Notes (and pics) on a Train

I have travelled on my last Indian train. Tomorrow I fly to Nepal. Forgive the jumbledness of these scribblings from the trains, one of my favourite things in India.

***

India has one of the biggest rail networks in the world and as much as possible i have tried to travel on it. We stay in sleeper class. This is the lowest class of reserved berths on an overnight train and consists of 8 "beds" per compartment. There is no air conditioning, just 3 fans in each compartment to stir the thick air. There is no curtains, no privacy and bars instead of windows (in the desert, sand and dust blow through, coating everything). The beds are just platforms covered in institutional, easy-wipe blue plastic, with no bedding. The heat is generally such that you sweat through the night in shorts and t-shirt without blankets. The carriages are filthy, we've shared at least one with mice. They are noisy, overcrowded and sometimes unsafe, requiring you to lock your bags to your bed. But unlike a bus or a plane, where I think India somewhat stops while you travel, in a train India drapes itself out in the carriage around you.

Huge sprawling families of 15 on their 6 reserved berths as they squabble and laugh spontaneously. They take turns lying down to sleep, filling any space you are foolish enough to leave empty. The old man cross-legged on his seat eyes closed, praying and touching his head to the seat. The various food and drinks sellers up and down the aisle blending their wares into a mantra "coffeeteachai , coffeeteachai...". The puckered kiss noises passengers use to get the attention of sellers and the good natured haggling that follows. The ritual of eating as each little group takes out their prepared food wrapped in banana leaves, newspaper or sets of stacked metal pots. The offers of food and drink. People throwing their rubbish out the barred windows, glass bottles and all. The staring kids, too shy to smile back. People spitting out the blood red juice from chewing paan, a mix of betel nuts and berries used like chewing tobacco. Mobile phones going constantly, either playing music or chatting. The beggars who work the trains, some nudging you awake with the stump of their arm and the complicated procedure of getting your money into their shirt pocket when they have no hands. The guys who come along on their hands and knees pushing a cloth along to clean the floor (pocketing any edibles which the mice haven't got to) and silently, with their eyes, plead for money. The lovely friendly man...with the business card. The two lads from the pyramid scheme, their unbridled enthusiasm for this future of marketing. The conversations around us moving in and out of english at random, particularly amongst the kids. The advice sought after or otherwise, regularly inaccurate. People breaking into song at random. The loss of all sense of personal space, people clambering over you like you've known them for years. Young kids being hoisted around the place one-handed, often with only a firm grip on the bicep, hoiked onto upper bunks with ease. Proud Indian mothers spending hours extolling the virtues of Drive and Determination and the overseas jobs of their sons. The informality of strangers. The filtered sunlight on colourful clothes.

***

When the carriage gets too much you can move out into the doorway. India is fortunately still mostly in the stone age when it comes to Health and Safety Protocols and Procedeures which means responsibility for your own safety is back with yourself. If you want to hang out from the train with one hand and take a photo thats ok. If you want to try and crush into a moving train door at the same time as 50 other people, this is also cool. So one of my favourite bits is sitting in the doorway with my legs dangling, watching rural India sway past.

Kids, and occasionally adults, stand by the track and wave enthusiastically. Farmers ( men, women, children), doubled over in the fields, work in ridiculous heat oblivious to the passing train, or sit in the shade watching through half closed eyes. We pass little dusty red clay villages of 5 or 6 houses or big, dirty provincial towns which use the embankment as a dumping ground. In the early morning villagers squat in their fields and do toilet and try to ignore the audience rolling by. We pause at stations where little old ladies and their bundles have to clamber six feet to the ground and back up onto the platform on the other side. Women walk along dusty roads, one hand holding a huge basket on their head and the other holding a child braced against their hip. Hay stacks and brick stacks.

Occasionally the train crosses a bridge and the ground drops away suddenly beneath you, so that there is nothing between you and the river below but air. I can never quite shake that niggling temptation to jump.

***

One kid minding some sheep with a stick bigger than he was. He waved speculatively and I waved back. He cheered and started pelvic thrusting at the train, his hands in the air like he'd just scored a goal, then looking around wildly to see if there was anyone to share his victory with.

***

The head waggle is an Indian gesture of many meanings, often used in greeting, which is basically nodding your head sideways left to right. Sitting in the doorway of one train I spotted some rather stern, well-dressed women walking in a line by the side of the track. On an impulse I waggled my head at them. Solemn and straight backed, the first woman frowned but out of habit she waggled back, an almost involuntary reaction. This set off the women behind her in unsmiling unison, their frowning faces bouncing around as if caught in the draft of the train. I'll never forget it.

