by Katy Gardner
Gemma clung grimly onto her bags. I could see that she was nervous, but was too engrossed to do anything more than vaguely squeeze her hand.
“Isn’t it amazing? I love it!” I remember crying out at one point. She just stared at me as if I was mad. When we finally jerked to a halt in front of the huge, earth-red station, I leaped up enthusiastically, pulling my rucksack over my shoulders and reaching into my money belt for the four ten-rupee notes the book had said the journey should cost. Behind me, Gemma was still fussing with her bags.
“Come on, let’s go and find the ticket office.”
Turning to the driver I handed him the money, nodding at him and smiling. He looked down at it, frowning. Very slowly he tucked the four notes into the chest pocket of his oily shirt, then turning back to me, held out his hand.
“One hundred rupees,” he said.
I spun around in surprise.
“You what?!”
“One hundred rupees.”
“You must be joking! It only costs forty to the station . . .”
He stared at me impassively.
“That’s what it says in our guide,” I said firmly, then blew my authority by blurting: “You’re ripping us off! You should’ve had your meter on!” My voice sounded unnaturally high, as if I’d suddenly become six again and was about to be denied something terribly important, like my rightful share of a bag of sweets or some special treat.
“No, madam, meter is broken.” With a jerk of his chin the driver indicated the twisted face of the meter. “We agree one hundred rupees.”
“We did not!” I felt ridiculously close to tears. I think I might have even stamped my foot.
Next to me, Gemma had put her bags down and was looking at me anxiously.
“Esther . . .”
I ignored her. I could feel my face burning puce. I knew it didn’t really matter, not in the great scheme of things, but I felt like such a fool. I’d thought I could handle everything and now, on my very first excursion, I was being humiliated. And in front of Gemma, too.
“Bastard!” I hissed.
I gestured in the direction of the other scooter-rickshaws waiting on the concourse.
“Ask them! They’ll tell you how much it costs!”
A few of the drivers were beginning to saunter in our direction.
“Look,” Gemma said quietly. “Just give the guy the extra money. It’s less than a quid.”
“But that’s not the point!”
“What is the point then?”
I turned to look at her. She was gazing at me stubbornly, her mind made up. I took a deep breath. It was clearly time to establish some basics.
“The point is,” I said slowly, “that you can’t let them rip you off. It just puts up all the fares for everyone else.”
“So?”
“So, I . . .”
I stopped. The driver was glaring at me. Next to him, Gemma was chewing her nails and frowning.
“It’s the whole principle of the thing,” I said lamely. To be honest, by this stage I’d forgotten what the actual principle was.
“What? That’s crap! It’s only about fifty p. Just give him the money.”
There was a long silence in which a large lump seemed to be forming in my throat. I bit my lip, aware that people were turning to look at us. Why couldn’t Gemma simply agree with me? Why did she always have to be so obstinate? At our feet a small crowd of children had accumulated, their hands outstretched. Gemma folded her arms, her eyes glinting with determined resistance. This was not really about us being ripped off by the rickshaw driver, I was thinking. It was about her and me.
I swallowed hard.
“All right, then,” I whispered. “Take your sodding money.”
Peeling another sixty rupees from the wad of cash folded in my pocket I flung it at the driver and strode quickly in the direction of the station as Gemma hurried behind me. My whole head, from the top of my scalp to the base of my neck, felt as if it had caught on fire.
We walked into the station, staggering slightly from the weight of our packs and looking around in vain for the ticket office. Even I had not been prepared for the pulsating energy of the place: the crowds of people streaming around us; the red turbaned porters with piles of suitcases on their heads; the sleeping bodies stretched out on oily platforms; the cries of pedlars; the screech and wheeze of braking trains; and the hum of a thousand voices. I could smell the oil of the engines and the sweet reek of urine; as we passed a stall selling peanuts and chancchuri, the whiff of roasting spices made my empty belly gurgle. Above us a loudspeaker crackled unintelligibly; somewhere in the distance I could hear canned sitar music. At our feet the most determined of the children, a small girl with bare feet and a bright red flower behind her ear, was still pulling at Gemma’s elbows and crying out: “Baksheesh, memsahib!”
I gulped. I kept telling myself it was all part of the adventure, but the incident with the rickshaw driver had left me shaking with anger and humiliation. What prats we were, I thought furiously. And I wished the little girl would leave us alone, too. She must have sensed that Gemma was the softer touch because she’d grabbed hold of her hand, making it impossible to shake her off without using considerable force.
Gemma trotted beside me, her face taut.
“What shall we do now?” she whispered.
“Find the ticket office,” I replied curtly. I stared at the mass of bodies ahead of us, willing it to separate and the ticket office miraculously appear. To be honest I was more than a little unnerved. Why did the task of negotiating our way across the station and buying a ticket suddenly seem so difficult?
Gemma sniffed miserably. It was typical of her, I thought with irritation. Just now, when I needed her to keep her head together she was going to throw a nervous fit.
“What am I going to do about this kid? Oh God, please go away . . .”
