Hyderabad to Bhubaneswar
Somewhere between Hyderabad and Bhubaneshwar, which isn’t being very precise, as it is a twenty-hour journey, spread over two days. Let’s just say, it was during the second half of the trip. The train was stationary. I was standing in an open doorway, looking across several platforms at some provincial station
A couple of tracks away stood a freight train. Workers were submerged from the platform, checking the couplings between wagons. They then hauled themselves back onto the platform. Their freight train engine kicked into life and pulled the wagons forward with a sudden jolt.
Shouts of horror; a loud cry for the driver to stop the train immediately. Several workers lowered themselves back down between the wagons and emerged carrying a colleague, who was then laid out on the platform.
The workers gathered around the injured person in a circle. A feeling of helplessness seemed to descend. I could only assume that their colleague who was down on the track between the wagons as the wheels started to turn had been seriously maimed, or worse.
Two minutes later, the sound of a whistle, and the offending train was on its way – no impounding the vehicle or anything like that, pending the launch of an accident inquiry. A minute later our own train pulled out. Life felt cheap.
This is just one anecdote from a large collection amassed during my travels across the India Rail network, from east to west, north to south. Sometimes it felt like I didn’t even need to step off the train to find events worth writing about. After all, at any point in time, the train’s occupants seemed to collectively constitute a large town, with all the life histories that are likely to be found within such a conurbation.
Here are some more of those stories.
Calcutta to Varanasi
If I had to give each Indian station that I have visited a chaos-ranking, Calcutta would leave the rest standing. It was during my first visit to India that I arrived at Calcutta station one late evening. The station concourse might already have been a living city, but several thousand more ticket holders, in search of the right carriage, seemed to swell the platforms to breaking point. Calcutta was on the move.
Needless to say, I was grateful for the assistance of a neighbouring passenger who sat next to me on the way up from Bhubaneshwar. He clutched my sleeve, led me through the maelstrom, pushed me into the back of a taxi, got into the front, asked which hotel I wanted, and we set off. On the back seat I sat in silence. My mind was still racing, more through fear than adrenaline. Hell, I thought, I’ve never seen bedlam like that before. Outside the hotel I started to leaf through a wad of rupees, but my helper pushed the fare away. ‘Please, it’s no problem,’ he said. Then the taxi and helper disappeared.
Respite from the tracks – Recollections from a former capital city
I was having a night off from the rails and rewarded myself with a stay at the Fairlawn Hotel. Price wise, this was high end stuff, but I wanted to pay the premium to experience its time warp atmosphere. It was frozen in the days of British Rule. Indeed, its two white British spinster owners, now in their seventies, probably at one time were children of the Raj. As I arrived at this late hour, they were strutting around the place, barking instructions at servants, who in response were dashing around reception area. I checked in. One of the spinsters clapped her hands loudly. Her jowls shook. A servant marched over and bowed deferentially to her. She pointed to my rucksack. He picked it up. It was embarrassing.
I was looking forward to climbing beside him up an ornate winding staircase past all the deer and tiger heads that were mounted on the walls. However, I was to be disappointed. Instead, the servant marched out the front door, to the only available room – a portacabin by the front gates. It was immaculately clean, with a free-standing cast-iron bath. I had though paid a sizeable fee to be at the heart of some kind of ‘Days of the Raj’ play, rather than having to observe it from the periphery.
I bedded down, but struggled to get any sleep, as just over the wall, a few inches from my abode, sat several homeless men, who talked, coughed, and sneezed loudly through the night. And when they had quietened down, the crows of Calcutta started up.
I had hoped to claw back some value for my money at a lavish evening meal, included in the full board tariff. This was to take place at sunset around a huge, extensively laid table, and would probably resemble a film-set from Gosford Park. My lack of formal dining attire was of concern to me. However, I didn’t have to worry, because at the point at which a lobster starter was due to be served, I had to be at Howrah Station for the commencement of my journey to Varanasi. A cashback payment from the Fairlawn would surely be coming my way. Instead, they offered to put me up a chicken sandwich and an apple to eat on the train. Overall, I had been short changed.
