Beads, Boys and Bangles

by Sophia Bennett

  At seven, we’re waiting in the hotel lobby for Mr Patil’s car to come and pick us up. At first, I wondered why we couldn’t just take a taxi, but it turns out that when they say the garment factory is ‘in’ Mumbai, what they mean is that it’s in an industrial area a two-hour drive from our hotel. When you’ve got a city big enough to hold twenty million people, a two-hour drive away counts as ‘in’.

  I’m really hoping that the driver hasn’t brought one of his children so we can do fun maths tests again. Luckily, he hasn’t. Instead, he’s accompanied by Rakesh, the ‘Manager for Closures’ (which turns out to be zips, not shutting the factory down) – a young man who doesn’t stare at us for a second and spends the whole two hours telling us about his fabulous city, and how wonderful it is, and how it’s the best at producing movies, playing cricket, building skyscrapers, starting new businesses and creating delicious food.

  ‘And shopping,’ I add.

  ‘Oh, yes, shopping,’ he says. ‘The best in the world for shopping. There is no doubt about that.’

  ‘And ice cream. Mango especially.’

  He looks round at me, impressed that I’ve already discovered so many important things about his city. Then he says something in Hindi to the driver, who smiles and looks round too. This is slightly dangerous, as he’s being overtaken by lorries on both sides at the time, but we don’t crash, so I assume he knows what he’s doing.

  Gradually, the countryside changes from flat and brown to green and slightly hilly. There are lakes. Fewer flats and more factories. The road is still crammed with cars and taxis, buses, vans and lorries, bikes and bright yellow rickshaws. Most of them are heavily laden with bags and boxes. Stuff is being carried backwards and forwards in enormous quantities.

  A few months ago, some of the boxes would have held the first consignment of Crow’s collection for Miss Teen. It’s amazing to be here and to think of their journey, past the lakes, up across the ocean (which one? Still no idea) and into the heart of London, where they would have felt right at home in the seething crowd and the clamour and commotion of launch day.

  We come to a grand set of white gates with slightly peeling paint. Beyond them are palm trees and car parks and huge buildings. It looks like how Jenny described the studios in Hollywood when she was making Kid Code, except with smaller cars and more people in bright pink saris.

  The driver takes us to the biggest building of all, which is so long it would take you ten minutes to walk from one end to the other, and Rakesh announces that we’ve arrived.

  This is where the collection was made. This is where we’ll find out the truth about how it was done. This is where we’ll discover who was mistaken: Andy Elat or the No Kidding people. We all take a deep breath and squeeze each others’ hands. Then Rakesh guides us through the heat of the car park to the air-conditioned oasis of Mr Patil’s textile empire.

  There’s a small reception area with plastic garden chairs, where we wait while Rakesh makes a call. Two minutes later, a stunning girl with black hair halfway down her back comes in and gives us a welcoming smile.

  ‘This is Alisha,’ Rakesh says. ‘She’s your guide for the day.’ After all the chatting in the car, he is suddenly a different person. He gives Alisha a shy nod, hunches his shoulders and heads quickly for his desk. But the girl makes up for him in warmth and confidence. Especially where Harry is concerned. When she shakes his hand, her smile grows, her eyelashes flutter and she somehow manages to rearrange her hair like a black waterfall over her shoulder. This is a typical Harry effect. He doesn’t seem to notice and gives her his usual friendly smile.

  Alisha asks us to follow her. She does it in a perfect American accent, although she looks completely Indian to me. I’m guessing she’s already been to Harvard or somewhere. I happen to spot Edie looking grumpily at her. Whether it’s the long, black hair, the American education or the Harry effect, I can’t tell.

  We walk through a delivery area, where there are enough cardboard boxes to build a small city. Everything is carefully stacked and labelled and there’s a conveyor belt to deliver ever more boxes to the stacks. This should give me a clue as to what’s coming next, but it doesn’t.

  From the moment we walk into the main building, I’m stunned. I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I think maybe I pictured a room about the size of our school gym and a few women busy at sewing machines, chatting to each other like an overgrown knitting circle. I didn’t picture the largest indoor space I’ve seen in my life – one that you could easily fit our whole school inside – and enough high-tech equipment to launch a space shuttle.

