VC's 36-Hour Day

Well I'm in Allahabad, and rather than going ALL the way back to the Punjab to pick up my blog in Chandigarh where I left off, I'm going to give you a taste of the disorientation and exhaustion that I'm feeling by jumping around, backwards, from city to city, starting where I am now and ending up at Chandigarh.

The past 36 or so hours have been very, very difficult.

In general, I haven't had the easiest time since parting with Desi (and the poor bab has been experiencing drowning and teeth falling out nightmares, and was vomiting the day I left Delhi...although not in a tragic Greek sort of way...he had just had too much to drink the night before lol, but still -- it's hasn't been an easy 2 days for either of us).

I think I already hinted that Fatehpour Sikri and Agra were not easy places to be in, but WOW did the difficulties only START, there.

I may have mentioned, before, that when Desi and I went to the office in Delhi to book the train tickets for the rest of my stay in India, I couldn't get the ticket from Agra to Varanasi that I wanted. The train booking guy told me that the ONLY train I could take, overnight, to get from the corner of UP (Uttar Pradesh -- formerly "United Provinces," under the British, the initials saved in spirit of India's LOVE for acronyms!) where I was in Agra to the total opposite corner, where Varanasi is, was on a train from a place about 30km East of Agra called Tundla. According to him, many tourists leave from there, and it's not a problem to get there.

RIGHT.

I should start by saying that it's not even easy to figure out, when you are in Agra, how to get to Tundla. Although they are connected by a rail line, I learned from the station guy in Agra the night that I arrived (who at first refused to even speak to me, because they were no longer SELLING tickets, they were only EXCHANGING tickets) that I needed to take a bus from the Agra Fort bus station (it's interesting, in India, that it doesn't matter how many times you tell a rickshaw driver which specific bus station you want, he will insist on knowing what city you are continuing on to to make sure that you aren't an idiot and going from the wrong station...a nice service, I guess, but I'm not sure I trust the rickshaw drivers to have the departures of every station committed to memory!).

Because my train from Tundla to Varanasi was not scheduled to leave until almost 9PM, when I went to the Agra Fort bus station yesterday morning *before* visiting the Fort or the Taj, I was expecting to be told something like "You pay X amount and it takes Y hours, and you'll catch the bus at Z time right over there." Instead, it was more of a woman behind the counter NOT speaking English and being TOTALLY shouted over by scheming rickshaw driver/bus ticketer/khiladi (see former blog in Pakistan/Afghanistan for the meaning of Khiladi!) THINGS who had the attitude that, although they were not the ones in the information booth, because they were men and because they were hustling, they knew better than I or she what I needed to do. I think it surprises people when I say things to them like: "I am not TALKING to you. You don't WORK here. I'm talking to HER. SHE has the job. You don't" etc., but things were eventually under control and she managed to tell me (when it turned out that she did speak English so long as she felt like it) that I needed to return to the bus station at 5:30 or 6:30, stand in the dirt(y) lot, should the name "Tundla," and then be whisked away to the city for an unknown price and with an unknown arrival time. Fine. This was WELL within my range of expectations, so I could cope.

You'll get to hear about my day in Agra and the Taj later (we are working backward, kind of, remember?), but let's just say that while my getting ON the bus to Tundla was not problematic, everything else since checking in to my hotel in Allahabad has been.

The bus ride, again, was unpleasant but well withing my expectations; meaning: I was taken to by a boy in his late teens/early twenties who decided to sit next to me/on me and make conversation with me (I use the word "conversation" generously). I was direct enough, when there were still open seats on the bus, to ask him to not sit RIGHT next to me, because it was too hot to have bodies touching (see! neurotic type A's can TOTALLY survive in India!), but when the bus filled up (as they all quickly do...and don't worry...you will stop at EVERY fruit stand and beverage shack along the road until you pick up enough people to fill the seats) he persuaded the guy sitting next to me to trade with him and thereby cement our friendship.
They dropped us off in Tundla LITERALLY in the side of an unmarked highway, but I was not YET too upset, as I had more than 2 hours before my train, and knew that if I wandered around long enough I'd find a rickshaw who, even price-gouging me, wouldn't not get more than a dollar or two to take me to the rail station.

Let the hell begin.

Ok, so the rail station was what I predicted, but what I did not predict was having to wait there for 5 hours under constant assault.

I had seen other rail stations, and I have pretty realistic expectations about facilities, here (in fact I've been more pleasantly surprised by our hotels, for example, than disappointed, my hotel in Allahabad included), but my ability to cope is VERY contingent on how long I need to exist in certain environments. In other words: an hour or two in the train station would have been fine...three was unpleasant but I hadn't cracked...FIVE HOURS and I was going mad.

The main problem was that I didn't not feel physically safe in the station. Not because of thieves and assaulters (whose photos are posted outside the Chief Inspector's office...one should do a study of the strange offices you find in Indian rail stations, and EVERY station, no matter how small, it seems, has these offices, each with clearly-bureaucratic but functionally-empty names like "Chief Ticket Inspector" and "Deputy Assistant Rail Manager"), but because of the bugs, rodents, and other things constantly threatening attack.