I put my grievances behind me and ventured out for the day. In the distance, I observed the huge Howrah Bridge, over which I would have to pass later, as I crossed the Hooghly River on the way to the station. Over the next few hours, whenever I looked back at the bridge, it resembled extreme bedlam. Advanced driving skills would be needed for this one, whoever my taxi driver was.
A short walk from the Fairlawn, in the heart of the Chowrangee district, I stopped at a book stall with its wares spread out across the pavement. But then, as I started to browse, a few strides away I spotted something, or should I say someone, who I had heard about. His head was submerged underground, beneath a pile of gravel. His shoulder blades were level with the pavement. I walked over to him. He was motionless and near naked, with his legs pointing straight up in the air. There was no name tag or message next to him. A constant throng of disinterested people walked past. There was a small box in front of the man containing a smattering of Rupees. I couldn’t work out if he was begging or busking. I stood over him for a couple of minutes. I wanted to tap the soles of his feet to see if he might come up for air and explain himself – I would have paid him for his troubles, I swear I would. Finally, I concluded that he was meditating, with a bit of money making on the side. I dropped some coins into the box and moved on.
I retraced my steps to the gates of the Fairlawn and, level with my portacabin, a man sat on the pavement coughing loudly. Was this one of the chaps who had kept me awake into the small hours? I was glad I wasn’t staying there again tonight.
Further down the road, I came to one of Mother Theresa’s hostels. I am writing this particular paragraph nearly thirty-years on and my recollection is very hazy. Was Mother Teresa in residence? What kind of hostel was it? Was it a hospice? Or a home for people with disabilities maybe? I am pretty sure, from what I can recall from the recesses of my mind, that it was a place for homeless children. I know I passed through the large gates of this mansion, climbed up the steps and entered its interior. There, I had a heart-warming conversation with the oversees volunteer who staffed the reception – she too had just called in one day on impulse, as she was traversing India, and had not got any further.
Right there and then, I would have had some debate with my inner self about whether the same thing was about to happen to me. Perhaps I might not make it to Howrah Station in five-hours’ time. Perhaps my workplace desk in England would, come next month, just be an empty space. How close did I come to staying on? I can’t recall – I suspect less than fifty percent. I do remember though being aware of the irony of my ensuing actions, as I left Mother Teresa’s place – heading back down the road to the Fairlawn, giving the man with his head in the pavement some more coins, passing the beggars over the wall from my portacabin, entering the hotel and enjoying afternoon tea in opulent surrounds.
These recollections of my meanderings in the Chowrangee district only represents a small slice of my time in Calcutta, the former capital of British India. .
I was deeply intrigued by how the British Raj came into being, initially in the 17th Century, but in particular, how this had been bought on by a young tear away from Shropshire. Clive of India rose through the ranks of the East India Company, which with his guidance turned into one of, if not the biggest corporation in the world with its private army, that raged regional skirmishes and kept undesirable natives at bay. The honourable Company then subjudicated and plundered a hell of a lot of the Subcontinent. Its functions were then nationalised by the British Government, who thus profited directly from the exploitation. At this point the governmental framework known as the Raj was born.
Were there aspects of the Raj’s days still to be found in Calcutta beyond that of the Faulty Towers like atmosphere that prevailed at the Fairlawn Hotel? Indeed, there were. This took the form of the Victoria Memorial, and it was here that most of my sojourn in Calcutta was spent
On my east coast rail journey up from Bhubaneswar, I started to read about the Victoria Memorial. The feeling I got was that this was very much a place that acted as a tribute to the Raj, rather than giving a more modern Indian perspective of its colonialization and exploitation.