  All the offices are on an upstairs level, overlooking the massive factory floor. The floor itself is rubber and shiny, reflecting the very bright strip lights hanging from the ceiling. It’s marked out with lines showing the areas where different stages of production happen, and there are dozens of these, filled with machines and rails and boxes and noise and people. The sewing machine racket is the most amazing thing. It sounds like there’s a nonstop hailstorm going on, but nobody seems to notice it. I guess they must be used to it by now.

  Alisha leads us up the stairs to the offices. In a little meeting room that smells distractingly of curry, she sits us down and shows us a PowerPoint presentation of the factory and the work it does for Miss Teen and other big fashion retailers. I try to be really, really interested, but PowerPoint presentations are not my most favourite thing and I find myself thinking more and more about mango ice cream. I hope there isn’t going to be a little test at the end. Luckily, there isn’t.

  ‘Watch out for anomalies,’ Edie hisses loudly as we head back down the stairs. She’s like something from a spy movie.

  I try and ask her what anomalies are, but by now she’s chatting to Alisha, so I give up.

  ‘Watch out for anomalies,’ I hiss to Crow, doing my best Bond girl impression.

  Crow ignores me. We’re heading for the pattern cutting section, and now that it’s not on a PowerPoint slide, it’s actually quite interesting. As well as tables and tables of people cutting fabric with scissors, like you’d expect, there are also massive laser-guided machines that can cut several layers at once. Crow spends ages watching each machine, following its careful path as it traces the lines of the pattern and transforms the fabric underneath into pieces for the factory workers to sew.

  Finally, we understand why Crow’s fiddly designs would be so ‘undoable’ here. Each part of the process is done hundreds of times over, and then the results are taken to different workers, doing different processes, in a different part of the building. Pieces are constantly being moved around on giant racks, in vast quantities. If anything is too complicated or detailed, there’s a chance that something will go wrong.

  Crow doesn’t seem to mind that the tour is proving how her latest designs won’t work. Instead, she’s fascinated by how the clothes are made. We watch the workers cutting, sewing, checking, pressing, hanging, folding, labelling, packing. We watch little scraps of fabric gradually turn into tee-shirts and trousers and dresses and tops. Thousands and thousands of them.

  When Alisha leaves us for a moment to make some phone calls, Edie leans forward, still doing her spy-girl thing.

  ‘Have you noticed anything?’ she asks eagerly.

  Harry considers. ‘Did you see how many of the machinists had iPods? That sewing machine din must drive them crazy.’

  ‘They could make the pleated dresses hang better if they cut the pattern differently,’ Crow adds.

  ‘Whoever ordered the green satin-effect tracksuits is going to regret it,’ I point out.

  ‘I mean, about the CHILDREN!’ Edie growls. ‘Anything unusual? Any young workers? Any rooms we’re not being shown? Trap doors? Phil says they can hide them in all sorts of unusual places.’

  ‘No,’ we say. ‘Have you?’

  No, she has to admit, she hasn’t. The shiny rubber floor doesn’t look as though it could contain trap doors down to secret basemen
t locations. The whole place feels like an enormous warehouse. The few rooms inside it are glass-walled and contain managers and computers, not children. Everyone here seems older than us, and healthy, and . . . normal. In fact, Alisha’s been telling us that the factory helps to sponsor a local school, so if anything, children are doing quite well out of it being here.

  When Alisha comes back, we ask if this was definitely the factory where Crow’s collection was made.

  ‘I wasn’t here last year,’ she says. She was probably getting her American degree. She is SO Edie in about five years’ time. ‘But I’ve heard about the collection. People were really excited. They knew about that girl at the Oscars. Joe Yule’s girlfriend – you know. They were thrilled to be a part of the story. I’ll show you some pictures.’

  She does. They have a whole scrapbook of photos of pieces from the Jewels collection being made. We all look at each other. We feel really guilty for ever doubting them. Edie most of all. We stay on until the end of the day, but at no stage do I spot an anomaly. Nor does Edie. Nor does Crow. Harry finally notices how pretty Alisha is, but that’s about it.

