by Philip Roy
We arrived in front of the train station in a cloud of dust. Melissa went inside and bought our tickets. Then she double-checked to see that I had Mr. Singh’s address, told us she’d be waiting at the same spot tomorrow night, wished us a safe trip and left in another cloud of dust.
Neither Radji nor I had ever been on a train. We wandered over to the platform, found a bench and sat down to wait for the train to arrive. Melissa told us to step onto the train as soon as it arrived, otherwise other people would push us aside and we wouldn’t even get the seats she had paid for. I assured her we would.
There was only one other person waiting. I thought that was strange. It was a young man playing a guitar. A pack of dogs had gathered around him and appeared to be listening to him. The man looked friendly and so did the dogs. Radji was curious, as usual, so he got up and drifted over to listen too. He just stood there and watched, and then I saw the young man speak to him. The train started to come. Radji hurried back. He turned and waved to the young man, who waved back.
“What did he say to you?” I asked.
“He said, ‘Peace.’”
Chapter Seventeen
THE TRAIN GLIDED DOWN the tracks like a long team of workhorses with silent hooves and husky lungs. It looked as if it had been over-burdened with passengers and freight for so long it had grown old and exhausted. I almost had to tell myself not to feel sorry for a piece of machinery; it was just a train. The sides were green and black, but they faded into one colour. The windows looked less like openings for fresh air than plates to keep the passengers from falling out.
In the time it took the train to roll to a complete stop, a small crowd had gathered. There were men in dark suits and light suits, uniforms, work clothes, travel clothes and robes. Some were dressed all in white. The women wore brightly coloured saris. The saris were just long sheets of silk they wound around themselves like caterpillars in cocoons, but they were the most beautiful things to look at, and I couldn’t help staring. I had seen sari shops in Ernakulum and stopped in front of the windows to admire the colours, but seeing them on the women was better because they came alive with movement. Walking through a crowd in India I often felt as though I were walking in a parade.
We were swept up in the crowd as it rushed onto the train. Melissa was right—we had to wrestle our way on board, only to find a whole family taking our seats. I very politely explained to the father that they were sitting in our seats and he very firmly told me I was wrong. Then he stared at Radji and frowned, so I frowned back. We wrestled our way through the walls of people until we found a train official and I explained the problem to him. He looked at me, then examined our tickets and headed back to the seats where he quickly removed the whole family. They kicked up a big fuss but the train official spoke louder than anybody else, and they moved and we took our seats opposite each other by the window. The train started to roll just as we sat down. We grinned with excitement. Hollie poked his head out of the tool bag on my lap and sniffed the strange smells of the train.
The train quickly left the outskirts of Old Goa and went up into the hills and we were surrounded by jungle and rock-faces and temples sticking out of the mist. The sun went down and dropped an orange blanket over everything. I couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. The train kept picking up speed until it was racing along with a clicking and clacking on the track underneath us. It sounded a bit like a crackling fire.
Radji sat across from me with a nervous smile on his face, but it wasn’t long before the chess box in his hands was opened and he was setting up the tiny magnetic pieces. I lifted Hollie out of the tool bag and let him curl up on the seat between the window and me. Radji and I started to play a game. In a couple of minutes we were surrounded by a group of men who were studying our every move. There wasn’t room for everyone but I was starting to learn that in India that didn’t matter; people would crowd in any way they could and no one took offense. One man wrapped his arm tightly around the neck of another man because that was the only way he could fit onto the corner of the seat without falling. And they sat that way and watched for a long time. Everyone was interested in me because I was from another country. They ignored Radji and he ignored them.
We stopped at a station after a while and picked up more people. I saw them rush at the train even before it stopped. I couldn’t imagine where they were going to sit. The train stayed in the station for about ten minutes, and during that time some men came on board with jugs of hot chai for sale, so I bought some. Some beggars climbed onto the train too, old ones and children, and they came straight to me because I was not from India. I gave the first beggar—a boy—a few rupees. He went away quickly and came back with several more beggars, and they climbed over themselves to get to me. But the men sitting beside us shooed them away and told me it was not a good idea to give them money. The train started up again and I saw the chai sellers and beggars drop down onto the platform.
It became so crowded that the man next to me squeezed closer until Hollie had to jump onto my lap. Now there were ten people sitting where there was space for five. And yet Radji sat alone with plenty of room around him. Something about him was simply not acceptable to the other people in the car. How did they even know he was “untouchable”? His skin was a little darker, but not that much. They looked the same to me. He was poor, but so were lots of other people. But he wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. And he carried himself with a posture of fear and low self-worth. I figured it was that more than anything else. If you ran from a barking dog it would chase you. If you stood up to it, it would respect you and back down. It surprised me to see human beings act like this. No one spoke to him. They were careful not to touch him. Yet they couldn’t take their eyes away from the game we were playing.