As my lengthy train clanked its way along the rails, I leafed through the Memorial’s literature. Its tone made me come over all colonial, reminiscing, as it did, about the days of the Raj. I really couldn’t understand what all those Guardian readers were complaining about. Yes, we stole the country’s freedom and plundered its resources, but we gave the natives their rail network, along which I now passed. And what about all those governmental and judicial institutions? Boy, had we civilised them. My sentiments didn’t last long though. Why on earth Calcutta would want to cling onto a memorial that immortalised its time as the nerve centre of Britain’s Jewel in the Crown was beyond me. But immortalise it, it did. The design of the building, for a start, was an alluring hybrid of Saint Paul’s, Capitol Hill and the Taj Mahal. And then there was its damned name, ‘Victoria’ under whose reign many of the Raj’s excesses had been inflicted, and ‘Memorial’, a eulogy. This did seem to be a kind of a give a way.
But still, these misgivings didn’t stop me from spending several hours at the Memorial. However, the only recollection I now have of my visit is the trek along its long and winding approach path, as its dome loomed up large in front of me.
Instead, it is the tales of everyday folk that have stayed with me, during my two days away from the rails – Mother Teresa and the volunteer with her heart of gold; the coughing homeless men whose pavement residence was just over the wall from my portacabin lodge; the meditating man who passed the time of day with his head submerged beneath the ground; and the servant at the Fairlawn who was ordered to jump to it and pick up my baggage – if only he could have given his elderly British spinster employers the finger.
The Howrah Express to Varanasi
I arrived back at the Howrah station to catch the train to Varanasi. My overnight journeys so far had been spent in the relative comfort and safety of air-conditioned carriages – I had been softened up.
However, it was with some trepidation that I clamped eyes on the Howrah Express that was to carry me to Varanasi; no luxury liner this; no air-conditioned carriages; where there should have been glass slates in window frames, in many cases these had fallen out; instead of 4-berth cabins there were six; a distinct lack of padding on the berths; and thick dust everywhere.
I threaded myself through the crowd, walking alongside the length of the train, convinced that at some point I’d come across an air-conditioned carriage, with my details (name, sex, date of birth) included on the passenger ledgers which were pasted to each door.
I even started to insist with a ticket inspector that there must have been mistake, which of course there hadn’t.
We pulled out just before midnight, and I attempted to bed down. Unfortunately, the cabin’s other occupants had no intention of trying to do the same. No lights out here. They were most firmly on for the rest of the night; no muffled noise of the train gliding over the tracks – the sound insulated by air conditioning – rather a loud clunking noise came through the glass-less window frame as we passed over sleepers. Several hours of the cabin’s occupants talking loudly to each other followed, and when this had died down, at ten-minute intervals the irritating noise of an older man dredging up saliva with great gusto. Yes, the Indian cough – much retching of the throat followed by a venomous gob out the window – Varanasi could not come quickly enough.
At 4 am the cabin’s occupants alighted from the train at an intermediate stop. I stripped down to my underpants and wrapped a skimpy cotton sheet around my body. At last, as the compartment’s sole occupant, I crashed out on the top berth.
About four hours later I came round and opened my eyes with a start. Each of the other berths was lined with people sitting upright. The floor space was also taken up with passengers standing – the Howrah Express had now been transformed into a commuter train. I gasped. My look of horror was met with smirks and laughter from several of my new companions.
None of the standing passengers seemed concerned that I was taking up the sitting room of five people. But I thought I better make the effort. So, on the top berth, I got dressed, whilst the others were, I hoped, averting their view. It felt as though I was getting changed on the luggage rack of a London Underground tube in the rush hour.
Well at least I had a more luxurious journey lined up in three night’s time – I was due to travel on the super-fast Shatabdi Express to Agra, which slashed the normal rail journey time. It was heralded as one of India’s showcase trains – state of the art, luxurious and as it was air-conditioned throughout, not an opportunity for anyone to gob out the window. After travelling by ‘hard’ class, I thought I had earned this upgrade.
Varanasi to Agra
I already had my Shatabdi ticket before entering India and arrived at the advertised platform. I checked with Indian-Railway’s staff that I was waiting in the right place – after all, deciphering the electronic information board was well beyond my capabilities, being scripted in Hindi.
