On The Eastern Railway

I wake a few minutes before my 4am alarm, wash, dress, unpack the blanket I bought in Delhi and fold it into a carrier bag; I use the wrapper to seal my Berghaus fleece and then compression-strap it to the top of my pack. The lobby is dark and empty; I settled my bill the previous night, so I leave the key on the desk and go downstairs to the blackness of pre-dawn Sudder Street. I knock on the window of an Ambassador to wake the taxi driver sleeping on the back seat; he raises his head briefly before turning over and putting his hands over his ears. I walk towards another taxi parked under a tree halfway down to the junction with Chowingree. An old, homeless woman is lying on the wooden bench that is fixed to the wall where the 'Chopsticks Corner' wallah sets-up his daytime stall, watching me; I stop and turn back - I must have woken her trying to get the taxi driver's attention. Her frail body is wrapped in a thin, faded sari, her pillow a small hessian bag containing her meagre possessions. I hold out the blanket: "This will keep you warm," I tell her gently. She touches her hand to her forehead and breastbone then clutches my hand. It is cold, dry, rough: "Thank you, sir; thank you".
The taxi drives through the dark, deserted streets of Kolkata with the lights off; now and then I see the shadowy bulk of a bus or a Tata truck moving in the gloom. The driver flashes his headlights once as we pass, then we disappear again. I buy a cup of sweet, milky coffee at Howrah and cross the footbridge to platform 18 where the Dhuali Express is already waiting behind an electric WAP-4 locomotive. My reservation is posted at the door of C1 - the only reserved chair-car carriage in the entire train - which is completely full. I take my seat next to a friendly Bengali family on the way to see relatives in Balasore; as the train snakes across the points at the station's throat they ask me where I am from, where in India I have been, what is my 'good name'. The pantry-car boy serves a breakfast of omelette, chiplets, brad and tomato ketchup as we leave the city's suburbs behind; the Bengali family study me as I construct a chip-butty and an egg sandwich, then begin experimenting with permutations of their own.
I stand at the open vestibule door as the sun rises over Kharagpur and smoke a Wills Classic. For the people crushed into the unreserved coaches the 10 minute stop will be their first opportunity to purchase refreshments since leaving Kolkata. The platform is teeming with passengers frantically snapping up bowls of Iddli and Phulka, sliced-open coconuts and leaf rolled Paan. The activity reaches fever pitch as the WAP-4 blows its horn and begins to move, the last of the stragglers climbing onto the moving footboards empty-handed: they will stay hungry and thirsty until we reach Balasore in an hour and a half.
The train leaves the agricultural patchwork of paddy fields and banana plantations and crosses a vast, barren plain. Nothing grows in the reddish-brown dust that stretches in every direction as far as the eye can see.; there are no villages with goats and cattle, not a blade of grass or a single tree. I stand in the doorway as we roll for mile after mile through the desolate landscape; it is barely 9am and already hotter than Kolkata. At Balasore, the Bengali family wish me farewell as they load their luggage onto the heads of three waiting coolis; I stand in the blazing sunshine on the platform and buy water from one of the wallahs as a bead of sweat creeps down my spine. When I go back to my seat I find there is fewer than half a dozen passengers left in the carriage. The landscape has metamorphosised by the time we reach Bhadrak in Orissa: undulating grassy plains dotted with palm groves, huge, isolated hills rising out of nowhere, like up-turned jelly-moulds. The line curves and bends between long, straight sections, running for mile upon mile on a raised earth embankment. The double track splays every so often to cross swamps and tidal rivers on parallel bridges, then comes together again until we reach the next crossing. I am standing in the doorway smoking a Wills Classic. The train slows as we approach a level crossing, the mud, rag and cardboard walls of a Bastee - a slum of makeshift huts - strung along the edge of the line beside me. Suddenly:
Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!
I slam the door and crouch down just as the plastic window above me shatters; I hear impacts all down the side of the coach, people shouting, glass breaking. The conductor opens the connecting door and asks if I am injured: "stone attack," he assures me, "not gun."
We reach Jaipur Keonjhar Road and the hot, humid air hits me like a hammer blow when I open the track-side door. I am now the only passenger left in coach C1. A young man stumbles across the tracks below me, his eyes wild and bloodshot; he slowly begins to pull himself up the steps to my door with jerky, puppet-like movements. I shove the door in his face, wedging it with my boot while I flip the latch. He hangs outside the broken window and leers in at me:
"Uncle, " he slurs, " let me in. Let me in, uncle." It is the nightmarish, half-speed voice of a horror film.
I stand with my back pressed against the vestibule bulkhead, sweat trickling down my neck.
Slowly, the platform-side door swings open.
"Uncle...." He has crawled under the train and is now swaying in the open doorway, his crimson eyes fixed on me, drooling: "Uncle....."
I cross the vestibule, pry his fingers from the outside handrails and send him cartwheeling onto the platform with a push in his chest. As he shambles forward again, I register a blur of movement over his left shoulder; he is too slow to follow my eyes and does not see the RPF officer bring his Lachti up in a slicing, over-arm arc with all the speed and energy of a fast-bowler. I hear the bone snap as the bamboo stick connects with the zombie's forearm - crump! He reels away form his attacker, his arm hanging uselessly at his side, the hand already darkening and swelling.
I sit in the empty coach until the outskirts of Jaipur Keonjhar peter out into fields and streams, then stand at the open door, the hot slipstream whipping away the smoke from my Wills Classic. We slowly cross a long trestle over a wide tidal estuary; before the train reaches the far side I have lost sight of the other bank. The WAP-4 climbs a curved gradient as we come off the bridge; the tracks separate and the adjacent line runs along a slightly elevated embankment alongside us.
I see a group of men huddled in the ballast on the other line - a trackwork gang, perhaps, taking a chai break. Apart from the one who somehow seems to have crawled halfway under the nearest rail, wedged between two sleepers. But that isn't right because the top of his hips are separated from his lower back by a space of at least a foot, either side of the glinting rail. He is lying face down with his feet stretched out behind him, and is wearing a loose blue shirt and a red dhoti tied where his waste should be. You might think he was sleeping, if it wasn't for the ragged meat and splintered bone bulging from the truncated torso where a train's wheels cut him in two. The hot air is buzzing with flies. I back away from the door, wipe a film of perspiration from my forehead and light a Classic with trembling fingers. Sweat dampens and blurs the Wills logo where my fingers clamp the cigarette; I lick salt from my lips and breathe deeply.
The countryside is now a lush green with swathes of coconut palms rippled with dry, sandy riverbeds; the villages are mud and thatch - quite obviously very poor - the fields worked by peasant women wrapped in brilliantly coloured saris and oxen drawing wooden hoes beneath a blazing blue sky. I close the door whenever one of the impoverished settlements or desperate Bastees comes too close to the line; sometimes I sit in the coolness of the carriage and listen to the rattle of the air-conditioner's fan.
We stop at a small halt and wait for an up-bound passenger train to clear the junction ahead; there is a small concrete hut on the raised earth platform on one side, a ribbon of dusty scrub on the other. I buy a bottle of water from a wallah and stand in the doorway. The crowd of passengers waiting on the beaten earth across the tracks watch me - cool eyes set in dark, lined faces. I lean back and look down the corridor to the far end of the coach; the vestibule is filled with bright sunlight: both doors are wide open.
I slowly close my door and flip the catch, check the lock on the other side and make my way to the other end of the carriage. I am completely alone; the conductor is idling away the rest of the journey sleeping in the Luggage-Cum-Brake Van at the back of the train. There are no AK-47 armed paramilitaries or Lachti wielding RPF men to protect me: it would be a very simple matter to come over and steal everything I have. The small but nonetheless real threat of kidnap is there too - it has been reported in the TOI twice since I arrived in Delhi. I quietly lock both doors and go back to my seat; I sit rigidly, clenching and unclenching my fists, willing the driver to lock the WAP-4's airhorns on and pull back the power-handle. My hair is slick with sweat, my mouth dry. Eventually, with painful slowness, the train begins to move; somebody pounds on the locked door behind me - trackside, the wrong side to have any legitimate business in my isolated carriage.
I step into the suffocating heat at Bhubaneswar station, buy a some water and sit on a bench with my map. An Indo-African leads a chained monkey past me. The monkey stops in front of me and sits down, tired by the heat; the man sits next to it and they both rest. The man strokes the fur behind the monkey's ear and talks quietly to it; it crawls into his lap and curls up; it seems perfectly content. A small boy with leprosy and mad, flashing eyes jigs and wails on the platform in front of me, a skein of loose flesh flapping at his neck, the moist stumps of his fingers outstretched for baksheesh. Everyone is looking at me, watching each move I make. A drop of sweat rolls off the tip of my nose and soaks into my map.
I close my eyes for a few moments and see the words that are at the forefront of my mind:

