Around India in 80 Trains (6 page)

Playing Musical Berths and Pervert Peek-a-Boo had so exhausted us both that we overslept and were the last to get off the train in Mangalore, but not before spotting an absurd sign nailed to the wall:

‘Harassing Women Passengers is a Punishable Offence’

The warning was illustrated with a cartoon of a man behind bars, sporting a wholly unapologetic smile. It looked like an advert for harassment: the offender appeared quite happy to be there, as though his crime was well worth his punishment. In India obscene remarks, wandering hands, singing bawdy songs and staring are clubbed together under the term, ‘eve-teasing’. It is one of many delightful Indian archaisms, a charming term that suggests pigtail-pulling in playgrounds and hiding behind trees, rather than the bum-grabbing, boob-groping action that usually takes place in crowded venues and on tightly packed transport. Were the biblical terminology replaced with the ugliness of what it was, the convict would have looked a lot less like someone had just offered him a bag of sweets.

Mangalore station’s platform was empty but for two figures waiting at the end of the train. Twin grins holding hands made their way towards us. Ksheetij skipped around Monesh, baring his teeth in the sunshine, a combination of gaps and wonky milk teeth.

‘We are waiting for you to come to the temple,’ Monesh explained, ‘if you are having time before your train we would like it if you come.’

He was pushy but likeable and we had little else to do for the next few hours but clean teeth, find coffee and file a complaint for harassment, so we followed him out. The Mangaladevi temple was a short auto ride away and I was now intrigued. Monesh had explained that Mother Mangaladevi, the temple’s deity, was a useful ally to unmarried women. If fair and pious maidens prayed to her, she would help them fulfil their desires for a suitable husband. I was neither fair, nor pious—more wheatish and indifferent—but it would not hurt to pay her a visit if her results were cheaper and more bountiful than a subscription to Shaadi.com, the Indian matrimonial website.

Worshippers were filtered into two lanes of traffic separated by railings. The priest carried out a tray of offerings from the enclosure and several arms stretched through the railings, tossing coins in the direction of the flame and swiping to take a blessing. An elbow clipped the back of my head as I tried to dodge arms in tight blouses, swinging their fatty hammocks of flesh across my face. Claustrophobic, and with flashbacks of the Hillsborough disaster, I disentangled myself and crawled out from under the barrier to join Monesh who was standing by a statue wearing a beatific smile. He lay down before her and I left him prostrate to wander around on my own. Towards the exit a pot of kumkum sat next to a dish of dull yellow sandalwood, like two bowls of hotdog condiments. I reached forward to take a pinch when the priest hurried over and smacked my hand away, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He dipped his podgy fingers into the powder and threw it into my palm with an enormous show of self-importance.

Picking my way back through the three silver doorways, I swapped bag duties with Passepartout as he followed Monesh back into the temple, who was only too pleased to explain everything again to him. They reappeared just as my stomach growled and I realised that we had eaten nothing since the hallucinogenic rice. Monesh squatted next to me.

‘We are going to take lunch, so you must come with us. We will make sure it is a clean and nice place, but it must be pure vegetarian as you may become sick.’

‘You don’t have to do that, we can find somewhere ourselves.’

He shook his head, which could have implied a multitude of meanings.

‘No, you are our guests. Don’t worry, I’ll go and come now.’

The little man wandered off in bare feet before returning a few minutes later and leading us to a dhaba filled with men in booths, sucking their plates clean of sambar. Monesh would not allow us to pay for our meals and had finished his idlis, washed up and hailed two autos when we met him outside. Back at the station the family waited with us on the platform until the Matsyagandha Express to Madgaon had arrived. Passepartout was teaching Ksheetij to take photos when Monesh led me away by the arm. He stopped once we were out of earshot from his family and turned to me.

‘I must ask you one question now, if I may?’

I nodded.

‘You promise that you will be keeping in touch?’

‘Yes.’

‘See, you both are friends now. Please do not forget us, you will be in touch, no?’

‘Of course we will.’

Monesh peered at me, as though searching for a sign that it was all a ruse. His amber eyes swirled with the fear that he and his family would be forgotten the moment we boarded the train—at best they might become a tale to tell fondly around the dinner table. As our train arrived, Ksheetij leapt up into his father’s arms. They followed us down the platform until we found our compartment, stacked bags and ordered coffee. As train number five pulled out and the pair waved alongside, I overheard Passepartout mutter into his cup: ‘Every child should have a father like that.’