As departure time approached a train pulled in alongside the platform. However, I struggled to find a carriage which resembled anything like a spot of luxury. All I could see were more windows with glass slats missing.
‘Is this the Shatabdi?’, I asked a ticket inspector. ‘No,’ he said pointing to a neighbouring platform and to the tail end of a train which was just disappearing from Varanasi station, ‘That’s the Shatabdi.’
My heart sank.
‘You see,’ he explained, ‘ten minutes ago, a platform change was announced over the public address system. It was decided that the Shatabdi would leave from platform five, not four. Didn’t you hear it?’
Well of course I bloody heard it, I just didn’t understand Hindi, that’s all. And with the maelstrom that moved around those densely packed platforms, even if there had been a sudden surge of prospective Shatabdi passengers from platforms 4 to 5, in the general melee I wouldn’t have noticed.
You can try the ticket office tomorrow,’ he said. Perhaps you can get on the waiting list for the Shatabdi in about three nights time – you are not likely to get a ticket before then. Demand is high.’
It was approaching midnight and the prospect of searching for lodgings at this late hour didn’t appeal to me.
‘When is the next train to Agra?’ I asked, wanting to add, ‘You know, the bog standard one?’
‘If you want to continue your journey tonight, you must catch a train in two hours’ time, but you will need to change at Kanpur at three o’clock. Then you will have to wait two hours for your connection.’
I growled. So much for my luxurious berth on the superfast Shatabdi, but what could I do but accept the Inspector’s offer of a cup of tea in his track side office?
I arrived four hours later at Kanpur and, still growling, paced up and down the platform – I still had not forgiven myself, or whoever else was responsible for switching the Shatabdi’s platform. But then a distraction; a loud hissing sound guided me towards my latest discovery – at the end of one of the platforms there was a flurry of activity as men clambered over an imposing steam engine, scrubbing its body with long brushes and hot water.
Now I ain’t no train spotter, but I had recently read a newspaper article about a select bunch of rail enthusiasts who make the journey from The UK to India quite regularly and spend their whole time in the Sub-continent trying to track down majestic mechanical beasts like the one that was now before me- gricing, I think they call it. Marriages were even known to have floundered because of this past time. I looked closely at the motif and details that had been riveted onto the engine’s crest a lifetime ago – a coat of arms, the engine’s name, and its place of manufacture – Newton Le Willows, Lancashire, England.
Well, I must admit there was a certain allure to this spectacle – a kind of pondering along the lines of how much more of a magical experience it would be to be pulled along by this magnificent piece of engineering rather than by the Shatabdi; a chunnering of pistons instead of the gentle hum of air conditioning. Then I remembered how the newspaper article had outlined that the limited rolling-stock of steam engines across India would be taken out of service within the next year – it might even have added, ‘and broken up’, which would have been a tragedy.
My growling had been cured for the moment. I wondered what the chances were of stumbling upon Black-Bessie – or whatever had been riveted to her crest, at such an ungodly hour in this distant backwater. And where were all those gricers. Shouldn’t they have been here to assist Bessie with her bath time?
And before this train-spotting business could take a severe grip on me, my train arrived.
So, in the small hours, I found myself once again in hard class, in another glassless carriage. But this time my only companions were a middle-aged couple, who had got on at Kanpur. I nodded off and came around a few hours later. There were still just the three of us. But down below at ground level, a large tablecloth was laid out and a range of vegetarian dishes on plates were on display. Breakfast? Lunch? Call it what you want. I was asked to join them and didn’t need asking twice.
Thus, with the breeze streaming in, the wheels going rat-ta-tat-tat over the sleepers, the sound of hawkers at station platforms, a complementary banquet and conversation with my co-passengers as far as Agra, I thought that maybe travelling by hard class did have its pluses after all.
Caravan to Agra
And memories of another train journey to Agra, this time from Bhopal.