She stopped, looking down at the child mournfully and shaking her head.
“No!” I said firmly, more to Gemma than to the girl. “No way!”
“Let’s just give her something . . .”
“It just encourages them!”
Gemma looked at me, her eyes red and watery. I think she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Suddenly she rummaged in her money belt and pulled out a crisp one-hundred rupee note.
“Here!”
For a second the girl just gazed at the money. Then, as if afraid it might suddenly disappear, she snatched it and ran into the crowd. I stared at Gemma’s sweaty, flustered face in disbelief.
“What did you do that for?”
“I just wanted her to go away!” She smiled at me weakly.
“Jesus, Gem! A hundred rupees is a shitload of money here! If you do that it buggers up the whole economy!”
“So what? It made her happy, didn’t it?” She shrugged, dismissing all my firmly held convictions with one small muscular movement.
“You’re mad,” I said.
We walked in silence toward a large electronic Departures board. Underneath this a crowd of people were clustered around a line of metal grilled booths. The money didn’t really matter, I was telling myself; it wasn’t worth a fight. I’d just have to explain all these things to Gemma later. After all, I had written a dissertation on the effects of tourism on local economies in my final year, I did know what I was talking about.
“Perhaps we get the tickets there,” I said lightly.
Gemma walked slightly faster, her face set. I could tell from the pout of her mouth and the appearance of that sullen little line between her eyebrows that she was sulking, but I was determined not to get drawn in. So, I had snapped at her, I thought with exasperation, but she shouldn’t be so sensitive. It didn’t mean anything. As we approached the booths I saw that amidst the apparently formless crowd were actually three discernible lines.
“Is this the line for tickets?”
The man at the end of the shortest line nodded enthusiastically.
“Yes, yes, this w
ay please.”
He gestured to another, far longer line.
“Not here?”
He nodded.
“No, madam. This is for first-class only.”
We stood in the line for many long minutes. There seemed to be no rationale for what took place ahead of us. People pushed in, or carried out complicated transactions which involved another three officials and much gesticulating, but other than us, no one seemed to object or grow impatient. From time to time the official at the booth would slip off his stool and disappear altogether, and Gemma and I would tut and strain our necks as the time ticked past, our annoyance at each other conveniently displaced onto the line.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Why can’t they have some sort of system?”
It took about an hour to reach the front. When we did, I took a deep breath, leaned across the counter, and announced to the balding official: “Two tickets for Calcutta, please. And when’s the next train?”
He glanced up from his ledger book, barely acknowledging my presence.
“Not here,” he said. “The tourist office is that way. You must buy your tickets there.”
With a flick of his head he gestured toward the other side of the station.
“You’ve got to be joking!”
We stared at him in disbelief, but he was no longer interested, his attention transferred to the next customer.
“That’s completely bonkers.”
“Oh well . . .” I took a deep breath. “I suppose it’s all part of the adventure.”
Something unreadable flickered across Gemma’s face. For a moment I thought the sulk was about to reappear but then she laughed out loud, a sharp yelp of unexpected mirth.
“Yo! Esther and her great adventure! Let it commence!”
TWO hours later we had procured two second-class seats to Calcutta on the Bengal Express, which left at six P.M. After another half hour of being directed to the wrong place we found the lockers, where we secured a bag filled with Gemma’s books, the traveler’s checks, and our air tickets. There were two keys, one for each of us. We put the rest of our cash and our passports in Gemma’s money belt. Now, with nothing else to do but wait, we took up our places on platform 10.
Gemma sat huddled by her backpack, Middlemarch opened on her lap. I don’t think she was actually reading it; she kept staring into space, her face tight and grumpy. I, however, had forgotten about the rickshaw and the beggar girl and was feeling much better. I gazed around, beginning to relax. The platform was filled with people, many of whom had laid blankets and mats on the concrete and were cooking food on portable stoves. Others slept, apparently undisturbed by the mayhem caused each time a train arrived, when everyone would push and shout as if their lives depended upon boarding: first the porters, who chased the train along the platform and jumped aboard, then, following close behind, a wave of passengers laden with boxes and cardboard suitcases and vast canvas bags.
By now we’d been in the station for over five hours, and I was yearning for our journey to begin. I kept threading my way to the edge of the platform and gazing hopefully into the haze. Six P.M. came and went. I wandered over to a stall selling provisions, bought biscuits, bottled water, and a copy of Indian Cosmopolitan. I was beginning to feel that we had been there forever.
Then, just as I was glancing through an item on dating agencies in Bangalore, I realized that something was finally happening. All around us people started to stir. The family sitting next to Gemma were packing their belongings; the porters, who had been squatting around a game of cards, were standing, straightening their turbans, and arranging their dhotis.
I peered down the track. Far away, in the shimmering distance, I could see movement. At first it was just a small dot, then gradually the train grew closer until finally it was upon us: the bullish face of the engine shunting past the platforms, followed by carriage after rusty carriage, a metallic, bellowing monster.
“It’s here!”
