Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

by Paul Theroux

  Bapji had made himself popular as a member of the Indian parliament and as an ambassador. To raise funds, he had collaborated with the Taj Group in creating a luxury hotel. Over the years, it had fallen into disrepair, but it was restored to its former glory. It was also something of a menagerie of the moribund—toothy tiger heads on most walls, stuffed leopards in feline attitudes on plinths and above staircases, buffalo, antlered bucks, pairs of enormous elephant tusks in the game room and even in the private apartments—trophies of alpha males gathering dust, and photos of memorable days: upright hunters cradling rifles, with their boots resting on dead tigers and dead leopards.

  "Welcome, please sit," Bapji said when I arrived in his study. He was a stoutish man in a traditional Rajasthani outfit resembling white pajamas, the long shirt called a kurta, and tight trousers—jodhpurs indeed. And he was barefoot. The room was a repository of family photographs and books and files, and on the coffee table in front of me, videocassettes of Godzilla, Great Journeys, and Yes, Minister. A cricket match was in progress on a television across the room, and it remained on, Bapji glancing at it from time to time throughout our conversation.

  "Things have settled down. It was quite busy with the royal visit, as you can imagine. But it was a private visit."

  "What other kind is there?"

  "A formal visit. In that case it would be state-sponsored. The prince would get one day off—the informal part of a formal visit, so to say. But this one he paid for himself."

  "He seemed pretty jolly."

  "He's happy. She's happy too."

  It seemed to me that Bapji and Charles were about the same age. I said, "You weren't at school with him by any chance?"

  "I was at Eton. Then Oxford—Christ Church, the first in my family to go to Oxford. He was at school at Gordonstoun." Bapji smiled. "A grim place—highly spartan. He would have been happier at Eton. His boys went there."

  "Had you met the duchess before?"

  "I knew her brother, Mark Shand. And she has a sister Annabel. I don't know her."

  A servant brought tea and cookies. I asked Bapji about his ancestry—whether it was true, as I'd heard, that his family was descended from the sun deity.

  "It's true, we're associated with Surya," he said. "There is no sun worship as such, but you know the yoga position, the surya namaskar. Our family goes back to the Ramayana. We are kshattriya—warrior caste."

  This was a delicate way of putting it: the family claims descent from Lord Rama, who is associated with the sun. By contrast, Lord Krishna is associated with the moon.

  "This is all documented?"

  "Oh, yes. Our family history is well recorded. My ancestors arrived in these parts in 1211. Prior to that, the grandson of Jai Chand ruled, so our family traces their relation to the Rashstra Kuta family, early in the tenth century."

  He was speaking of a family tree stretching back a thousand years, from branches to roots.

  "I seem to remember being in a sun temple."

  "There's one in Jaipur."

  It was at the height of Galta Gorge, near a temple I had visited long ago on the outskirts of the city.

  "Are you fasting for Navratri?"

  "I am doing my best. Fasting depends on choice. Some people eat nothing for nine days—take only water. Some eat one meal. Some eat fruit. And there are Rajputs who kill a goat—as a prasad, an offering. Alcohol is also offered. And, yes, some drink it."

  "I hadn't realized that everyone did something different."

  "I'll tell you," he said.

  "I hope you don't mind my writing this down," I said. "I find this interesting."

  He waggled his head in the Indian way, meaning, Okay. And now I realized what was lovable about him, what made him sound trustworthy and unpedantic: it was his lisp, a slight slushiness of delivery, a lopsidedness in his jaw, which made him seem, in spite of his full mustache, like a small boy.

  "Each community assigns special values to certain foods. That which makes you strong and excitable is forbidden to Brahmins, because theirs is an ascetic tradition. But a sadhu might smoke hashish"—and he raised his hand and puffed an imaginary joint. "But bhang is not smoked. It is powdered and made into milkshakes, called thandhai."

  "What's the mixture?"

  "Milk, water, ground almonds, and some other ingredients added to it. And of course the bhang—you call it cannabis? It makes you pretty silly."

