Escape From Civil Lines

I have most of the day to kill before my train. I leave my bag in the hotel luggage room and go to The Indian Coffee House on MG Marg, where the waiters dash between tables in white Dhotis with trays of glasses filled with coffee and chai. It is a huge, airy place with enormous ceiling fans and faded blue walls; there are no women here at all: the coffee house is a male preserve. I walk over to The Big Bazaar. It is a modern shopping mall with one department store, dozens of half-finished empty units, and a McDonalds. Guards armed with assault rifles eye me casually as I check my daypack in before entering, removing everything of value as advised by a large sign over the counter. I order a McAloo Tikki burger for lunch; it arrives twenty minutes later and tastes of nothing other than unidentifiable spices, swimming in a bland Tikka sauce the consistency of non-drip gloss. I buy a sturdy brass padlock and a length of chain in the department store to secure my bag on the train, then collect my daypack and get my luggage from The Bungalow. I take a cycle-rickshaw to Allahbad Junction and check the dot-matrix display for train number 2506 - The North East Express, due to depart at 3.45pm; as I walk over to platform 8, I notice 2506 displayed above the stairs down to platform 4, and a handwritten sign indicating platform 1. I ask one of the train controllers at the enquiries desk which is the correct platform, and I am told to go to platform 5; while I trudge back across the long footbridge, the station announcement system goes down: my only reliable source of information is replaced by a shrill Indian voice repeating 1-2-3-4-5- test-test-test-5-4-3-2-1 into the microphone. I wait on the bridge between platforms four and five and read the destination boards on the carriages of the two trains that arrive, neither, of which is 2506. I walk back to platform 1 and check the departures screen again: The North East Express has disappeared completely. It has probably slipped out of some distant platform while I waited pointlessly on the footbridge. I give up and leave the station: it is now 6pm. I go to the booking center and spend an hour working through Trains At A Glance, filling out reservation slips, queuing, being turned back because the train is full, reworking permutations and going back to the counter again. I finally get a reservation on The Amritsar-Howrah Punjab Mail by booking a seat on The Ganga Gompti Express back to Lucknow to make the connection; it means another day in Allahbad and a further two in Lucknow, and I am forced to buy the only remaining First Class Sleeper berth. I take a cycle-rickshaw back to The Tourist Bungalow; it is full of people in town for the Mela. I spend the next hour trying all the hotels and guesthouses I can find; everything decent is full, and I finally accept a grotty room at The Milan Hotel at an extortionate 660 Rupees. I walk down to the Tandoor restaurant and treat myself to a chicken tikka biryani, then pick up a couple of bottles of Kingfisher and go back to my grim, depressing cell.
I waste the morning trying to work at an internet cafe; it has three slow PCs, none of which have a CD drive or USB port. The connection fails every few minutes, and there are constant power-cuts. I walk through Civil Lines to The Allahbad Regency and sit in the garden bar with my notebook, slowly sipping an ice-cold Kingfisher beneath the tall palms, the white uniformed waiters gliding across the neatly clipped lawn infront of my table. Just along the street from The Regency I passed a large crowd gathered around a building site. There was a strange, unpleasant smell in the air, and a lot of security guards keeping people back as a gang of coolis dug into a mound of rubble at the side of the half-finished building. I check the Times at The Regency: an unknown number of labourers were buried when the side of the building collapsed two days ago. Corruption and sub-standard materials are cited, and nearby residents are complaining about the smell of decaying bodies. I take a cycle-rickshaw to Allahbad City Station. We are stopped at a crossroads as a procession to the Sangam passes by. The police cordon the road off with a length of rope, blowing their whistles, screaming at people to get back, smashing their Lachtis - thick bamboo sticks - across the bonnets of auto-rickshaws, denting panels and breaking off mirrors. There are guns everywhere - bolt action Lee Enfields, AK-47s, shotguns, Armalites, Sten guns, revolvers, pistols - and the tension is palpable. Convoys of colourful floats snake across the junction, speaker systems blaring music and prayers, dignitaries and pilgrims standing on their open decks.
I sit on a bench on platform 1 at Allahbad City with a bottle of mineral water, scanning the station for possible picture angles. Across the tracks a transit camp has been set up for the pilgrims, row upon row of safari tents, and security is tight. In the distance I hear crump-crump-crump - shotgun blasts, some trouble down near the Sangam ground - and the guards finger their weapons nervously.
"From which country?" An officer from the RPF ( Railway Protection Force ) is standing infront of my bench, arms folded behind his back. I tell him.
"What are you doing here?" I make up a story about trying to find a train to Howrah, and explain that I will go to Allahbad Junction and try there once I have rested for a few minutes. He is small, neat and intelligent, and clearly doesn't believe a word I say. A group of guards and onlookers have crowded around the bench by now; I try to remain as relaxed and friendly as possible, and offer to show him my passport.
"That is not necessary", he says in his clipped, heavily accented English. He leans over me: "You have consumed some whisky?"
"No" I reply, my throat suddenly very dry.
"Some rum?"
"I drank one beer at The Regency earlier. I do not drink strong liquor", I tell him with rising panic. "Is there a problem?" I ask him.
