On the Train to Kochi

On the Train to Kochi

Remembering the incoherent soliloquy of the railway ticket agent I had to deal with in downtown Panaji, I hired Toni to get me to and on the train. I had a sleeper ticket clutched tightly in my fist but I had to catch the train in some station in the outlying areas many kilometers from familiar territory. The station was literally in a neighboring town.

Tony’s cab was very old and was resting somewhere a mechanic could rejuvenate it and so Tony hired Mike (no relation to Tyson, Tony assured me) and we set off for an hour drive through night and a thousand headlights pointed at us. Words fail me in describing traffic anywhere in India so I won’t. Although I will report that I saw no wrecks along the way. Once at the station, Tony checked on the where and when of the express and I would find, after he left, that the arrival would even be later than expressed by Tony.

The platform had a good crowd of people, vendors, and night-flying insects. If I recall, I had washed down with mosquito repellant and, since arriving in India, had taken a nightly pill of doxycycline hyclate, an anti-malaria medicine. Funny thing, I’m sure I copied the name off the bottle correctly but my spell check redlined the drug’s name. But anything that looked or bit like a mosquito made me super nervous. I was on my way into a land of standing water, rivers, lakes, and canals, and of course, malaria.

I said good bye to Tony and looking around I found a chart which matched sleeper car with platform position. I also met a French couple, Guy and Nicole, who were to be in the same car. We slung out packs on our backs and began to hike our way to the designated position. This would prove to be a very long train.

Guy retired from Air France and now having time and still in very good health in their sixties, they had decided to see more of India. Their first trip they had landed in Goa as a starting place. That was as far as they went. Goa holds the attention of quiet a few travelers. They come, look around, settle in, and stay.

The beaches are the draw. On one of our chit safaris, Tony drove me out to a beach. I walked down across the sand and looked out at a stranded freighter. Perhaps the ship lost power and drifted into the shallows rather than a pilot error of running aground. Now it was surely sanded in and there would be no way to refloat it. Only the insurance underwriters know. Tony said that the ship had been there for several years and from time to time a salvage crew comes by and cuts off “a hind quarter” and then moves on. The derelict is money invested, money made, money lost, and what you have left is junk. The junk collects faster than India can rid itself of it. The future of the country looks bright and trashed simultaneously.

We may have arrived too early in the day. Only elderly Europeans walked along the water’s edge in wading suits and I saw no one in the water. I walked down where the surf broke and smoothed the sand and I did feel a drop in temperature. To many people who live somewhere other than the coast, seeing the sea meet the sky, and I suppose, realizing the size and distance of each, fascinates them. One could rent a beach house here which was part of the idea. I had enough to keep me busy in town and the bus ride in and out to the beach would only complicate life.

According to what I heard and read, nude bathing has been the fashion here. Both my guide books argued strongly against the practice as it create a gallery of voyeurs. And in an age of cell phones, I would bet that a crowd could gather fast. I didn’t see anybody in my age group that I thought would be more interesting with clothes off than on and I didn’t feel like peeling so we followed the guidebook’s admonition and I turned round and walk back to the cab.

But now my new acquaintances, Guy and Nicole who were off to see more of India, and I waited for a late train. We were joined by a young Catalonian who was on his way to join up with his girlfriend of many years and a few months of estrangement. He spoke good English and proved to have a sense of humor. I told him about being so burned out on looking at Catholic churches that by the time I reached Barcelona, I wouldn’t budge when the tour bus pulled up near the Church of the Sacred Family and that I had to discover Gaudi many years later while prowling the library shelves in America. Wilde said something to the effect that, The problem with youth is that it is wasted on the young. In this case, the problem with tour guides is that they knew too little of local history and too much about one more church. The young man thought my plight amusing and we both agreed that I need another trip to Barcelona.

Amazingly, to me anyway, the train drew up and we boarded the correct car with as much dignity and as little dashing down the platform as one could wish for. Second class sleepers have an aisle a little off centerline and benched compartments of four bunks on one side of the aisle allowing the passenger to sleep “thwartship” while the other two sleep fore and aft on the narrow side of the aisle. A plastic covered pad served as a mattress and there was more need for open windows and electric fans mounted on the ceilings than there would be for sheets and blankets. The bunk’s surface reminded me of the sleeper bus’s bunks and I wondered how long it would take for me to scrub this shirt clean.