  "I must try it"

  "Some people start laughing. Some people pout," Bapji said. "Opium eating is also part of our culture. That's become a ritual in western Rajasthan. In the past it was common, eating opium."

  "No religious sanction against it?"

  "No. It's a tradition. We kshattriyas can eat meat and drink alcohol, though within the kshattriya caste there are some differences. Especially at the two ends of the spectrum, you can say—the high castes at one end, and the scheduled and tribals at the other end."

  "I thought vegetarianism was the norm," I said.

  "There is an untruth abroad that the majority of Indians are vegetarians." He laughed in refutation and wiggled his toes. "It's not true. One Englishman made a study. He found that, on balance, there are more nonvegetarians than vegetarians in India."

  "You eat meat, sir?"

  "Us, yes, meat eaters! Hunting was part of our tradition. And there was a tradition of a goat being slaughtered in front of the temple." He made a slicing, throat-cutting gesture with one hand. "I saw you at the puja the other day at the fort. Goat sacrifice would have been done there some years ago."

  "How long ago?"

  "In my lifetime," he said. Not long ago—he'd been born in 1948. "As a young boy I saw it, the killing of the goat. It was very shocking to me. But my mother said, 'It is part of growing up. If the sight of blood bothers you, you can't be a warrior. "

  I loved his candor, his ability to talk about anything, his interest in explaining the minutiae of drug use and goat sacrifice. He leaned forward, eager with a new detail.

  "There are subtleties, you see. Apparently, if the goat doesn't shudder, it won't be accepted as a sacrifice. The animal needs to be afraid, to be suitably terrified, to stand still but also to visibly show fear. If not, you take it away and put a ring in its ear. The animal is impure."

  Though Bapji did not say so, I later learned from pilgrims that at the Kali temples—deemed very sacred—in Kolkata and Gauhati, goats (always black ones) are beheaded and bled as sacrifices every day, sometimes as many as fifteen or twenty. The carcasses are later butchered, cooked in the temple kitchens, and served in curries to the poor.

  Behind his head was a shelf of photographs. I recognized one as being the Rajmata of Jaipur, the former Gayatri Devi, a great beauty in her time. Rajmata literally means queen mother. She had endured a number of hardships—not just the early death of her husband and eldest son, but a fairly long and vindictive imprisonment by Mrs. Gandhi for refusing to knuckle under when the constitution was arbitrarily changed. A heavy smoker, known to be a connoisseur of single-malt whiskey, the rajmata lived in Jaipur much the way Babji did, in an annex of her grand palace.

  Bapji explained the connection: "The first wife of the Maharajah of Jaipur was the sister of my grandfather. The deal was that his niece would also marry. So aunt and daughter"—that is, the sister and her daughter, I guessed—"were both married to the same man. The aunt was eight or nine years older than he was—you see, he was only fifteen."

  I was somewhat lost in this explanation, and not sure of the dates, but it was so steamy in its complexity it didn't matter. I urged him to go on.

  "His British guardian wouldn't let them cohabit. She came out of the bedroom in a huff. 'What's the point of being married if I can't sleep in there? Ha-ha!"

  He got up and stretched, and we walked to the wide pink balcony that overlooked the palace gardens, a white marble pavilion shimmering in the distance on the green lawn. He said, "I was born in this palace. This was my only home. How old are you?"

  I
told him.

  "You look younger than me," he said.

  But then his life had been somewhat more eventful than mine, not just his glorious birth as a descendant of Lord Rama, the relentless rituals, the goat sacrifices, and the prophetic assumption of his mother, the reigning maharani: "You must be a warrior." But his becoming a maharajah at the age of four, after his father, just twenty-eight, died in an air crash. His princely world of privilege had been turned upside down by Mrs. Gandhi. Still in his twenties, he'd been a diplomat, the Indian high commissioner to Trinidad. And there was his son's tragic accident, something else to age him.

  As if that weren't commotion enough, there was an unstable younger brother—illegitimate and vindictive—who made several attempts to behead Bapji. On one occasion, the filmmaker Ismail Merchant, who had made a movie at the palace, was present, and watched horrified as the crazed brother blundered into a dinner party and swiped at the guests with a sword. Ultimately, Merchant reported, this mad, disinherited brother was himself beheaded and cut to pieces. All this Babji seemed to bear with equanimity.