Show me everything. Every pixel, every celluloid grain of the picture - the death and despair, the opulence and neglect, the suffering and the splendor. I want to see it all. Leave nothing out. Not one thing.

I open my eyes, stand up and shoulder my bag. I smile at the Indo-African and wave to his monkey; he smiles back warmly as the monkey cocks it's head to one side and gazes at me with inquisitive, intelligent eyes. I hold a 10 Rupee note at fingers length for the leper-boy to fumble into the remains of his hand, then walk out of the station. I check into a lime green room at the Arya Mahal hotel; it is a bare concrete cell, but it is clean and cool. I read the instructions on the disinfectant I bought on the way from the station; there are dilutions for cuts, surgery and childbirth: I mix the recommended solution for epidemics and soak my hands up to the wrists in the cracked bathroom sink.
I walk down Station Square to the Richi Bar and order a Kingfisher. The waiter proffers the un-opened bottle for me to test, and I agree it is cold enough; it is encrusted with ice, the contents chilled to a viscous slush.
"Where from, sir?" he asks as he pours the freezing beer into the glass he has just polished for me. He smiles when I tell him I am English: " You are welcome in Orissa."
I pick at some Aloo Zeera and push a Naan around my plate, buy three bottles of frozen beer from the waiter and walk back to my lurid room.
I lie on the bed, the sheet twisted around my feet, and sip icy Kingfisher as I watch the spinning ceiling fan - thud-thud-thud.
I close my eyes and see the calloused black feet and smooth calf muscles extending from the hem of a red dhoti; in the background a ghostly soundtrack echoes:
"Uncle, let me in. Let me in, Uncle. Let me in. Let me in......"