Poor me.

I do not want to talk too much about this. Just to say that there is so much poverty around and to such an extreme level that you have to put up walls. You have to frown and be angry with the beggars. You forget even why you're angry at them except that it had something to do with being strong and not giving every last one all your money. So then you end up giving none to anyone. Or each time you develop a "system" to decide who to give to it crumbles under the onslaught. You end up giving money to the smiling drunk who can tuck his foot behind his ear while you shrink away in disgust from the little old lady who's too weak to do anything but cling to your arm. And you might stay ahead of the guilt by observing to yourself how people generally seem happier, the wonderous simplicity of a peasant's life, the purity of poverty, it's us with money who have it all wrong. Or what good can I do, what a tiny drop in the ocean anything i give will be. Or the mafia gets all the money, its the mafia that chopped off their limbs. There are numerous others you can filter it through, until it becomes nearly nothing.

So its a relief sometimes when the wall comes down, crashing down sometimes, when you hear something in someone's voice or watch someone who isn't even aware you're there. You realise the reality of that moment, the genuine suffering right there in front of you that you can probably alleviate. It hits you in the stomach I find, and suddenly I have to not be looking at this person anymore.

I don't even necessarily give them anything, I can't even face them. I just indulge that moment so as to remember who I hope I am, and to remember that really when you get down to it, its not ok.

And then, in no time at all, the walls go back up.

Call me Mr Mahal.

When I grow up I'm gonna be King of the World.


And I'm gonna live here.

I know what you're thinking.


"Beautiful."

Thank you, I've been working out.

Deserted

"No chappathi, no chai, no woman, no cry..."

The camel guide's little poems make no real sense but he drifts between them and local desert singing with ease. In the wind they are almost indistinguishable and both become strangely haunting. The same wind forces my eyes low but visibility is down to a hazy kilometre of scrub in any direction so it makes no odds. The heat is oppressive (47'C they reckon later) and the wind alleviates this a small but precious amount, wind chill if you will. Between the conditions and the sleepy plodding of my camel my senses are reduced to a small bubble, like having your hood up in heavy rain.

Because of my detachment the well comes up like a traditional mirage, to my mind appearing from nowhere. It is a raised well with a concrete cover and a trough to the side for the animals to drink from. The animals rely on the locals to haul up water to fill it, emphasising the delicate balance of life in such a place. There are several different types of animals congregated at the well but they are almost all disappointingly familiar. There are a few cattle, common to the streets of most cities in India, but skinnier here for not having all that urban debris to forage. Sheep shiver in the shade of one small bush, their desparate panting emphasised by one particular sheep whose bell rings with a forced, steady rhythm. Goats stutter around with their evil eyes while a lone donkey bears a water bag with that sad, empty look that I now suspect is common to all donkeys. Three little birds add a disney touch, bobbing and jumping over each other in the wind and water, but they are overshadowed by the dark swarm of flies around the trough and the general air of burden of the other gathered animals. Our camels are the most exotic presence, with their endearing ugliness, the amazing practicality of their bodies and that unique way they have of sitting, folding their tri-jointed legs in opposite directions.

Alongside the animals there are a few locals from a small village over the dunes, a village of "untoucables", the lowest caste in India. Two men wearing bright turbans, one red and one orange, fill leather water containers draped over the backs of the donkey and a camel. They seem unimpressed by our arrival and the red head squats down on the side of the well and holds forth with one of our guides, using his arms expansively like an Italian. I can't hear what he's saying, I'm still in my own little cocoon and I take advantage of this, using my camera shamelessly. The rest of the locals are grubby kids, watching us curiously from within the security of their goats and sheep, reluctant to smile.

Our guides set to work, Kamal cleans the dead flies from the trough while Mr Seargent refills it from the well. I don't know if Kamal is his real name or one given to him by some of his first lazy tourists which he stuck with for simplicity or as a lasting monument to their (and our) ignorance. At this stage I know he was married by arrangement at age fifteen to a girl aged ten. He now has 3 kids and is only twenty-three years of age despite looking forty. He urges me not to marry. Where Mr Seargent got his name is anyone's guess. The two of them work quickly and seem to pay little attention to the red head. Too soon it is time to climb back onto our grumbling camels and continue on our way.

