Outlaw in India (10 page)

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
concentrate 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.”

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
many 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?

We went ever deeper into this chaos until the driver came to a stop.

“Is it here?”

He pointed down a dark street. “There. You’ll have to walk in there. I cannot
go in there, I won’t get out.”

I didn’t know if he meant he couldn’t fit, or if they wouldn’t let him out.
“Will you wait here?”

He looked impatient. “Four hundred rupees.”

“Okay. Here.”

We got out of the rickshaw. I pulled Hollie onto my back. Radji took my hand.
People on the street stared suspiciously at us. I tried to ignore them and
searched for the numbers on the buildings, which were almost impossible to find
underneath the dirt. These must have once been new, clean buildings with shops
and workshops in them. Now they were filthy, and many were shut or just filled
with people and junk. But some of them still appeared to be functioning as
workshops where people were fixing things and maybe selling them. There was
nothing new for sale, only old things that were fixed up. In fact, it sort of
looked like a community of recyclers, and that was kind of cool. Ziegfried would
have enjoyed seeing that, although he wouldn’t like the mess.

Suddenly, I had an idea. With Radji in hand I ducked into a makeshift shop
where a man was sitting at a workbench straightening copper wire. On the floor,
which was just earth, were large piles of copper wire twisted up in impossible
messes. Some of it was still attached to pieces of pipe or wood. It must have
been pulled out of old buildings. The man was carefully unwinding it and
straightening it by running it slowly through two wheels, like rolling wet
clothes through an old fashioned ringer washer. A group of four or five other
men and boys were hanging around the shop watching. Their eyes opened wide when
they saw us enter. I did my very best not to look nervous at all or too
interested.

“Good looking copper,” I said.

He didn’t look up but I knew he saw me. “Copper is copper.”

I picked up one clump. “No. This is better copper than that.”

He looked up now. “You are right. Do you buy copper?”

“No, but I have a friend who does. He would like this copper very much but he
is far away.”

“How far?”

“Canada.”

I thought for a second that he almost smiled. “That is far.”

“Maybe I could buy a little of your copper and bring it to him as a gift. He
would like copper that had come all the way from India.”

He stared at me to see if I was being serious. “One hundred rupees for that
piece,” he said.

I did my best to frown. “I can only pay fifty rupees.”

This time I was sure he smiled just a tiny bit. “Eighty rupees and you can take
it back to Canada.”

I should have argued more but was too anxious. I pulled the bills out of my
pocket, flipped through them and handed him eighty rupees. I was a little
nervous waving money around, but if they were thieves there wasn’t much we could
do about it anyway. Something told me they weren’t thieves.

He took the money and squinted at me. “But that is not why you are here.”

“No. That’s true. But my friend really would like a present of copper from
India. And he will send you a postcard to thank you. That is the sort of man he
is.”

He considered for a moment. “You have a nice friend.”

“He is. He is the one who taught me about copper and many other things.”

“But that is not why you are here. Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for an old man.”

He looked puzzled. “You look for an old man here? Who could that be?”

“He is staying with Mr. Singh. At this address.” I handed him the paper. He
took it, read it and looked confused.

“He is dead?”

“No. But I think he is very sick.”

“He must be dead.”

“Why must he be dead?”

“If he is staying with Mr. Singh, he must be dead. Come. I will take
you.”

He gestured to a boy in the shop who rushed over and took his spot when he got
up. The boy immediately took over the task of straightening the wire as if he
had been just waiting to do it. We followed the man down the street until we
were standing in front of another shop that was lined inside with urns. The urns
were everywhere. There was a very old man there. The coppersmith spoke to him
and he came out to greet us. He was very friendly. I was pretty sure he was a
Sikh. He wore a long white turban wrapped around his head and had thick white
eyebrows. His eyes were unusually large and kind. For some reason he reminded me
of a very skinny version of Santa Claus.

“You are looking for someone?” he asked.

“Yes. I am looking for the brother of Melissa Honeychurch. She said that she
called you.”