In the bigger conurbations of India, the railway stations are microcosms of its larger society. The platforms, booking halls and forecourts swarm with all manner of hawkers and travellers. By night these expanses are transformed into sleeping cities as hundreds of people lay out their bedding for the night. Some are just waiting for a train to arrive during the small hours, but for many this is a permanent communal bedroom. In these locations, the colour and contrast is just as emphatic as that found down the bazaars of many cities on the Subcontinent.
Bringing this down another level, as the train started to pull out from Bhopal, life on the train seemed a microcosm of that on the platforms and forecourts
Men with baskets of handkerchiefs to sell stood on the platform edge and pushed their merchandise through the train’s open windows in search of a sale. When they retreated into the shade, they were replaced by children who pushed their hands through my window, clutching magazines. They receded to be replaced by other groups of children trying to sell fruit, nuts, or samosas.
The carriage was a communal design, without cabins. It was packed with passengers and soldiers who had travelled overnight, many of whom were going the whole hog from Bombay to Delhi. An array of baggage was strewn along the corridor. Many people still lay on the berths that lined the carriage.
I found a seat and wedged my backpack in between other mountains of luggage. The sound of a tap-tapping got nearer. A blind beggar appeared at the end of my seat with his stick and started to sing. He sang for a minute, and then moved on a few more shuffles to the next alcove, where he continued with verse number two.
He was followed a couple of minutes later by a boy whose legs had been amputated. His torso was propped on a wheeled trestle. With his fists, he pushed his way along the congested passageway selling matches.
The train started to move. A chai wallah appeared with his urn, ‘Chai chai, chai, hot tea, chai.’
A lady walked past with a cage of budgerigars, ‘Pretty birdie, very cheap. ‘, she said, presumably referring to her low prices. An imitation of her followed, selling a different version of bird – the stuffed toy variety. The woman pulled their tails and this time they really did go cheap, cheap, cheap.
A young girl followed with a gold ring through her nose, and silver bangles up to her elbows. Her two boy accomplices carried a pair of drums. The trio paused at the end of my seat. She broke into song; the boys blazed away with their drumsticks; the sleepers seemingly slept on; the sweat seeped down the boys’ brows; the blazing continued; the girl carried on wailing; I proffered some coins and the cabaret moved onto another row of seats.
The Indian Railway’s meal wallah appeared, taking orders for lunch, which were then telexed down the line to a station two hours away.
I was hemmed in with a Sikh family who were heading for Delhi. After a while I dozed off with a newspaper and book in my lap. Moments later I was woken by the feeling of the book being removed. I opened my eyes to find one of the sons opposite reading my publication. I dozed off again, to be woken by the feeling of my newspaper being removed. Looking up I saw the daughter with her head buried in my Times of India from last week. I dozed off, again to be woken minutes later by the feeling of both items being replaced in my lap. Yes, my lap, as this particular alcove’s reference shelf.
Oh well I thought, when in India and all that stuff. So, just to test the water, I leant across and removed a magazine from the daughter’s lap – no need to ask. She showed not a flicker of emotion, but just stared straight ahead. Alas her woman’s fashion magazine was of no great interest to me. I placed it back in her lap, eyeing a thick book on her brother’s knee, leant over and without a word picked it up. Again, not a modicum of communication between us. Unfortunately, his Oracle Visual Basic Manual did not help me paint a rich mental picture of life on the rails.
‘Cold drink, fruity fruity, tomato soooup’, cried another drinks wallah.
A constant caravan along the line to Agra.
Jaipur to Jodhpur
At Jaipur station a cow wanders into the waiting room, pays no attention to anyone, gobbles up a couple of stray carrier bags and wanders back out onto the platform. No one batted an eyelid, except maybe for me. But anyway… ..
By now on these train journeys, as we pulled into intermittent stations, I had developed the habit of opening an entrance door at the end of the carriage and stepping down onto the track, rather than the platform. I ‘d wander down the line for a few paces to stretch my legs, and then as the driver sounded his horn, nip back up the line and clamber back on board, just as the wheels started to slowly turn – I certainly wasn’t the only passenger to engage in this activity.