  * * *

  In the evening, Harry takes Crow to see a Bollywood movie. I can’t go because, even though I’m in one of the most exciting, crowded, fascinating cities in the world, I HAVE TO REVISE FRENCH GCSE. Life is so unfair. Edie is busy on email again. She spends about an hour describing everything to Phil. Then she reads out an email from Jenny.

  ‘Sorry to say goodbye to the Boat House. Just started rehearsing in the new theatre. It’s massive! We got through loads of scenes because people weren’t busy getting warm water for TQOE. Joe Ew-l decided she was working too hard, so he’s taken her away for a few days. To Venice. Watch out for the photos. Bill’s busy on a new project, but he came in to watch rehearsals and he liked my scenes!’

  Etc. Etc. I wait for the bit where she asks us about what it’s like in India, but she doesn’t. I mean, how interesting could it be on a foreign continent, compared with rehearsing a play you’ve already performed night after night for four weeks? At least she’s happy, though.

  I ask Edie if she’s decided what to do about her website.

  ‘Are you going to take down the “Cheap Clothes Cost Lives” stuff?’

  Edie looks shocked. ‘Of course not! But I guess I’ll have to put up some sort of apology to Miss Teen. So will No Kidding. Phil says he doesn’t understand it. The person who gave them those photos of the children was a reliable source. It makes them look stupid. Phil’s worried that next time they do a campaign, people just won’t believe them. I’ve sort of made it worse for them by getting involved.’

  Her shoulders sag. She’s clearly not happy about letting down the No Kidding people. Edie hates letting people down. Even people she’s never met who’ve done nothing but make her life stressful and complicated.

  I decide it’s time to change the subject. ‘So, what’s happening tomorrow?’ I ask. Now that we’ve seen the factory, I’m assuming we can just relax.

  Edie’s in charge of the schedule. She loves that sort of thing and cheers up immediately. She’s put it on a spreadsheet, which she brings up on her computer.

  ‘Free morning. Then we need to pack for the train to Agra in the evening.’

  ‘Pack?’ I vaguely remember people mentioning that we were catching a train to another town at some stage, but I didn’t realise it would involve packing. ‘Why do we have to pack?’

  ‘Because Agra’s a long way away. It’s a twenty-hour journey.’

  I snort with giggles. ‘You know, for a minute there, I thought you said twenty hours! Hahaha!’

  Edie looks at me sternly. ‘I did.’

  I stop giggling. ‘What? You can’t mean we’re going to sit on a train for TWENTY HOURS? Why can’t we fly?’

  ‘Because there aren’t any direct flights to Agra and by the time you’ve gone to Delhi and caught a cab, it takes about as long.’

  ‘So why on earth are we going? What can POSSIBLY be in Agra to make it worth twenty hours? Nothing is worth twenty hours.’

  Edie smiles at me. ‘Oh, I think this is.’

  God, I wish I was better at geography.

  ‘OK, put me out of my misery,’ I tell her. ‘What is it?’ She grins, delighted.

  ‘Even you’ve heard of this one, Nonie. How about the Taj Mahal?’

  ‘You mean like the hotel down the road?’

  ‘Not that Taj Mahal. THE Taj Mahal.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, finally getting it. Actually, that does sound rather wow.

  I’m still not completely convinced that twenty hours is an acceptable length of time to travel anywhere, frankly, except possibly Australia, but standing in the station the next evening, surrounded by the bustle of excited train-goers, I have to admit I’m getting used to the idea. Mum once did a photo shoot at the Taj Mahal and has always droned on about how ‘simply magical’ and ‘uniquely inspirational’ it is. I shall now be able to shut her up by going ‘when I was there . . .’, which will be very annoying for her and mega-fun for me, so I’m looking forward to that bit already.

  Also, I have loaded up on new DS games and magazines and should have enough to keep me busy for the whole journey without once needing to resort to French grammar, which is good. Edie is insisting that we spend most of our time admiring the incredible scenery and ‘getting to know the heart of India’. But I’m totally planning to admire my new fashion show game and see how many models I can send down the DS catwalk in record time.