The train made a few more stops and then, rather suddenly, we were alone in the car. A train official came in and lifted four sleeping berths away from the wall above ours, so that there were now six berths in the compartment instead of just four seats. We stayed sitting still; we weren’t ready to sleep yet. Then a few beggars made their way onto the train and came down the aisle. One was a boy about my age. He didn’t have any legs. They were cut off at the trunk, and he wasn’t actually standing but holding himself up with his hands. He didn’t have crutches. He stood about as high as a large dog. One of his hands was only a ball of skin, like a club, and yet he was swinging himself along the floor and into each compartment like a monkey, to beg. In spite of how shocking that was, it was something else about him that mesmerized me. It was the look in his eyes. He stared at me with such a burning stare I felt almost hypnotized. He looked so intensely angry and yet resigned at the same time. He was my age and yet he looked a thousand years old.
I couldn’t move fast enough to get my money out, and, unlike the other beggars, he wouldn’t wait. Somehow I think he didn’t really want my money. He was just going through the act of begging because that was what was expected of him. After he left, and the train pulled away, Radji said that he was probably a snake victim. That’s what happens to you sometimes if you don’t die. Oh. I stared out the window at the stars blinking over the black hills and the occasional lights flickering out of the jungle and wondered what had really happened to him, and what would happen to him now. I would never forget the look he gave me. If people could speak with their eyes, then I was sure he was yelling at the top of his lungs. But I couldn’t understand his language.
At the next stop, a large group of nursing students climbed on board. They were on vacation and were excited. Although they were older than me, the way they were laughing and giggling made them seem younger. They sounded like a flock of birds. They climbed noisily onto the train in a wave, saw us and crowded in, around and above us. They sat five or six to a berth designed for one. They didn’t treat Radji any differently from anyone else, which was refreshing. In fact, they took a shine to him and pressed right up to him until he was squeezed against the window like me. This made it harder for him to concentra
te on the game. I took advantage of that and pulled a four-move checkmate on him, and he became flushed and had to take a break. It was time to take a break anyway. Then, the girls began to sing.
They were probably singing in Hindi. It was really beautiful. Radji and I sat and listened with grins on our faces while the girls filled the train with their voices. They passed Hollie from lap to lap and he didn’t mind at all. They weren’t the least bit shy, probably because there were so many of them together.
After a while, the girls cleared a small space in the doorway and one very pretty girl in the most beautiful sari appeared. While the other girls sang for her, she performed a traditional Indian dance. She told a story with the movements of her body. This was now the most beautiful thing I had seen in India. I didn’t even know it was possible to move like this. It was as if she had turned her body into water and wind. She floated and she swam and she soared like a bird. On through the night the train rolled while the girls sang and she danced story after story. It was one of the most magical experiences of my whole life.
The nurses got off at another station to catch a train heading east. The train grew quiet again, except for the clicking and clacking. Radji and I lay down on our berths. Hollie curled up by my feet and we all fell asleep for a few hours. We were not even disturbed by the train entering the vast, over-populated metropolis of Mumbai. The train rolled on until it entered the great old Victoria Terminal, the largest train station ever built by the British Empire.
Like a ball that kept rolling after coming down a hill, slowly losing its speed, as if not wanting to stop at all, the train came in at only a few feet per second, then just inches per second, and then stopped without any jarring whatsoever. You only knew you had stopped by looking out the window and seeing no movement, which seemed strange now. But a lady’s sharp voice over the loudspeakers told us we were inside an enormous building—the station—in the very early hours of morning. I reached over and nudged Radji. “It’s time to go, Radji. We’re here.”
Chapter Eighteen
IT WAS THE BUSIEST TRAIN station in all of Asia, according to my guide book. We had a hard time finding our way out of it. I put Hollie in the tool bag but could feel him moving around trying to sniff everything. And there was a lot to sniff. You would have thought we had fallen through time a hundred years, because porters were pushing around old wooden carts, carrying goods wrapped in burlap and white cotton sacks. Men and boys in bare feet were carrying bundles of newspapers and baskets of spices and fish on their heads. Some of the baskets were so heavy the men could barely walk straight. It was early still, and I had the feeling that a very great and very old city was just waking up.
We found the main entrance finally. It was still dark out. There were trucks unloading in the front, old lorries with vegetables, fruit, newspapers and white and brown bundles that the porters were having placed on their heads so that they could race them into the station before collapsing under their weight. Some men were carrying large buckets filled with ice and fish, half the size of their bodies, on their heads. I couldn’t imagine how they could possibly carry them but they were, though I noticed their legs looked permanently bowed from a lifetime of such heavy work. They were beasts of burden.
Also outside, many people were waking and washing on the sidewalks in front of the station. Whole families were gathered there. Mothers emptied large plastic bottles of water over their babies and young children, just as we had seen in Kochi. The children cried while their older brothers and sisters laughed.