And so, somewhere between Jaipur and Jodhpur, I stepped down onto the trackside and wandered along the gravel to the end of the carriage, but then got brave suddenly and extended my walk up to the end of the next carriage. The horn sounded so I turned around to head back. The wheels started to turn very slowly. I quickened my pace and drew level with the opening that I had emerged from. However, it was not open anymore. The door was shut and grabbing the handles, I found out that it was locked as well.
There I was, stood between a number of railway lines. The train was gathering pace. I lunged at each door handle that rolled past, but my luck seemed to be running out.
I was starting to vision myself as a lone traveller from England standing in what felt like the middle of nowhere. The tail end of the train disappears around the bend, transporting his baggage – his home of sorts for the month – to some distant metropolis, while he just stands befuddled between a set of rails, scratches his head, and says, ‘Oh well, maybe it was just meant to happen this way.’
But back to real-time and my current plight. More carriages trundled past, more groping at locked doors, until now faces are poking out of glassless window frames – ‘hard class’, at the back end of the train, had started to pass by.
And then enormous relief as the tail-end of the train drew near and an open door appeared. I hauled myself up at the critical moment. As I got to my feet, I found myself wedged in between other passengers, who were standing near the carriage doors. There wasn’t any direct link between hard class and air-conditioning, but what did I care? At least my journey across India wasn’t going to come to a calamitous halt. I’d just have to get off the next stop an hour up the line, leg it to my original carriage and be reunited with my baggage – hoping of course that it was still there.
And as my palpitations started to subside, I became aware of the curious glances I was receiving, which was hardly surprising. One moment these passengers were starting to dream about what kind of pulses they were going to have with their evening meal, or some banal matter. And the next, look out some crazy foreigner has just thrown himself from the trackside, into the moving carriage and landed in front of us. It was like the man who fell to earth.
An overnight journey through the Sind Desert to the isolated medieval outpost of Jaisalmer, near the Pakistan border – an ancient settlement of sandstone forts, maharajas’ palaces, exquisitely carved houses and mansions and narrow winding cobbled streets. It is like something out of the Arabian Nights.
Extra blankets rather than air conditioning were required on this journey, the temperatures at night plummeting to freezing.
Police guards with guns were assigned to each carriage. Insurrectionists from neighbouring Pakistan were not the problem. Instead, armed hold ups and banditry were the main concern.
The train pulled out. I had a cabin to myself. Ten-minutes down the line there was a knock at the cabin door. I opened it and was greeted by an armed police guard in full uniformed regalia.
‘Hello. I am a policeman.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Please read this.’
It was a list of safety precautions, which left one under no illusion that the safest place on this journey was behind a securely locked door.
One piece of advice on the checklist was not to lie down with your head nearest the window. This, the policeman indicated, would reduce the chances of passengers having their throats slit if bandits leant in from the outside.
In the middle of the night the train jolted to a holt; lots of shouting, heated arguments and boots running up and down the corridor.
Whatever was going off, this was an unscheduled stop. I was not going to poke my head out of the door. Instead, I just pulled the blankets over my head and hoped for the best.
Down to the tip
I had spent two days chilling out on Kovalam beach on the west coast. The resort is near Trivandrum capital of India’s deep southern state of Kerala. Reputed to be India’s finest shoreline, the beach acts as a magnet for both Indian holiday makers and foreign tourists. However, once I had had a few dips in the sea and spent my mealtimes eating grilled swordfish or shark, there was not much to detain me. It was time to move on.
I had made my way bit by bit down to this resort from India’s northern hill stations. My plan was to turn around and head back up its parallel east coast. Despite still having this other coast to traverse, it really did feel like I had reached journey’s end – I’d be struggling to carry on much further in the same direction.
But I was not quite ready for this U-turn yet, because down the track, a mere fifty-odd miles from Trivandrum was India’s southernmost tip, Kanyakumari where the Bay of Bengal meets the Indian Ocean. Here during the course of a full moon, it is possible to see the sun set, and the moon rise simultaneously over the sea’s horizon.
