Another train adventure

En Transit from New Jalpaiguri to Varanasi:

After our final meal in Darjeeling, a scrumptious Tibetan medley of steamed momos (Tibetan dumplings), brothy vegetable soup, fresh apple juice as thick as applesauce and soy sauce that tasted a little too much like molasses, my weary cohorts Estathea, Sara, Cecilia and myself crammed ourselves yet again into a dusty jeep, and made off down the winding mountain road into a pitch black, sultry night. I don't remember much of the jeep ride, because I defied the laws of nature and drifted into some semblance of sleep, waking every few minutes when we hit a bump or swerved around a corner and my skull slammed into the seat in front of me. What I do remember is Cecilia having a brilliant, hour long conversation almost entirely in Hindi with our friendly jeep driver, and feeling incredibly happy for some unknown reason, stroking my bloated stomach in a post-momo stupor.

At the train station, we watched the train pull up, but after running up and down the length of the train and realizing that our car was absent, we started to panic slightly. Poising ourselves so we could grab on to one of the cars should the train decide to leave, we stood nervously on the train platform with several other confused looking white backpackers. We soon discovered that we had no reason to fret. Our car, accompanied by a small engine but nothing else, came lurching up the track as though it had suddenly realized that the party couldn't start unless it was present. The beautiful thing about India is that things always, always work themselves out, in some way or another. I'm still undecided as to whether this phenomenon is reserved to India, or whether it's simply about the attitude one chooses to adopt in life.

The train. We're sharing our compartment with a very adorable middle-aged couple. The woman is extraordinarily petite, and has the most delicate face which is camoflouged by the enormous glasses she wears. She caresses her right arm, which is in a cast, and is wrapped in a red cardigan. I just want to give her a hug. I don't, not just because that would incredibly awkward in this land of minimal physical contact, but also because I'm fairly certain a big hug might actually crush her. I watch them interact. Her husband spends a great deal of time setting up one of the bunks for his wife, and then makes a meager, cramped bed for himself on the bunk above, with all three of their suitcases.

Exhausted, I slumped down onto the nearest bunk and pass out. I woke up several times in the middle of the night to very strange goings-on. At around midnight, I waddle over to the bathroom with a full bladder, dressed in my ridiculous cold-train outfit of long underwear and a hoodie. I stood waiting for the bathroom with a tiny adolescent boy dressed in an impeccable, crisp, British-style school uniform. He stares at me for a while as I attempt to wipe the sleep out of my eyes but only succeed in wiping mascara all over my face. Then he decides to practice his English with me, which is perfect. Finally an old, bent over woman in a sari comes out of the bathroom muttering something under her breath and shaking her head. Behind her, through the flapping door of the bathroom, I see feces smeared all over the squat toilet and the rest of the tiny bathroom. To keep from vomiting, I leave the darling little school boy to handle that situation, and I stumble in the next direction to see what the other bathroom is like. Making it down the aisle is not exactly easy, as there are literally people everywhere, and they are all staring at me in the most unnerving fashion. Down the aisle a ways, I could see an almost naked man who was being beaten and yelled at by a much larger, dressed man. Not wanting to get involved with that scene at all, I turned directly around and decided peeing was not that important.

Back in my bunk, I attempted to turn off the chaos by shoving my earplugs in and putting on my eye mask. I woke up several more times to shouting. The obnoxiously bright flourescent lights stayed on all night. Every time I woke up, I sensed people staring at me, and looked up to see at least 4 pairs of eyes glued to me. Really guys? Is watching a white woman sleep really that fascinating, that it can keep you entertained all night? Guess so.

Morning time. There are people everywhere. Our train snakes so slowly through the northern state of Bihar, that we get fairly long glimpses of towns as we pass by them. Poverty is extremely apparent, and I can feel the enormity of it even from the train. Each station we stop at looks like a refugee camp, with entire families of three or four generations laying on thin fabric on the ground. A young woman with a little naked boy on her hip walks over to my window. She has at least 8 little girls surrounding her. They are all so beautiful, with their bright colors, gold nose rings and bindis. They are all smiles as they shove their grubby little hands between the bars of the train window, pleading for money and food. I give them my sweet roll from a bakery in Darjeeling, and they run away giggling.

As we continue through Bihar, I grow more and more disgusted with the amount of trash on the train tracks. The tracks make up the humble belly of India, thanklessly digesting the thousands of plastic chai cups, empty bags of chips, food containers of every shape and size, millions of water bottles, urine, all shades of human fecal matter possible, and the ubiquitous blood-red paan spit. We pass village after village of sad looking shanty settlements, bony thin men and boys, women with naked skinny babies on their hips, all toiling away around the filthy railroad tracks. Forming manure patties out of their hands to dry in the sun, chipping away at rock, digging holes, hauling materials in baskets on their heads, they are all forced to work in the trash trough of India's middle and upper classes as we jostle through the otherwise beautiful country-side. I try to save my small trash pile (a couple chai cups, a plastic water bottle, some paper bags from the pastries we bought in Darjeeling) but the chuckling old toothless man across from me grabs it all and tosses it out the window. He thinks he's doing me a favor.

Sometimes I just want to scream, "COME ON INDIA. Get with it. Seriously."