Of the things which tried to variously defecate on me, suck my blood, eat me, or in some other way make me want to throw myself on the tracks were: stray dogs, THOUSANDS (no exaggeration) of well-fed pigeons, grasshoppers (I have NEVER seen so many!), moths, flies, mosquitoes, roaches (the tiny fast kind and the HUGE fast kind), and lizards. Seeing respite in the First Class Lounge, I quickly learned that all that keeps out are the dogs and pigeons, and the rest are given free entry.

It was puzzling to me how people in that lounge (think: Orange County beach restroom with wooden benches and odd colonial-style paintings of the Indian countryside) could sleep with roaches, moths, flies, mosquitoes, and grasshoppers ON THEIR BODIES. I was totally unable to concentrate, for the most part, on Toni Morrison's "Love" because I had to track: "Lizard has moved behind third bench on the left, while moth remains steady on foot stool, and roaches alpha and beta divide and conquer painting area." I left the lounge in frustration, once, but returned after one of the screaming birds managed a bulls eye on my book (it would turn out that the book would get MUCH more on it than that). I wanted to make a video with my camera, but it would have eaten too much memory (and since the card I bought in Delhi had a fake 1GB ticker when it was really only 50% of that, I didn't have memory to spare!), but these birds were INSANE. I mean it was so loud in the station that the echoes of their chirps made it virtually impossible to hear the announcer or other people (only in the respite of the "lounge" could you hear someone talk). I was finally forced out of the lounge a second time when one of the largest roaches I've ever seen landed on my sweater, so, while eagerly watched by a little girl and her brother (and everyone else in the room) I swatted it off the Donna Karen with my book, both fell to the floor, and everyone proceeded to laugh (the girl giggled for about 5 minutes, and I was happy to bring them some levity, but in the end there were too many bugs in the lounge, and I thought I'd do better outside).

So while my train is running three hours late, the station power is cutting in and out (pros and cons: when the lights went out, and it was PITCH BLACK, the birds would shut up, but then the bugs would seek hot things rather than bright things, and their taxis was directed RIGHT at me). EVERYONE was confused about the train (would it STILL arrive on Platform 3?), and even the mother of the lounge (she really is that...this old woman in a bright blue saree who doesn't inspect people's tickets, but just questions you about where you're going, sizing you up as first class material or not, and waking you up to run to your train -- or what she believes is your train -- when she hears it coming).

I'll skip the disturbing homosocial space of the lounge, the guy who I think tried to pick me up, and the boy (I say "boy" but he was at least college age) who I am convinced was more or less masturbating in public (he and his friend were making all kinds of jokes and joined each other, legs entwined, to cuddle on the bench before one of them got a little TOO excited).

I found a straight line on the platform that had little enough light so as to not reflect TOO much on my book and thereby attract bugs, was pigeon free (although it was like walking a balance beam!), and where, if I kept pacing, I was too much a moving target for a grasshopper. I paced along that line, about 4 meters in length, for nearly 3 hours, in and out of darkness and without food or drink (like I want samosas cooked with bird crap for sauce, and the beverage guy didn't have change and wasn't interested in the lost business by not getting any), covered in sweat, with my stuff, before the trains came. Finally, at almost 11PM, some trains started to come, their presence announced BEFORE a horn or light by the HUGE amounts of dirt and trash that swirled around the platform before they rolled-in.

It was a truly awful few hours. I actually borded the wrong train because TWO different TRAIN ATTENDANTS told me it was going to Varanasi, but then I found a guy who told me the NAME of the train (since, although they all have numbers, the key is the name), and I got off in time to not end up...not here. I knew inside that, no matter how late a train was, it was likely to always come on the platform it's supposed to, because a track switch would probably require a lot of paperwork, stamps, and the faxing of the ministries of transportation and of the interior.

When I got on the train, three hours late, the cabin was already closed and I assumed my lower-berth sleeper in half-light, while the two guys up and across from me (there were two sets of bunks in my little mini-compartment) negotiated with the ticket inspector to let them sleep together, meaning: not give a shit about the other three of us sleeping and talk all night. It was not SUCH a problem, their talking, because as soon as I sat down a roach crawled across the fold-away table next to my pillow, and so I knew I was on bug-patrol. By the end of "breakfast" in the morning (you aren't served food, like on the nicer, faster, on-time and bug-free trains Desi and I took, so breakfast is whatever food you decide to buy from the people walking the aisles with tea, hashbrowns, or samosas...) I had killed 4 roaches next to my pillow or on the wall next to my bed, and was thankful that Toni Morrison not only wrote a great book, but also chose a soft back print with an easy-to-wipe cover!

[For future blogging: I read Kundera's "Ignorance" and, as an ironic match in terms of title, Morrison's "Love" on this trip, and really should give my thoughts on both, if I ever get the chance]

It was a relief to get off the train in Varanasi, even though I knew that THIS was the city so many people (including Desi) described as being one of the worst they'd ever visited in their lives, and once I was resolved to carry ALL my stuff rather than try to stow something at the train station and waste time, having to come back to pick it up before going to the bus station to go to Allahabad, I was on the road and ready to see the city.

VC