Around India in 80 Trains (48 page)

Epilogue

31 May 2011

London had never felt so alive. I had flung open the windows and balcony door of my flat and the smell of an early summer barbecue drifted in from next door’s garden. A spiral of smoke curled its way up between the trees, green and glowing as the evening sun cut into the room at angles, bouncing off my computer screen. Reading the final line of chapter seven, I pressed print and sat back with relief.

It was one year since I had arrived home and I was a third of the way through writing this book. To my right was a stack of multi-coloured train tickets, faded and wilting. A pile of hotel and restaurant receipts sat next to them, along with my large leather-bound logbook and six shabby notebooks barely holding on to their spines. Stuck to the wall was the pressed orchid from the Indian Maharaja—minus one petal. A cardboard box of books sat on the floor. Before flying home I had posted my mobile library which had arrived a couple of weeks after I did and still had about it a faint smell of camphor and dust.

What looked like a jumble sale was now my home. Most mornings I would manage half an hour of meditation—45 minutes if I was lucky—before sitting down and sifting through the memorabilia, using each piece to reassemble the journey. On another wall was my map of India. Now the line of marker pen ran all the way around the country, starting in Chennai and ending firmly back there. I often found myself gazing proudly at that map, remembering episodes that made me smile, but I wished that marker pen could have run through a few more states: Nagaland, Mizoram and Uttaranchal, for instance. As much as my questions about India had been satisfied, a new curiosity had been sparked, and I knew that I would one day go back.

On a separate screen a slideshow of photographs played on a loop, familiar faces appearing and fading into one another. I changed some of their names among the pages, but decided that others deserved to be recognised for their role in shaping my journey, and in turn, shaping me.

Acknowledgements

I had no idea how many people would come together to shape the wonderful journey that began when I boarded the first train in January 2010 and ended at the last line of this book. To the cast of characters who wandered the train aisles, slept above me or sat by my side, I hope that I have shown my gratitude throughout the pages. In addition to Pramod Kapoor and the team at Roli, a core group deserves my heartfelt thanks.

While in India, Urmila Dongre offered me a permanent bedroom, delightful company and much-needed antispasmodics as did Radhika and Krishna Das, Neil Sudhakar, Arun Chadda and Kavita Bhupathi Chadda. Sweetie and Imthiaz Pasha, my surrogate parents, thank you for your love, affection and occasional ridicule: without you I would not have survived and would still be queuing for tatkal tickets at Chennai Central.

Huge thanks go to Giles Heron, my next-door-neighbour and chief proofreader, for coffee,
Community
and keeping me sane, and to Russell Goulbourne whose eagle-eyed editing and brilliant wit and wisdom have made this a much sharper book than I could have hoped. In their own ways, Stephen Armstrong, William Dalrymple, Matthew Rosenberg, Milan Samani, Arun Rajagopal, Harald Haugan, Meredydd Lloyd-Jones, Charles Cumming and Michael Haydock gave me little prods and pushes when I needed them.

Chris and Lynn Palmer’s impeccable timing was a godsend—and the same goes for Marc Sethi and Edward Price—much love and gratitude for your photography and friendship when I needed it most. Adam Benzine, Ramin Farahani and Sarah Warwick have weathered my strops and tears with hugs, humour and encouragement, but a special thank you goes to my school friend Abizer Kapadia for designing the most beautiful website, without which this book would never have happened.

I will be forever grateful to my dear agent, David Godwin, for making that crackly phone call to Gangtok, holding my hand from start to finish while writing this book and proving to be a wonderfully wicked companion in my subsequent travels. Enormous thanks to you and Anna Watkins for enduring my visits and shameless pilfering from your bookcases.

Lastly, and most importantly, I want to thank my parents Rekha and Rajesh, my brother Rahul, and in particular my sister-in-law Sarita, for giving me nothing but love and whoops of joy, and delighting in my adventures as if they were their own.

About the Author

Monisha Rajesh was born in King’s Lynn in Norfolk and grew up all over England. She read French at the University of Leeds and taught English at a high school in Cannes before studying postgraduate journalism at City University London. She has written for the
London Evening Standard
,
The
Guardian
,
TIME
magazine and
The
New York Times
. Monisha now works at
The
Week
magazine and lives in London. This is her first book.