And so we all boarded and upon reaching my reserved seat, I found that I had broken into an on-going card game of a half-dozen adolescent boys. There was a little fold out table between the window seats and one of them was mine. If you buy a ticket (2nd class) you can wander the train and sit where ever you want…until the conductor finds you. That was what happened here. Second class lacked the table and offered wooden benches instead of the plastic covered mats for sitting. Except for the boys, I had the compartment to myself, then one by one, I lost them to possibly another empty sleeper compartment. I stowed my pack and briefcase beneath my bunk, opened both windows, made a pillow out of the coat my daughter bought for me, and while thinking whether there were anyplace in India cool enough to wear the coat, I fell asleep.

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Ask any photographer and he’ll tell you that the early morning or late evening is the time to be out and about. The sun casts long shadows and by facing the sun, it’s backlighting create a dramatic picture. After a night of little sleep, my spirit and flesh took different paths. I did stay awake to watch early sunup for a few minutes. There is always a haze in India from cooking fires, dust from the streets, the water hanging in the air, and the LP fumes from the Mumbai taxis. I was now almost halfway between Cape Comorin, the south tip of India, and the road to the airport at Mumbai so I should drop the last cause and just say that the auto rickshaw, the scooters, the motorcycles, busses, cars, and the train on which I rode can locally bring on the same effect. The sun shown yellow-orange and against this the buildings and the forest of palms and wild trees silhouette themselves like standing shadows. Had there been clouds in the distance, I would not see them. They would be faded by haze.

Finally I did awaken. There was a woman sleeping on the bunk on the other side of the table. After sitting up, rubbing my eyes, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, and running my fingers a few times through my hair, I looked out the window at the passing forest and fields. I’ve heard that Malabar Coast has two monsoons. This place was so rich in plant life that it looked to have three. Water stood in the rice fields but also in long ponds along the track. Also in the fields cows grazed accompanied by one or more pure white egrets. The cow would stir fish or insect and the egret’s head darted like a rifle’s hammer, catching what a second before had enjoyed the safety of deception. There were long-stemmed daisy-like flowers with white petals and yellow centers standing tall in the water. Banana trees grew along peoples’ yards. Papaya trees (plants) outlined the gardens’ edge. Many of the trees were in flower.

A plan in nature is that each tree or plant has its own time to bloom and in that way there is little competition for the notice of pollinating insects. There were bright red orange blossoms of the color of a pomegranate blossom but as light and sight improved, the flowers turned out to be hibiscus. And the list of plant shapes and colors rolled on like this train down the track. Simply look again and a new species shows itself.

The diversity of plant life increases as you approach the equator but there are fewer numbers within the species (unless of course the plant is cultivated – the cocoanut palm for instance.) When the direction is reversed and you go toward the poles, then diversity dwindles and specimens increase representing each species. The Malabar Coast is a free-for-all as to different species. I saw a small elephant ear type of plant, which has a magenta center in the leaf. Any place, where decretive plants are marketed in North America, sells this plant often times to be grown indoors. A half hour passed and I saw another growing near a flooded ditch along the track. After that I saw no more.

Then we came to rivers and often there was a highway paralleling the railway. Over one river stood a neatly painted masonry bridge for auto traffic. At one end of the bridge in the water waded a white egret. The bird’s white seemed a color check against the white of the bridge.

The farmsteads were built of either stone or concrete. The hip roofs were tiled and while smoke and time turned the red to black, the rough surface of the tile catches enough dust to support lichen growth. The supersedure doesn’t progress to grass. One fairly common design was a hip roof over the central part of the house, then the eaves of the roof act to break the continuous line but below a lower roof following the same line of slope as above covers a surrounding veranda.

It being Wednesday, the children were off to school wearing scrubbed uniforms. Occasionally as we roll through a town, I saw a mosque. The girls’ heads were covered. The younger girls wore skirts cut just below the knees. The older girls’ skirts ended at the ankle. Since heat was never far from my mind, the girls looked as if they would become very uncomfortable if the day proved to be a steamer.