Having made it as far south as Trivandrum, a day trip to Kanyakumari, a tiny blob of a settlement, which nestles right at the far-flung lower end of the sub-continent, was in order. It wouldn’t have been the done thing to have come all this way and not to have made the effort.
Kanyakumari is a tacky seaside town, without the attraction of a beach that could rival Kovalam, and as I got on the train at Trivandrum for what was to be an excruciatingly slow journey, the carriage was nearly empty. Two and a half-hours later we arrived at the tip.
Travel maps of India look like an intricate swarm of rail tracks, that make their way from the far northern Himalayan foothills to the junction where I was now stood. It was hard to believe that such a complex network, by the time I reached journey’s end at the cape, was reduced to just two quiet buffers. I stepped down from the train and counted them – platform one a brief sideways shuffle, and then platform two. That was it. No mass exodus from the train – no pile of suitcases, rucksacks and children being pushed out of the doors or windows: no one else on a day trip from Kovalam – just a smattering of Indian passengers; a very quiet affair.
The station building was a stolid marble monstrosity, built in a Stalinesque like style, with the appearance of a Soviet palace of culture. It was highly out of proportion to the two small platforms it housed.
Along the mile long stretch of road that led from the station down to the sea front were lamp posts with speakers attached. Hindi music screeched out- Oh Mickey, Mickey, Mickey or something like that; an attempt to whip up a kind of holiday atmosphere.
Kanyakumari is also a Hindu place of pilgrimage. The Indian philosopher Swami Vivekanda spent time here and so five hundred metres off the shore on a small island a temple combining architectural styles from across India was built in his honour.
If I was looking for a bit of exhilaration down by the sea front, I did not have to look any further than the ferries that made the frequent crossings to this temple island. There were long queues of adults and children at the terminal. The short channel of water between the point of embarkment and the temple, looked like a very choppy affair with swirling currents. It would not have been out of place at a fair ground ride, with the vessel struggling to cut a clear path over the lively surf. This seemed to add to the children’s excitement – shrieks of laughter as waves crashed against the side, the spray, giving passengers a good soaking.
And on the temple-island, I looked in two directions – beyond the shoreline was a distant landscape dominated by green fields, which were interspersed with whitewashed churches. It looked like a scene from a Constable painting.
And then round the other side of the temple, I gazed onto the sea’s distant horizon, the next piece of land, a few thousand miles south, Antarctica.
I pondered that this was the end-result of all my Indian rail trips – even those I have made since then all fit into that two-thousand-mile-long network, from Shimla to Kanyakumari, from the Himalayan foothills down to the tip.
And of course, as I say, this had not culminated at some highly chaotic station in one of the county’s bigger metropolises, with platforms as far as you could see. No, the point of arrival at land’s end had been a rather humble affair.
I retraced my path back to the station. Along the stretch of speaking – or should I say singing – lamp posts. I stopped off at a small booth, which housed the town’s post office, bought a post card of the temple-island silhouetted by a full moon, jotted a note to my parents on the reverse and watched the postmaster slam his Kanyakumari frank over the address. He then passed me the phone to ring England, I had been waiting for this moment since I entered India, to convey my current position to my father, who with a fair amount of foreign travel under his belt would have been mightily impressed when I blurted out, ‘Made it to the very tip Dad.’ – it felt like a bit of an achievement you understand. My mother answered. I was about to launch into a tirade, but she cut me short, ‘Damian, your father was taken into hospital today, at short notice for a hernia operation. I’m sorry but I have to leave immediately to visit him.’
On the return journey to Trivandrum, I shared a compartment with a globetrotting backpacker from Nottingham, who was winding his way back to England. He was by all accounts a fearless chappy – tales of muggings in Africa and bombs in Kashmir.
I asked him, ‘Did you catch the ferry over to the temple-island today?’
‘No bloody fear,’ he gasped, ‘You mean that roll-on, roll-over affair? It looked way too scary.’
