Around India in 80 Trains (42 page)

Rain began to whip the windows, not in wispy English streams that dampen spirits, but with the kind that lacerate human skin. Shivering, I zigzagged back through the pantry car. At one end a man wearing a T-shirt filled with holes tossed smoking cauliflower in a karahi the size of a satellite dish, while at the other, a pair of boots attached to a sleeping policeman stuck out over a berth, his AK47 propped up against the wall. It was a far cry from
Hello
magazine, packets of Quavers and the balloon-red blazers of a Virgin Pendolino.

I settled down to read when the compartment resounded with an almighty ‘BAM!’ and I peered over the edge of the berth to see who had been shot. The Human Conker was crouched on the floor, running his hand over a hole in the window that was now splintering into a spider web.

‘Rocks,’ he said. ‘They throw rocks sometimes to cause problems. Sometimes bullets.’

Hoping nobody chose that moment to throw bullets, I jumped down and inspected the web. ‘Who does?’ I questioned, as he smoothed his strands back into place and ignored me.

Curious, I got back into my berth just as Passepartout appeared with his book and the haggard look of a sleep-deprived mother. He clambered into the empty berth just as the ticket inspector waddled into sight. He was an unpleasant man whose top lip curled up as he peered at our tickets, revealing dark, sticky-looking gums.

‘Tell him to go!’ he shouted at me, gesturing at Passepartout with a pair of pantomime eyebrows.

There was nobody in the berth and as the rail passes included second-tier, I saw no reason why he should.

‘Someone is coming at the next stop,’ he barked.

Passepartout slid down and walked off. Nobody came for the next four hours.

I must have fallen into a deep sleep, as when I looked over, the bed was made and a skeletal man in a cross-legged position was cupping his elbows, engaged in breathing exercises. Chandan was a 31-year-old English teacher from Dibrugarh in Assam who studied naturopathy and drank two glasses of hot water with every meal to prevent fat absorption. His eyes flicked open and he looked straight at me.

‘May I ask what it is you are writing?’

I showed him the list of train journeys and he pulled out a giant encyclopaedia on the history of Assam and tossed it across to me.

‘Why are you carrying this?’ I asked in bemusement.

‘I was teaching in Delhi.’

He closed both eyes, but continued talking.

‘It’s peaceful now,’ he said. ‘Earlier, young people were feeling that the central government of India was neglecting Assam since independence. Compared with other parts of India you will see that Assam is underdeveloped, there is no investment and huge unemployment. There is also the problem of infiltration from Bangladesh. Immigrants come in and settle on the banks of the Brahmaputra and then gradually they make their way up to the main part of Assam and start occupying. Rajiv Gandhi signed the Assam Accord in 1985 but no section of this has been fulfilled yet.’

He paused to inhale while I scribbled, thrilled at this uninvited explanation of Assam’s unrest.

‘What did the Accord include?’

‘They had promised to clear out illegal immigrants and to help industrialisation, but all they do is take advantage of our tea and oil.’

‘Why haven’t they addressed the demands?’

‘Assam youth are fed up of being exploited and are demanding independence as a state, but India wants to keep us attached because we’re useful.’

He placed the index finger of his right hand against his left nostril and exhaled.

‘Mainland India is full of terrible people. They complain that you Britishers came and raped the country, but Indians do no better among their own people.’

‘What can you do?’

‘Not much. We often kidnap foreigners, make off explosions and no doubt you will be reading of dastardly behaviour: we are just trying to get the attention of the Indian government.’

Whether or not he meant the royal ‘we’ I now had no intention of falling asleep in the berth next to a self-confessed kidnapper. He hugged his knees to his chest and rolled onto his back before sitting up and watching me drain the dregs of my tea.

‘You mustn’t drink tea in Assam,’ he grinned.

After drinking over a thousand paper cups of tea-flavoured treacle, the trip to Assam in search of the finest cuppa was like pilgrimage. Whether my tea obsession came from my Indian genes or from growing up in Yorkshire, travelling to Assam felt to me what a trip to Colombia must mean to Charlie Sheen.