Watching the landscape pass by the window tires the eye and I laid down again for a nap. In a half-hour I awoke but kept my eyes shut.

“I was married at 16 and my husband passed away when he was only 49. I was then 29. From that time to this I am alone in the world with my daughter.”

I heard a man’s sympathetic grunt in reply. My compartment mate was awake and we had a visitor. With eyes open and spider webs of sleep impairing vision, I looked across at a middle aged man and woman visiting.

The woman went on. “My husband brought me to Goa as a bride and I have lived there ever since.”

“Where did you come from?” asked the man.

“From Portugal where I was born.” She went on to explain that she was Portuguese and became Indian through marriage. Be that as it may, dressed in a sari and having a dark completion, you would not notice a racial difference between her and any other Goan passenger. Somewhere back on the lower branches of her family tree, one or more ancestors migrated from the subcontinent to Portugal.

The lady was bright, had wit, and spoke English with only a few Anglo-Indian oddities in pronunciation. It is a good idea to learn and use the Indian pronunciation . When asked, “And from which country do you come?” An answer such as the United States or America simply stalls the progress of the conversation. But if you say, “Ah-med-de-cah,” immediately the conversation proceeds.

She asked me all about my family and like everybody else I’ve met, wonder why my family was not with me. I explain that my mother is 94 and has a hard time crossing a room. Having a young man frantically checking the direction of Mak-kah and then falling asleep on her shoulder would not be in any plan for her in the near future. My daughter had graduated from Columbia, had all her state certifications to practice medicine as a nurse practioner in New York State, and was job hunting.

“And your wife?”

I told her that my wife made the first crossing of India with me years ago but since then we’ve gone our separate ways. It’s as common as curry to be encounter what in the West we would consider a personal inquisition. In India it is simply getting onto information that in time I would probably include in conversation. And let there be no doubt about it, they are interested.

“I was married at 16 and my husband passed away when he was only 49. I was then 29. From that time to this I am alone in the world with my daughter.”

“Is that so?” I said.

While her family tragedy was sad, her husband seems to have left her well off. Her daughter received an education and held a responsible job in Ernakulam. The widow asked me what I was doing in India and I told her that I was looking over the country to see if there were anyplace I would like to stay for a month or a year or…. She told me about the virtues of Goa and I had no argument against her reasoning but told her that the heat was a little more than I had planned on.

“My husband brought me to Goa as a bride and I have lived there ever since.”

The Spaniard dropped in to talk over hotel plans. He had heard of a place which was very inexpensive and would I be interested in getting a room there?

There is or was an almost recognized sport in India, especially among foreigners. How far can you travel on how little? During the first trip across, we stopped in Bodhgaya, which is on the eastern side of the country and famous as the site where Buddha sat beneath the Bodhi Tree, meditated, and gained Enlightenment. We met a couple of Americans. These two guys would hitchhike and ride third class trains and by hook and crook, cross Pakistan, southern Iran, cut the corner of Iraq to get to Kuwait. There they would sell a pint of blood, rest up a little, and sell a second pint. And then make the return trip to Bodhgaya with money left over. I never heard why there was such a blood market in Kuwait and really they were not paying a lot for the blood, but it was the traveling on nothing that was the attraction. Good sport when you are twenty or thirty. At the moment I was hoping I’d find a room with no lizard droppings. And I expected to pay over Rs. 400, which is about ten dollars American. The price was surely within the limits of my budget. Below the Hotel Republica in Goa, there is a hole-in-the-wall called the Palace. The manager stayed drunk and the Pentecostals, beating a base drum, held prayer services in what in earlier days might have been a dining room. Seven nights in the Palace cost no more than three nights at the Republica but the rooms were dim, grim, and I’m sure sprinkled with lizard droppings. Not a good place for an old man, who has to sleep beneath a ceiling fan, and so while I found him excellent company, I passed on following his plan.

The widow’s daughter was at the station to meet her mother and so we all shook hands. She wore a bright yellow sari that caught the sunlight and , like her mother, seemed to be a delightful person but it was now approaching two p.m. when I wilt beneath the sun and my mind turned elsewhere.

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