As we leave, heads bowed, I notice with disappointment tyre tracks on the ground, and the thought of jeeps roaming here makes any remoteness seem fanciful and staged, no doubt a McDonalds is hiding just beyond the dunes. Then I see a camel-drawn water trailer approach and realise with relief that this is the source of the tracks. With my sense of isolation recovered I can surrender again to those simultaeneous feelings of claustrophobia within that limited horizon and agoraphobia of all that windswept emptiness that lies beyond.

The chat

Unfortunately in India every encounter is tainted by a certain level of distrust, particularly when the conversation is initiated by an Indian. It can be something of a game to try and determine as quickly as possible, using any clues available, why this person is talking to you. For instance today walking along a man asks us where we are from and gets excited when we (irish, english, israeli) tell him. Come in he says, insisting us into his home, introducing his family. The game begins. We talk a little with no clue, he's a machine technician, he has 3 kids, a few grandkids, likes what he's seen of Ireland and Israel on the tv, doesn't mention Engerland. I ponder as he talks. He is too close to a tourist attraction to be just curious about foreigners, other locals are bored by us. There is no evidence of any art that might be for sale, made by him or a family member. He has too many family members around to need the company. He mentions his wife does henna and a slight alarm goes off in my head but he is not very insistent and he has already said his wife is out. He talks about his son studying but he's not studying English (or Hebrew) so we can't be roped into tutoring. If we weren't quite the experienced tourists now we might even think he just enjoys the chat. But his tone implies a lead in. He mentions another Israeli person had got henna done there last month, this is it. Suddenly he flourishes a lone 20 shekels note from underneath his tablecloth. "How much is this worth?" he asks our Israeli friend. About 200 rupees ( 4 euro) she answers and he nods. "Could you change it?" he asks and then as explanation "My wife loves mints."



This might sound like a cynical way to approach interaction with the locals and I entirely agree. I value 10 minutes of no-ulterior-motive conversation with locals more than 10 hours wandering around temples but the regularity with which seemingly friendly conversations turn to someone's cousin's gallery or guesthouse is exhausting.



Very roughly they could be put into three groups. The first group, the sharks lets say, are all business. They are often the smoothest and friendliest, they will chat away to you, charming, make their lead in real gentle and be all smiles when you politely decline their commercial advances. However when they turn away you might just catch something in their expression or in the ensuing conversation they have with a friend that marks them as a shark. Other times these guys come across quite jaded, bored most likely, struggling to pretend they are interested in another group of sun-creamed ignorants.



The second group are those who seem to mix business with pleasure, they will chat and even be open about their business intentions but appear to take genuine pleasure from the exchange. (Obviously people in this group are sometimes actually just very good sharks.) Here you have the student who happily chats with you, insisting on bringing you to a restaurant you have only asked directions to, and then just before they leave almost reluctantly starting a spiel about an art shop they work in nearby. When you politely decline they seem nearly relieved that the deceit has been glossed over so quickly and they say their farewells with warmth. Also deserving a mention here are the beggar kids who tug on your trousers with sad, dirty faces, beseeching you as you battle your way through them into a rickshaw. Then as the rickshaw pulls away, their jobs done with no money having changed hands, they break into the widest of smiles and wave us off happily. And yes, i check my pockets after these exchanges and no, they aren't waving my wallet.



The third group are those people who are just as interested in us whities as we are in them. The friendliness of this group of people and their willingness to help is quite overwhelming. We are invited into wedding parties, to homes for dinners, we are invited into family photographs (some men get their wives to take the photo of them holding hands with the white girl). We hear tales of unbelieveable hardship told with humbling stoicism and smiles. Some of these stories i will have to relay at some stage. The ability of Indians to be cheerful, to enjoy the craic when things are basically shit, is astonishing. And the genuineness of these exchanges buries the cynicism, for a while at least, or until the next time someone opens with a smile, "Hello my friend, which country?".

An Indian tale

I am not known for my cooking abilities. My philosophy in food has been to keep my palate as unsophisticated as possible, the thinking being the less sophisticated my palate was the more I would enjoy easy-to-make, cheap foods. This explains why at 28 years of age I alone amongst my peers still appreciate the delicate subtleties of microwaved fish fingers in a wrap. With this kind of mental deficiency I feel under-qualified to write anything on the food in India (sorry D) but as it is such a big part of India I did feel it only right that I take a cooking class.


The class covered all sorts of weird and wonderful things with chutneys, paneer (cheese), lassis (yoghurt drinks), naan and chiapatti breads, masalas and chai (sweet tea with spices).