‘All tea in Assam is full of pesticides, so don’t drink it. We call it
saalu chai
, or “dirty tea”. Good tea is exported to you people and to Germany.’

I wished I had packed a bumper box of Twinings.

A man arrived wearing a grey anorak, a grey cardigan, grey trousers and a grey tie, with a shock of orange hair. He and his young son took over the bottom berth just as the mummified figure had crept out from beneath her blanket, revealing a slender face flushed with the glow of a good sleep. The Conker had gone and an elderly doctor with rosy cheeks lay in the side berth repeating
saalu chai
and laughing. Now was a good time to ask why there were so many policemen on board.

‘Why do police keep walking up and down our carriage? Is that normal?’

The doctor smiled as though he had not heard me. The grey-clothed, orange-haired man repeated the question, looking out of the window as the others looked away. I had committed the Assamese equivalent of farting in public. Still gazing at the blackness he replied:

‘They are thinking that there might be a bomb on the train. This is a prestigious and very nice Rajdhani train, so it is of special interest to militants.’

Inwardly I cursed Anusha and her love of Rajdhanis.

‘You shouldn’t worry’, he said, ‘but one way to know if this is true is if they bring sniffer dogs onto the train.’

As the train shook across the bridge entering Guwahati, the Brahmaputra river drifted in the dark, a wide-mouthed beast, rippling and sparkling beneath a full moon. Moving into the doorway I squatted to watch the show playing at arm’s reach. Huts lit by oil lamps and candles slid past, while fires burned beneath pots of food, the smoke flitting across the train doors. The city flickered like a fairytale kingdom as the train clanked and rolled past open homes and families winding down for the day. A body pressed itself against me and I jumped back to find a boy in an anorak, lighting a cigarette. He fixed me with a pair of slanted green eyes as his friend cleaned his nails with a blade. They were both Naga.

‘You are Christian?’

‘No, I’m a Hindu,’ I replied, wondering what that even meant anymore. They raised their eyebrows and glanced at my clothes.

‘No, you are Christian,’ said the second boy pressing his blade against the sleeve of my fleece.

I assured him I was not, then added that my granddad had been stationed in Nagaland in the 1960s, building roads with the Indian Army.

‘Not Christian?’ he said, pulling his blade back.

‘No, not Christian,’ I snapped.

‘Sorry, ma’am, we see you with Christian man, we think you also Christian.’

The thought of the ‘devout atheist’ being mistaken for a Christian was laughable and not at all worth getting into, so I pulled together a few lines of Hindi, much to their delight, and wandered back to my seat as a pair of Labradors were led through the carriage.

‘English ma’am, English ma’am, the train is arriving early.’

I sat up and squinted out of the window. There is a type of greyness that saves itself for days of early morning travel or after sleepless nights. It was in place, hanging from the skies and draped over the river. I raced down to B9 where, amid the neon lights, sari-tying, catarrh-clearing, toddler-whacking and hair-combing, Passepartout was curled up like a question mark, still asleep. As the train drew into Tinsukia, the morning dampness drifted through the open doors, bringing with it the smell of moss, mud and rain. It was certainly colder than West Bengal, but not cold enough to warrant the kind of attire that looked more suitable for a ski trip. A pair of newly-weds wore matching balaclavas—the man also wrapped in a checked scarf while his bride was wearing a pair of fingerless gloves revealing the maroon of her wedding henna.

I looked down hopefully at my phone. As in Jammu, foreign phones did not work here and I was worried we would not find our hosts. I was already nervous that the Rajdhani trio were professional con-artists, and I—naive and trusting—had fallen prey to an elaborate plot to lure foreign bait into the clutches of militants looking to take hostages. Or perhaps I had been reading too many books.

As we hovered, a stocky man with a square head, wearing a Pringle jumper, approached. He looked like a little brown Legoman and shook my hand, smiling to reveal rows of teeth that looked as though they were fitted from the mouth of a 4-year-old. Nirmal was the detective superintendent of Tinsukia police who was to take care of us for the next two days.