Grabbing our rucksacks we pushed through the surging crowd. I’d already memorized our carriage and seat numbers, and now we ran alongside the train, trying to work out where we should board. When we saw a white-gloved official standing in front of the first-class carriages, we waved our tickets at him, gesticulating that we were lost. He glanced up wearily from his paperwork. He was a thickset man, his black hair heavy with Brylcreem and his spectacles so strong that his magnified eyes goggled at us unnaturally.
“Which carriage?” I mouthed slowly, pointing at my ticket and then the train.
He stared at us in irritation.
“Yes, yes! Please show me your tickets!”
“You speak some English?”
He blinked, then said imperiously: “Your carriage is the third one after this. Please on no account give money to porters unless they have an official badge of identification and make sure you beware vagabonds in the night.”
Flicking his eyes back to his list, he waved us away like bothersome flies.
We found our seats easily after that, pulling ourselves and our backpacks aboard the train and pushing our way along the carriage. The second-class compartment consisted of rows of wooden benches and, directly opposite our allotted seats, the latrine: a stinking hole in the floor.
Judging by the crush of people surrounding us it was clear that we would have little room for sleep. It didn’t matter, I thought with renewed excitement; we could spend the whole night talking and smoking and watching the lights of India slide past: real hardcore travel. I glanced reassuringly at Gemma, who was perching on the edge of her section of the bench and easing her shoulders out of the backpack. She looked nervously around the carriage.
“How are we going to sleep here?”
“Does it matter? It’ll be fine. Just relax.”
Finally releasing herself from the pack, she started to push it under her seat. I turned to my own rucksack, hauling it up onto the luggage rack and groping vacantly through its nylon pockets for a padlock so I could secure it to the railings.
“That’s funny.” Gemma turned round, blinking in surprise. “I thought my money belt was here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought I put it in the top . . . it must be in the main part . . .”
Pulling the rucksack back onto the dusty carriage floor, she began to rummage through its contents. As I watched her, tremors of anxiety began to build inside me; when we’d been sitting on the platform I’d seen it tucked into the top, I remembered. Why couldn’t she find it now? Gemma’s fingers scrambled with increasing determination through the books and clothes and packets of medicine she’d insisted on bringing.
“Have you got it?”
“No . . .”
“Come on, Gem, it must be somewhere.”
“It’s gone!”
My stomach lurched.
“It can’t be . . . I saw you put it there!”
Heads had begun to turn, a wave of interest slowly breaking along the benches that surrounded us as people turned in our direction.
“But it isn’t!”
I could no longer bear it. I grabbed the bag from her, desperate to be doing something, anything but stand and watch her passively.
“Gemma, you halfwit! It has to be here!”
By now I could feel the eyes of the entire carriage upon us. From the benches opposite a large military-looking man with a handlebar mustache and a somewhat incongruous knitted tank-top had risen to his feet as if about to join the search.
“It’s got our passports in it!” I screamed.
From the platform, a whistle blew. There was a jolt, and we started to move. Gemma fell to her knees, peering desperately under the bench. Along with the tank-topped sergeant major we had been joined by an elderly lady in a white sari, who, as Gemma had stood up in despair, had grabbed her hand and was squeezing and clasping it to her bosom in an effort to comfort her. On the bench opposite two young men were searching under their own seats although it must have been obvious
to all concerned that the belt could not possibly be there.
Gemma had started to cry now, the tears making slimy tracks down her dusty cheeks. I stared at her in horror. I suppose I should have been more supportive, but all I could think was that because of her our trip was about to go belly up. How could she have been so stupid? The belt must have been stolen, or perhaps simply dropped onto the platform. Whatever had happened, by now it would be gone. Why was she always so careless?
With another jolt, the train moved forward again. Slowly, beyond the window, the platform began to move. With the third jerk, I jumped up and grabbed Gemma’s arm.
“Oh my God, Gemma, we have to get off! We can’t go to Calcutta without any money!”
Panic-stricken, we pulled at our packs and began to run along the aisle. The train was gathering speed, the section of the platform where we’d been sitting already slipping quietly past the window. We’d almost reached the carriage door, but now the train was moving too fast to make an exit anything other than suicidal.
As the final section of the platform whizzed past, I turned around. I think my predominant emotion was that of being drained: everything, all my plans, had suddenly been unplugged by Gemma’s muddle-headed stupidity.
“We’re fucked,” I whispered. “We’re totally fucked.”
“It wasn’t my fault, Esther, I . . .”
I didn’t let her finish.
“Wait . . .”
Gemma turned, following my gaze.
“What is it?”
“Look . . .”
At the other end of the rocking carriage, a figure was moving purposefully toward us. At first I thought it was one of the holy men I’d noticed waiting with their orange robes and shaven heads on the station platform. But as the swaying figure grew nearer I realized that I was wrong. It wasn’t a priest, but a young Western woman, with short blond hair, tanned skin, and long skinny legs.
As she finally reached us she smiled and held out her hands, as if making an offering. Gemma’s mouth had fallen open, the color returning slowly to her cheeks.
“She’s got it,” she whispered.