Our teacher, Shanshi, was a remarkable woman with a remarkable story to tell. Her husband had been a chef in the restaurant on the rooftop of the building where they lived. During a drought a decade ago in Udaipur, when there were no tourists because there was no lake, her husband decided to go to another town for a 10 day festival where he and his best friend made what money they could by cooking for the revellers. By the end of the festival they had made 60,000 rupees (ish 1200 euro, not a guarantee).


On the last evening when they had counted their money the pair sat down to a meal themselves, rightly pleased with their efforts. But the best friend had ill intent. He put sleeping tablets into the husband's food that left him weary, and when Shanshi's husband talked to her on the phone she insisted he stay the night for fear of an accident befalling him on his drive home. And so it was that while the unsuspecting husband lay passed out, the best friend got two men to hold him down and they strangled him with a rope. Morning came and the best friend rang the police in horror, his friend had not come down for chai in the morning and seemed to have succumbed to a heart attack.

An autopsy was carried out and the real cause of death was determined and the friend was thrown in jail. But he remained in jail for just one year and was then released, baksheesh shrugs Shanshi, bribes.


Shanshi is of the Brahmin caste. As a member of this caste she had to remain indoors for a year of mourning. Her boys, aged 9 and 11, were forced to find what work they could for the family to survive. Brahmins, being the top of the caste hierarchy traditionally and the most esteemed and proudest of the castes, do not tend to look favourably on those in poverty, even their own. When her year of mourning was over Shanshi was forced to work long days for pittance, doing the laundry of the local guesthouses to feed her children. This further ostracised her from those around her. She fell ill regularly and suffered blackouts.

Along comes an Irish tourist who befriends her son. She makes them snacks while they're hanging out. The Irish man declares these snacks delicious and says she should start cookery classes. So she did. And now, relatively speaking, she's minted. She can now afford to send her sons to college. She will no doubt feature in the next Lonely Planet and then she will be even richer.

Moral of the story? The Irish are great and she should have given me the cookery class for free. Miser.

The story so far.

Too much to write and I'm forgetting stuff so just a quick travelogue to get me up to date, I will write more on some of these places later.

Bangalore - Our party - Me, Aisling, Ollie + Amelia, Cassie
Big, progressive, IT capital of India and our destination after Hampi. As it happened one of our party of 5 was based out of Bangalore, living in the penthouse apartment of a family friend. Cassie got us into the swankiest bar in the city, where a double vodka and red bull cost me the same as four nights in a hotel. We then went to a sexy party and rubbed shoulders with people with names like "Xavier". Me and Ollie (Man U fan) saw fit to sing Roy Keane songs apparently. I don't know the words so I probably was just chanting his name over and over and thinking it worked in the song. Wisely realising that integration would never work, Cassie's contact brought us back to her very own high-end health spa with a jacuzzi, steam room and booze, where we were mostly safe from any diplomatic catastrophes. Highlight for me was going around slapping my companions with my wet boxers. Keeping it real.

Mysore - Our party now - Me, Aisling, Ollie + Amelia, Cassie, Val, Hugh
Mysore was supposed to be quieter place with a nice atmosphere but we were pretty disappointed. It didn't help that a few of us were in various states of unwellness, I had a small bit of Delhi belly. Impressive palace, lit up with over 50,000 lights on Sunday nights.

Kalpetta
Grand little place in hills. Wildlife safari a bit pants, saw some elephants (which were cool), then some deer, some bees, some more deer, and for the grand finale, some chickens.

After that we went to a cave with ancient rock carvings and did a little trekking. Got a shave.

Fort Cochin
Real laid back place, stayed here a few days doing nothing much and enjoying it, people watching. Portuguese influences here, very christian.

Allepey waterways
We got a very posh houseboat for a night (with our own chef), rode the waterways while we watched Kill Bill in Hindi, drank, played charades, then the "pick-box-off-ground-with-mouth" game and poker.

Amma's Ashram
We went and stayed in the ashram of The Divine Mother, Amma, the hugging guru. That was fascinating, not least because this centre of charity and spirituality looked like a hotel in Torremelinos. Monsoon kicked off spectacularly.

Ooty
Up in the hills proper, rented cottages in this hill station surrounded by tea and spice plantations. Cold enough that you need blankets to sleep again. Lovely trekking with native guide through the settlements of the Todi tribe. Couldn't take famous miniature train up due to landslide on the tracks.

June 1st
Ahmedabad - Me , Hugh(just a friend)
The group splits and a new chapter begins. We 2 fly into Ahmedabad up North to commence our tour of Rajasthan, the dusty jewel of India...