A jeep waited in the forecourt, with five armed police standing to attention, more of whom saluted from the roadside as we drove to the Circuit House, a colonial building set back from a lawn being mowed by two hungry goats. A bundle of overgrown puppies rolled around the porch, suckling at their mother, as Nirmal showed us to our rooms and left us in the care of Paulie, a lanky boy, no more than 15, wearing an oversized shirt and a smile that formed two dimples. It was Paulie who brought the first of many cups of tea. Dirty or not, it was like nectar from the Gods. Clay red, with neither milk nor sugar.

It was still barely daybreak and orange slivers were just beginning to crack through the grey, so we took to our beds for a couple of hours, crawling between damp covers that bore the mustiness of boarding schools, waking eventually to adamant quacking. Pulling back the curtains I was greeted by the blue skies of a primary school painting. Cotton wool clouds and an egg-yolk sun shone overhead and a motley crew of ducks and one goat splashed around in leftover puddles. The oedipal puppies had vanished. A man was sitting in a wicker chair in a tight red polo neck and flares, smiling from under a fine bouffant. He spotted my head in the window and waved.

Pradeep had a wide face and gappy teeth and thrived on gathering useless trivia. His specialist interest was cash points, but this also extended to enquiring about rucksack straps, our blood types, the expiry dates on English breakfast condiments and star signs. At one point, he tried to scratch a mole off my right ankle, insisting that it was dirt. Pradeep was Nirmal’s best friend and an accomplished guide who spent the next two days ferrying us all over town to meet his family, interspersed with visits to tea estates, oil refineries and collieries. But mainly to meet his family. After another cup of tea, we left the house, the jeep straining over ruts before Pradeep made a pit stop. A policeman climbed wordlessly into the front seat, balancing his AK47 over one shoulder. Passepartout turned pale in the back.

‘Nakul is your escort while you are here,’ Pradeep explained driving in the middle of the road, ploughing through pedestrians and turning on the siren at the slightest indication of traffic. Nirmal had arranged a tour of one of the 13 estates owned by a British company that produced 900,000kg of tea per year, 70 per cent of which was exported to Germany and Britain. Passepartout turned to me.

‘Isn’t it going to draw more attention to us, walking around with an armed guard, than if we were just on our own?’

‘Maybe, but I don’t particularly fancy our dastardly killings appearing in
The Hindu
next week.’

Navigating the bright green rows of bushes was like winding around Hampton Court Maze, at the heart of which lay an oasis of blossoms and dogs gambolling around the home of the estate manager. Ranjit was a beast of a man who stood on the steps, his thighs bulging in his shorts. He immediately ordered tea, which arrived in delicate china. Passepartout and I had begun to tremble from the caffeine and wobbled into the back of Ranjit’s jeep, which bounced and slammed along the dirt tracks to the factory. Row after row of geometrically perfect bushes stretched on for miles as pickers plucked the old leaves to make way for the second flush— provider of the purest tea. Inside the factory, Ranjit lined up a row of cups and began to slurp and hiss his way through each batch, before spitting like a cobra into a wooden column. He had the bulls-eye precision of a pro and stepped back, gesturing towards the cups.

‘Please, you must taste them yourself.’

I sucked in a mouthful of what turned out to be cold, unsweetened tea, so potent that my eyes began to water. Gagging and dribbling, I sprayed most of the column and, much to Passepartout’s delight, snorted a stream from my nose. Thrilled by the mess, Ranjit delved into an explanation of leaves, potency and oxidisation and gave us a tour of the sifting, drying and packing processes. It was barely 4pm, but bored with niceties, Ranjit wanted to give us a proper Assamese welcome.

‘What do you drink?’ he asked.

‘Normally tea with milk, but I don’t mind it without.’

Ranjit chuckled. ‘No, I meant what do you
drink
? Whisky?’