He turns on his heel without another word and marches off in the direction of the RPF headquarters in a compound at the end of the station. The guards and onlookers start to wander off, but not very far, and after a few minutes I gather my bag and bottle of water and walk leisurely down the platform to the exit. I expect to be stopped at any moment, and I have to force myself not to hurry and attract attention. I wave a 50 Rupee note at a rickshaw wallah and climb into the seat without any negotiation: "Civil Lines. Go. Now".
I use my map to direct him off the main road and through the Ox-herder's quarter; there are stables and paddocks full of beasts being bucket washed by coolis, scores of women gathering dung to flatten and dry at the roadside, serried ranks of two-foot long dung-sticks along the verge ready to be used as fuel. A river of effluent flows down a culvert at the edge of the narrow lane; the smell is overpowering but there are no guns or guards. I hide eight floors up in the Khana Shyam for an hour, and then creep back to my awful room.
I eat at Tandoor and walk over to The Cold Beer Shop. I am standing in the shadows at the side of the bar with a Kingfisher, out of the way of the jostling crowd of Indians at the counter, when a jeep with blue flashing lights pulls off MG Marg onto the dirt infront of the shack. The shopkeeper shakes his head worriedly at me, the fear in his eyes clear to see. Suddenly the drinkers at the counter are wheeling away as policemen swarm out of the jeep and wade into them, Lachtis flailing, smashing bottles off the counter, pushing them backwards into the dust with a violent shove in the chest from the end of their thick sticks. I drop everything and dodge through the rubbish piled at the back of the shack, between a couple of parked-up Ambassadors, and walk quickly along the parallel service road, keeping in the shadows. I look behind me and see the jeep pulling around the back of the shack behind me. I cut right, cross the mud strip, and push my way through the pedestrians at the side of the road; I take my life in my hands and walk straight out into the mad traffic - tyres screeching, horns and bells all around me - and zigzag across MG Marg as fast as I can. I don't know how I make the other side without being hit by anything. I go back to the safety of my disgusting room and lock and bolt the door; I have no idea why the Cold Beer Shop was raided - there is nothing illegal about it. It is a long time before I can sleep.
I wake at 4am, dress quickly and gather my bags. The reception desk is unstaffed, the lobby dark. Three blanketed forms are sleeping on the floor, and I gently nudge one of them awake with the toe of my boot: "Check-out", I tell him quietly.
"No check-out", he mumbles and goes back to sleep. I try one of the others, but get no response. I have left a deposit of 500 Rupees - far too much for the quality of the room - and owe another 160; I also have a train to catch. The idea of missing it and being stuck here again is enough to make up my mind: there is no-one to pay the money to, and simply leaving it with the key is out of the question - it would disappear in an instant, and I would have no receipt. The front door is unlocked. Anyone could walk in off the street while the three guards sleep. I place the key on the desk and walk out into the dark, cold morning; I find a cycle-rickshaw and reach Allahbad Junction station at 5.15am. My only hope is that the hotel won't pursue the matter of 160 Rupees, knowing full well they have already ripped me off for 500; however, they do have my passport details and onward destination, and a phone call to RPF at Lucknow would be all it would take to cause me some real problems. I go straight to the Train Controllers office and find my train waiting at platform 9, just as they said it would be. I double-check with the Conductor then buy a hot chai from one of the wallahs, which I drink by the open door to my carriage. The station is quiet at this hour, and I watch dozens of rats scuttling around the platforms, nosing in the stinking drifts of waste, scurrying into holes if a coolis footsteps come too close. The bright orange WDM at the head of the train rumbles at a slow tick-over, the headlight slicing out into the misty darkness; behind it, the unreserved coaches are packed solid, people hanging from the doorways, faces pressed against the barred windows. I would like to photograph the early morning scene, but my shredded nerves won't allow me to take the risk. I place my empty mud cup on a low wall; there is litter everywhere and no bins, but I can't bring myself to do as the locals do and simply throw it to the ground the moment I have finished with it. An RPF guard stops me as I go to board the train. He points at my cup: "Why do you just leave this here?" He seems genuinely offended by my seemingly thoughtless behavior. I apologise and he tells me to throw it onto the tracks instead: it lands with a splash in a stinking pool of sewage that has been squat-jettisoned from the platform edge by passengers wrapped in thin sheets to preserve the privacy of their pulled-down dhoti pants and raised saris, surrounded by ripped plastic bags, rotting half-eaten food, bits of paper and vermin-gnawed chicken bones. The guard is satisfied with this. My paranoia is in full flight; I am sure I will be picked-up and questioned about the unpaid hotel balance or my appearance at Allahbad City station. Just before departure, three RPF guards with sub-machineguns enter the coach; my blood freezes. They pay little attention to me as I sit and wait for the train to leave, a knot of tension in my stomach, and stay onboard as we leave Allahbad Junction behind and cross the Ganges. I arrive in Lucknow at 1pm; there are no RPF guards waiting for me on the platform. I check into the Deep Avadh again. They recognise me and ask with some surprise: "You like our hotel?". I tell them yes, adding the lie that although I said I was going to Darjeeling when I completed the Foreign Registration form last time, I must now go to Delhi instead. I will pick fictitous onward destinations at random from now on, and never let any hotel know where I am going next. I wash and change, then walk back through the lobby to the bar. I order a Kingfisher and allow myself to relax at last; then I drink a toast to The Ganga Gompti Express.