  "Maybe I should do yoga," Bapji said, clutching his belly through his kurta.

  "How did you like diplomatic life?"

  "I enjoyed it. I got on very well with the Indians in Trinidad. They were keeping the balance, and so was I. It was like walking a tightrope. But I told them that I was not their high commissioner. They were Trinidadians, weren't they? I made it plain to them that I was not batting on their side."

  Probably it was the cricket match on television that brought back the memory and the metaphor.

  "My predecessor was an old Muslim gentleman who wrote a memo to the effect that he wanted to ban cricket tours between India and Trinidad because they aroused strong emotions." He laughed recalling it. "A black Trinidadian came to me and said, 'We want cricket tours! We want to see Gavaskar!'"—a great batsman. "'What happens among us is our problem!'"

  Bapji broke off to watch the end of the cricket match, and when it was clear that India could not be beaten, he talked about the military tradition of his state. Celebrated in India, but unsung heroes everywhere else, the Indian army had been heroic in both world wars. Bapji explained that in a decisive battle in September 1918, the Royal Jodhpur Lancers led the charge into Haifa with the Hyderabad and Mysore mounted lancers on their flanks, surprising and defeating the German-Turkish army dug in on Mount Carmel.

  "They charged straight into machine guns. Uphill—great horsemanship, great valor. Dalpat Singh led the charge and died in the action." Bapji was gesturing again. "Straight across, into the fire. Of course, many died, but they killed four hundred men and took Haifa. They were very brave."

  He was looking out the window at the expanse of green lawn behind Umaid Bhawan. He straightened and twisted the ends of his mustache.

  "My people have courage." He nodded. "Heroes."

  He asked how long I would be staying. I said that I was going to leave for the station soon and I'd be on the train that night.

  "You'll see my grandfather there."

  He was not being enigmatic. He meant the equestrian statue of Umaid Singh in front of the Jodhpur railway station.

  NIGHT TRAIN TO JAIPUR

  KAPOORCHAND, A DIGNIFIED MAN of about sixty, was doing exactly what I was doing, and for the same reason. He lived in Jodhpur; he needed to be in Jaipur. "Train is best," he said, slightly contorted, sitting cross-legged on his bunk, and when he saw me fussing with my bedding, he said, "Don't do that. Coolie will take care of it. They have responsibilities. They must make your bed. They must wake you on time. They must bring you tea."

  His tone marked him as a man of picturesque outbursts. I waited for more. It seemed that we would be the only ones in the compartment. I put my things in order: water bottle, food I'd brought from the hotel, my notebook, that day's Hindustan Times, my copy of The Great Mutiny, and an Indian Railways Concise Timetable.

  The timetable impressed Kapoorchand. He said, "Plane might not take off. Or it might drop you in Delhi instead of Jaipur. Or you might have to wait hours." He smiled out the window at the platform of Jodhpur Station. "Train will leave on time. It will arrive on time. I will do my consulting and I will get evening train back to Jodhpur."

  He gave me his business card, which indicated he was a chartered accountant with the firm of Jain and Jain.

  "Are you busy?"

  "Too busy. I have been all over India, but always train." I said, "Gauhati?" It was in distant Assam.

  "I have been there."

  "Manipur?"

  "Yes."

  "Darjeeling?"

  The answer was yes to the ten other remote places I mentioned. As we were talking about these far-off stations, a man in a soldier's uniform slipped into the compartment, said hello, and began chaining his suitcase to the stanchion on the upper bunk.

  "Is that necessary?" I asked. As I spoke, the train whistle blew and we were on our way.

  "It is precaution, so to say," Kapoorchand said and consulted his watch, smiling because the train had left on the minute.

  As the soldier climbed into the berth over my head—older passengers, like me, got the lower berths—Kapoorchand gave me a chain and padlock from his briefcase that he carried as spares. But I didn't use them. I had very little in my bag, and I usually tucked my briefcase under my pillow, because it contained my passport and credit cards and notebooks and about $1,500 in small bills.