  The train is enormously long and just, well, enormous. There are lots of different classes and, with the help of the Patils, we’re in one of the best ones, which means air conditioning and a compartment with seats that turn into beds. When we get to the platform, I’m expecting hundreds of people to stream all over the carriages and tie themselves to the roof, like they do in movies. It’s quite disappointing when everybody behaves like they do in England, except dressed more colourfully, and gets on normally through the doors. Except they do it in such large, bustling numbers that I’m not sure how we’re all going to fit inside the train.

  It takes ages to find our seats. Everyone we ask confidently tells us they’re somewhere they’re not, and I’m beginning to wonder if they really exist at all when finally, Edie shrieks and beckons to us and we all pile in after her, just as the train starts moving.

  Cocooned in our compartment, Harry soon loses himself in a memoir by a photographer he likes who travelled in India a lot. Crow gets busy making a dress using some fuchsia pink sari material and a travel sewing kit she’s brought with her. Edie surrounds herself with revision books, guidebooks, water and bananas, which is pretty much all she dares consume in case Something Horrible happens to her tummy. She then has to pile the whole lot into her lap when an Indian family comes in to join us and takes up all the other seats.

  The train heads out of Mumbai. My plan to read and play DS games is quickly interrupted by the Indian family, who are desperate to chat. They want to know where we’ve come from, where we’re going, whether we’d like to try some of the delicious potato cakes and spicy things they’ve brought to keep them going on the journey, what my favourite sights in Mumbai are, and whether I’ve met the Queen. I’m tempted to say I’ve been compared to her a couple of times by my ex-not-boyfriend, but decide he’s not worth bringing into the conversation, and the family are very disappointed when I have to admit I’ve only ever seen her on TV.

  Next thing I know, the daughter of the family, who’s about ten, is sitting beside me and ‘helping’ me with my DS game, while her mother ‘helps’ me with my magazines, by flipping through all of them and laughing loudly at several of the outfits. I don’t mind, because the food she keeps feeding me from the big bag at her feet is so incredibly delicious I’m probably eating more of it than her husband and children put together.

  Long after darkness falls, they reach their station and pack up their belongings, leaving me with enough delicious food to last till mor
ning. I’m very sorry to see them go, and amazed to see that four hours have gone by already and it’s time for bed. I’m starting to think twenty hours isn’t so crazy for a train journey after all. Not only that, but even turning our seats into bunk beds is fun, and there’s something very soothing about being rocked to sleep by the sound of the wheels speeding along the tracks, carrying us further and further towards Agra.

  I love sleeping on trains, as it turns out, and, unlike Edie, I’m not constantly in fear of being attacked by bandits. This is the advantage of not reading too much historical local literature.

  The morning is a bit of a shock. Not the train itself, but the fact that every time I look out of the window, I seem to spot a naked bottom, squatting near the track. Are we travelling along some kind of thousand-mile loo? And, frankly, why don’t they teach you about this in geography? It would be so much more interesting than the population of Alaska, which is not a fact I plan on ever needing to know.

  I could look out of the window all day. Not at the bottoms, but at the people and animals constantly at work in the fields, or building shacks dangerously close to the railway, or just standing, looking and not doing much at all. However, I don’t get much of a chance as a new wave of passengers arrives wanting to know all about us. So it’s not until after lunch that I can finally get stuck into the magazines I bought. I’m in the middle of an article on Mumbai Fashion Week when Edie starts.

  ‘The Taj Mahal,’ she says grandly, out of the blue, ‘was finished in 1653.’

  We all look up, nod briefly and go back to what we’re doing.

  ‘It took twenty thousand labourers and a thousand elephants to build it and it is rumoured that Shah Jahan had all their hands cut off when it was finished so that nothing so beautiful could ever be built again.’

  ‘Elephants don’t have hands,’ I point out. ‘And by the way, ew.’

  Edie looks at me crossly. ‘They say the architect was killed,’ she goes on, ‘but—’