Passepartout was a black-coffee junkie, which upset the natural order of things. Coffee is brewed everywhere, on street corners and unoccupied patches of pavement, on roving carts and in kettles under trees—but brewed in milk that cloys. In South India, cooling hot coffee involves a highly skilled process of pouring the liquid between a tumbler and a metal dish, dragging and stretching the stream into arcs. Preparing coffee is an art form, so ordering it without milk or sugar prompted baffled looks, but started a game in restaurants called Coffee Roulette. When it was ordered all bets were placed on black, but it usually turned up white, extra white, extra sugary, and on those rare occasions when the contents were black, it usually turned out to be tea. At desperate times a Kenco-filled EpiPen would have been useful to jab Passepartout in the arm.

From Madgaon we made our way to our villa, one of a group of four gated villas in Nerul, a village near Candolim, Goa. The other three were taken over by a film crew from Mumbai, who played Lady Gaga at 3am, smoked in the pool and wore sunglasses at night. Each villa was self-serviced so the kitchen housed a kettle and a basket of Nescafé sachets. At the prospect of pure coffee to keep himself awake, Passepartout rubbed his hands with glee. He was leaning over the kettle awaiting the rumble of boiling water, when our taxi beeped from downstairs. We had decided to leave our neighbouring revellers and have lunch among the Russians and swearing tattooed people who wandered Candolim’s streets in their swimwear. He reached for the cold tap above the basin, opening it briefly to cool his cup and took a sip. The scene unfolded in slow motion and I watched with the sinking feeling that his motions would now be anything but slow.

‘Don’t drink that, it’s not been treated!’ I blurted out.

He lowered the cup and frowned.

‘But it’s a villa, the drinking water will be filtered.’

‘But it’s an
Indian
villa. The tap’s probably connected by a hosepipe to rainwater on the roof.’

That night the coffee kept him awake.

Candolim could have been Magaluf or Benidorm, were it not for the hordes of stray dogs that trotted around licking scraps of egg and chips from under the tables. Indian pye-dogs are a breed in their own right: curly-tailed; itchy; full of personality; full of ticks; and largely forgiving towards any kind of mistreatment, which in India, is frequent and harsh. They are also loving and loyal and will adopt anyone as a master should a biscuit find its way between their lips, which in India, is rare and laughable.

The main road was lined with cafés and bars serving lasagnes and burgers to Russians and Eastern Europeans. It was easier to find Indian food in the Cotswolds. Eventually spotting ‘Hyderabadi chikken’ on a laminated menu, we settled down at Floyd’s. Floyd’s was a cosy spot with bamboo roofing propped up by parrot-green pillars and red walls slapped with posters featuring malt whisky, smiling babies and a man playing bagpipes. One wall was tiled with a cartoon of fisherwomen dancing while a man suffering with scoliosis played the drums, and a monkey-pig hybrid watched on in confusion. A statue of the Air India maharaja bowed on the bar top, as though apologising for the untidiness of his surroundings. It was a charming hash of tat and colour, enhanced by sunburnt diners. The food took over an hour to arrive, and when it did, the chicken curry was as green as the pillars but delicious.

After lunch we strolled down a lane littered with shacks selling beads, cloth handbags and the kind of shirts worn in a Shakespeare play until we reached Candolim beach. Its sand was toasted golden, the water the colour of emeralds and the surf frothed and fizzed around teenagers splashing—metres from a gargantuan bulk carrier that had run aground. The River Princess looked less than regal, sitting sulkily on the edge of the water, black, rusting and abandoned, casting a sinister shadow across the waves. Ten years ago the 20,000-tonne tanker had drifted in a storm and hit the Goan shore but was yet to be adopted by shipbreakers. Instead a politicised salvaging process had begun. Numerous tenders to remove the ship had been awarded and withdrawn and now Goa Tourism, who had taken possession of the ship in 2003, was embroiled in disputes with the original owners over prices for the ship’s scraps. That the ship had already caused over 1km of coastline to erode, encouraged strong and dangerous currents and could at any time break in half and destroy the beach, seemed of little importance to anyone involved. After Passepartout had paddled on the edge of the water we made our way back to the villa, preferring to swim in a pool full of fag-butts.

Between Mangalore and Mumbai is a 760km section of railway that constitutes one of the finest engineering feats in the world. The Konkan Railway line contains 320 curves, 92 tunnels and 2,000 bridges, including the Panval Nadi viaduct, the tallest in India. The British shied away from constructing this section of the railways, due to its geographical challenges, leaving it to Indian engineers to bore through the Sahyadri hills, enduring flash floods, landslides and the dangers of digging through soft tunnels that often collapsed on engineers. Passenger trains first ran in 1998 and since then sections of the track have succumbed to landslides and loose boulders and a train has even tumbled off a bridge. A daily Jan Shatabdi speed train runs from Madgaon to Mumbai, lopping a good three hours off the normal journey time, while the majority of slower express trains travel at night. Night travel rendered the journey pointless if I could not dangle out of the doorway and watch the waters raging below my flip-flops. The Mandovi Express, however, was the only daily train that took an acceptable 12 hours and arrived into Mumbai at 9:30pm.