found Kalpana’s letters clustered in a
small brown envelope nestled between his boxer shorts. He carefully
stowed them in the back pocket of his shorts and stood to consult
himself in the mirror one last time. He looked anxious and haggard,
but more like himself than he had in weeks, having finally paid a
visit to the barber before leaving London. He smoothed out the
creases in his shirt and when there was nothing left to pick at, he
drew a deep breath, swiped the key card off the dresser and marched
with purpose towards the lobby of the hotel, allowing the door to
his room to slam shut behind him.