Aurangabad, Maharashtra, 431002, India
Kanyakumari, Kanyakumari District, Tamil Nadu, 629157, India
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, 695001, India
Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India
Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India
Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Kanpur, Kanpur Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, India
Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India
Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India
Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Bhubaneswar, Master Canteen Chowk, Ward 41, South East Zone, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation, Bhubaneswar (M.Corp.), Khordha, Odisha, 751006, India
Hyderabad, Telangana, India
The guard’s tale
Hyderabad to Bhubaneswar; a twenty-hour train journey on the Indian East Coast Express. Air-conditioned sleeper carriages are certainly a luxury when travelling across the sub-continent, but who wants to sit all day in the same seat, chilled or not? So, I found myself at frequent intervals loitering between the carriages, with the side doors to the outside world thrown wide open.
In between two of the carriages was the guard’s compartment. At best this was a box room of four-foot square, where, when he was not checking tickets, taking meal orders, or dishing out blankets, the guard whiled away his time or curled up in his short bed for the night. This chap was of scrawny appearance, wore dusty frayed clothes and went about his duties barefooted, in his mid-thirties, he had all the appearances of a grown up urchin. Inevitably whilst standing between these carriages, with the breeze streaming in, we started to chat. During the course of our conversation, he enquired about the possibility of me taking a photograph of him at the next station platform and then posting it back to India at a later point. However, I had found such requests during the preceding two weeks on the Indian rails to be very frequent. They held no novelty value, so I shrugged my shoulders half-heartedly and just said, ‘Maybe.’
The guard disappeared back into his tiny living quarters and had a rummage through his personal effects. He emerged with two stools and a well-worn, but gleaming tinderbox. We sat down and he started to prise open the lid of this casket, He retrieved several faded sepia photographs, which like his trousers were frayed at the edges. He poured over these items for a minute and then passed them to me for approval.
Each photograph was of a well-heeled family gathering from yesteryear, one person caught my attention on the back row. Both the face and the style of dress, a rajah suit, with a narrow strip of braid for the collar, seemed familiar. Bells were ringing the at the back of my mind. Who was this guy? I was looking in vain for my mental thesaurus of famous mugshots. However, the bottles of strong Indian beer from the night before were denying me access.
But to hell with this chap on the back, the train guard was more concerned with another character in the foreground of the photograph – a man immaculately dressed in a three-piece pin striped suit. No thesaurus was necessary here. The guard’s face leapt out of the suit at me.
Other passengers were now crowded around us both, scrutinising these pictures. The guard then pointed to several of the men folk on the photographs and said to me, ‘He dead, he dead and he dead. All killed. All now dead.’
He then touched the face of the mystery man on the back row and uttered the words that gave me total memory recall, ‘Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi.’ Rajiv was the heir apparent of Indira Gandhi. Indira was the head of a ruling dynasty and Prime Minister of India until her Sikh bodyguards murdered her one October evening back in 1984, Rajiv himself did not fare much better, after achieving Prime Ministerial status. Whilst on an electoral campaign walk about in the southern state Of Tamil Nadu in 1991, he was blown to smithereens, along with several aides and bodyguards on the photographs now before me. A female Tamil Tiger’s suicide bomber from Sri Lanka had ended the lives of these people, whose memory the train guard still preserved inside his tinderbox.
What, I wondered, was the chain Of events behind the train guard moving from the inner social circle of this powerful elite to shuffling his way barefoot between carriages, handing out blankets and sleeping in a four-by-four cubby hole on the Hyderabad – Bhubaneshwar Express?
A few minutes later the train arrived journey’s end and I hurriedly alighted. I forgot completely about this chance incident until several months after my return. Until I stumbled upon copious notes I had made at the time, it had Just got merged with the memories of many other chance acquaintances that occurred while travelling across the subcontinent. Whenever I think of this anecdote, I curse my stupidity. Why did I not stay behind for a minute to take that photograph of the guard and attempt to unravel the story of his career a bit further? He must have had some story to tell.
Damian Rainford
(*Author’s pictures; Other Photos are Pixels Free Photos) )
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