  "You know Jain religion?" Kapoorchand asked. "I am Jain. I meditate three hours a day. But I will do more. I have two brothers who have renounced world. They wander. They use no shoes. They travel many kilometers together."

  "Does this sort of life attract you?"

  "Very much indeed." He was tall, friendly, silver-haired, obviously a businessman—Jains are noted for their business acumen and also for their spirituality. He was well dressed for a railway passenger, in a starched long-sleeved white shirt and blue trousers; he wore an expensive watch. He said he also wanted to renounce the world. "I will do so in five or six years. I will wander. I will discover myself."

  "Where will you live?"

  "I will live in my soul."

  He gave me a Jain pamphlet titled Universal Fraternity, which I flipped through as he sat and ate from his small box of food. The pamphlet was full of sage advice—humanistic, brotherhood of man, do the right thing. I read a bit, read the newspaper, and wrote my notes about my talk with Bapji. The soldier was snoring; night had fallen, though it wasn't late. Kapoorchand seemed eager to discuss the life of the soul. Perhaps because he had just finished eating, he talked about the spiritual aspects of food.

  "Onions and garlic are worst," he said. "They make a desire for sex. And they cause angerness."

  "I did not know that."

  "My friend when he travels without wife never eats onions." He was enumerating vegetables on his fingers. "Carrots. Root vegetables. I don't eat, because it is killing the living plant. I eat tops only."

  "Potatoes?"

  "Some people eat. But for me—no. So many live things can be found on a potato."

  "Live things, such as...?"

  "Bacteria and molds. Why should they be killed because of me?"

  For this reason, Jains habitually wore masks, so as not to inhale any gnats that might be hovering near their open mouths; and they swept at the surface of water to disperse—what? water bugs? mosquito larvae?—before they drank. It was a strict interpretation of the Do Not Kill stricture: nothing must be killed, and that included flies and mold.

  "Fruit is good, but ... bananas can be tricky. It depends on time of day." Up went his admonitory finger. "Banana is gold in morning. Silver in afternoon. Iron in evening. One should not eat bananas in evening. Also, no yogurt in evening, but yogurt in morning is beneficial."

  "Indian food is spicy, though," I said.

  "Not beneficial. Chilies and pickle make angerness. They increase cruel nature."

  I could see that he enjoyed putting me in the know, because th
ere is a freight of detail in Indian life—an ever-present cargo of dogma, of strictures, of lessons, of distinctions—that turns Indians into mono-loguers. Their motive seemed pedantic, not to convert you but to exaggerate how little you knew of life.

  I ate some of the food I'd brought and offered a bit to him. He looked confused, but took it. He said, "I am so ashamed. I didn't offer you anything because you were writing. But now you offered. This is my fault. You set a better example."

  "That's a compliment."

  "Shake my hand," Kapoorchand said suddenly. I leaned across the rocking railway compartment and did so. He said, "You are generous. Good. I have many theories about handshakes. If you do it like this"—he extended a limp hand—"you are not generous. You are a cheat. Or it might mean you have only daughters. I shook a man's hand like that once and asked him, 'How many daughters?' He said, 'Three.' Then he said, 'Why did you not ask about sons?'" Kapoorchand paused, allowing me to savor this moment. "I said, 'Because you have no sons.' Man was astonished. 'How did you know?'"

  "What's the answer?"

  "Handshake. Weakness. Weak sperm cannot make sons."

  "Any more theories?" I reminded myself that this man was a chartered accountant on his way to Jaipur to spend a day looking through the entries of a company's ledgers.

  "Yes, many. Those who become angry but do not express their angerness get sick. Many die of cancer. They hold the angerness inside their body and it kills them."

  "Possibly."

  "Do you have theories, Mr. Paul?"

  "I have a theory that no house should be taller than a palm tree."

  "That is good. I have a haveli some distance from here. Modest size is there."

  "I also have a theory that nothing matters."

  Kapoorchand stared at me, looking dismayed.