We went to the front of a row of rickshaw taxis, the three-wheeled, motorized ones, and I handed the address to the first driver. He nodded firmly and said, “Yes, I will take you there. Six hundred rupees.” I shook my head and made a face as if he had just said the dumbest thing I ever heard. “It is very far,” he said. “Five hundred rupees.”
I reached in and took my paper back and looked at the next rickshaw in the line.
“It is a very dangerous neighbourhood,” said the driver. “I can take you there safely. Five hundred rupees.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I only want to pay three hundred rupees.”
He looked disgusted. “No. Too far.”
“It’s not so far,” I said, as if I knew what I was talking about. I didn’t. Eventually we settled on four hundred rupees. Radji, Hollie and I climbed into the back and the rickshaw took off.
It was a dangerous drive and I thought the driver was crazy. He swung back and forth on the street, getting out of the way of trucks and buses only at the very last second. I had to tell myself that this was normal in India and that millions of people travelled like this every day and didn’t get killed.
“You are from America?”
“No. Canada.”
“Canada?”
“Yes.”
“Canada is a good country.”
“I think so too.”
“Why do you come here?”
“To India? Or to Mumbai?”
“To Mumbai.”
“We have to pick up someone and take him on the train.”
He turned around and looked at Radji. “A boy?”
“No. An old man.”
“An old man?”
“Yes.”
“The old man must be very poor.”
“Why?”
He pointed to the address. “If he lives here, he must be very poor.” He turned and looked at me. “You must be careful here. This is a dangerous part of Mumbai. Very dangerous.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that. Can you wait for us and take us back to the train station?”
He tossed his head back and forth. “Ahhh . . . I don’t know. Maybe.”
At the moment, I couldn’t imagine anything more dangerous than being in the back of his rickshaw. “Why is it so dangerous there?”
“Very poor. Very much crime.”
“Oh. I would appreciate it if you could wait for us. We won’t be long.”
“Maybe I will wait for you.”
We travelled for a while on wide streets where there were buses and cars and trucks. There were also men pulling carts and trolleys with everything imaginable on them. Some things were unbelievable, such as one cart carrying the slaughtered carcasses of dozens of cows, or goats, I couldn’t tell exactly what they were. I just couldn’t understand how a single man, a small man, could pull such a weight, except that the cart must have been balanced perfectly. Still, it was an enormous amount of work, and I could see it in the man’s face and his body’s posture. And either he was ashamed for pulling dead, stinky carcasses through the city, or I was imagining that he was. It looked like it but I couldn’t really know.
Then the driver made a few sharp turns and we left the wide streets for narrower ones. Suddenly people and cows were right outside the windows and we had to slow down. We were inside the inner neighbourhoods of the city now, and they were getting poorer at every turn, and that wasn’t my imagination. Then we came around a corner and I saw something upsetting.
There was a monument in the centre where the street split in two. The monument was a sculpture of a skinny old man walking hand in hand with a young boy. I was pretty sure it was Gandhi. On the ground in front of the statue, sitting in the dirt, were four very young kids. In fact, one of them was a baby. They were only partly dressed. They had no pants or underwear. An older boy, about seven or eight years old, was dodging traffic as he was trying to lift the kids out of the dangerous spot in the middle of the street. What were they doing there in the first place? They were filthy. So was the boy who was moving them, one at a time like a mother cat moving her kittens. He looked confused, as if he had nowhere to take them. It looked so desperate, so hopeless, and yet none of the kids were crying. I looked at the driver. I wondered if he saw them. Well, he must have; they were right in front of him. But he just went around them like everyone else, and he didn’t even slow down.
I felt anxious for the kids, yet wouldn’t know how to help them. There were so man
y people here, so many extremely poor people. Where would you start? I supposed you’d have to move here and live here. And you’d have to have some training on what to do, and some support. You couldn’t come here alone. You would be swallowed up in the endless poverty and very quickly overwhelmed.
The streets were such a maze. Now I could understand why it was dangerous. If you got lost, or hurt, how would you ever find your way out? Would anyone help you? There were so many desperate people, maybe you would get robbed and be left stranded. Maybe you would be beaten or killed. I could sort of understand how desperate people might beat rich people out of frustration and anger, and rob them, as terrible as it was. But I could never understand why rich people in fancy neighbourhoods would beat innocent people like Radji. Yet that’s what he had been afraid of.
The streets grew narrower and darker. People started paying more attention to our rickshaw, looking in the windows as if wondering what we were doing here. I couldn’t help feeling a little nervous but was determined not to be afraid. The driver shook his head. “It is a dangerous neighbourhood.”
“Will you wait for us?”
“Maybe.”
I was starting to wonder if his “maybe” actually meant “no.” And what about Melissa’s brother? He must have been very poor indeed. Why else would he be in such a place?
