Chennai Central

I wake to the shrill beep! beep! beep! beep! of my alarm clock gone mad, its initial gentle entreaties frustrated and now an urgent demand that I switch it off and get up now. It is ten o’clock in the morning and the hours since the Howrah-Chennai Superfast Mail arrived at Central Station are a half-remembered dream. I know I sat on the steps outside the station and smoked Wills Classics for an eternity; and that even at 5am it was hot, humid and close. I think I drank at least three cups of coffee from the 24-hour chai stall in the concourse, and visited the Pay And Use toilets, which I’m sure were near platform 6, as many times – the ones I renamed Pay And Display on the second occasion, such was the curiosity I aroused in the other patrons. And it seems to me that it took far longer than three hours for the sun to rise fully and allow me to search for a room. And how many hotels did I try? Well, there was the one with the pleasant, marbled lobby on Kennet Lane with no rooms free, and the squalid Yatri hostel over the road that had plenty of vacancies; the one I told I needed to visit an ATM, and could they hold the room for an hour? The one with no hot water and a filthy, not-quite-big-enough, threadbare sheet stretched across the stained and sagging mattress, no pillow or towel provided? And half a dozen other places that were either full, too costly or ineffably disgusting until I found the Hotel Chennai Gate. I’m sure they said they had opened just last week, so they were little known and had priced the spotless, air-conditioned room, with it’s hot and cold running water and picture window facing the front elevation of Egmore Station, accordingly. When I spread my hand on the windowpane, the glass is hot from the mid-morning sun.
I shower, change my clothes and leave my room; the heat hits me like a hammer blow the instant I step into the corridor, as if it has been waiting in ambush for me to appear. I wade through the thick, heavy air and arrive in the lobby with my shirt clinging to my back. It is mayhem on the street outside: buses, Ambassador taxis and huge, Ashok Leyland trucks torment the pedestrians forced off the pavement by the erratic clutter of street hawker’s stalls and tease the swarms of auto-rickshaws, who’s drivers protest squeaking their hooters – not horns, but little, high-pitched hooters blown by squeezing a rubber ball, sounding for all the world like a prolonged, heated exchange between Sooty and Sweep. But in all of this melee there is no sign of a cycle-rickshaw or a wandering cow: the roads are too fast, too crowded for either to survive very long on them. I walk down Pantheon Road, turn left into Montieth Road and change some money at the Thomas Cook office. Perspiration is running down my temples in rivulets as I countersign my cheque, dripping off the tip of my nose onto the polished wooden counter. The cashier pretends not to notice: five hundred dollars is a lot of money in Tamil Nadu. I take an auto-rickshaw back to Egmore Station in the gathering afternoon heat; the sky has turned a sickly grey, big spots of warm rain darkening the pavements for a second before they evaporate again. I buy a ticket for Beach Station on the Chennai Suburban railway It is an old-fashioned pasteboard ticket; the same size and shape as the one I bought at Balatonkenese in Hungary last summer, and the ones I bought in the 1970’s at Leicester for my early, and occasionally over-ambitious railway adventures: the universal ticketing system invented in 1840’s England by Thomas Edmondson, adopted by an eclectic mix of railway companies the world over. The Edmondson ticket: an Edwardian gentleman time-traveller who has somehow circumvented the Information Superhighway to arrive 170 years later in a changed world.
The suburban electric train has hard, wooden seats, bare plate steel flooring and overhead fans blowing down from the grimy ceiling. The windows are glassless and barred, the sliding doors fixed to be permanently open. As it pulls into the station, the mass of people gathered on the platform surge towards the doors and fight their way onboard. I push my way half inside the threshold of one of the doors and grip the outside handrail tightly, more outside than inside the carriage. Every inch of space is stuffed with hot. Sweating and miserable passengers; my position is precarious but is preferable to being in the suffocating crush of bodies inside the coach: I can see and breathe, and be cooled by the breeze as the train gathers speed. There is no beach at, or near Beach Station. There is a deep-water container port and an inter-modal transfer facility – neither of which I think would be all that attractive, even if they were accessible. I return to the station and board the same train, which is now waiting in the bay platform to return south to Trisulam. There is something wrong with the hawkers and wallahs who pass through the train selling playing cards, cheap plastic wristwatches, bottles of warm Kinley Soda water and cellophane wrapped blocks of barfi. It takes me a few minutes to realize that they make deliberate and cautious movements because all of them are blind. They move slowly along the platform until they somehow sense an open door, feeling for the handrail with outstretched hands and probing for the carriage doorstep with an extended foot; they navigate their way steadily and confidently through the familiar territory of the coach chanting “Sweet-Snack-Chips” in a metallic drone. They know where each handhold, protruding seat edge and partition wall lies; every entrance and exit, whether it leads to a sheer drop to the tracks below on one side or the safety of the platform on the other. They bump into me as I stand inside the doorway, alter their course and move slowly around me, the exact position of this new and temporary obstacle fixed on their mental map of the carriage. Each has a badge to identify them as a licensed vendor of the Chennai Suburban Railway, a hazardous and dangerous environment in which to work, even with all senses present.
I get off the train at the first station and follow the lane down to Fort St George. An ancient iron studded, wooden gate at the west entrance leads me into a dark, 30 foot tunnel driven through the base of the huge, fortified walls: when the British established Madras Town here in 1640, they clearly intended to keep hold of their first territorial Indian possession. Inside, a warren of narrow roads are lined with colonial mansions, some restored for commercial use, many more in complete disrepair; some of the deep alcoves in the fort’s inner walls are inhabited, the deep recesses divided into sleeping and cooking-cum-sitout areas by crude wooden partitions. Much of the interior is used by the Indian army as a transfer camp and is out of bounds; constantly, I am stopped and turned back by sentries, only to turn the next corner and find myself in a dead end. I follow the direction of the few bicycles and Ambassadors that pass and eventually arrive at the northern tip of Marina Beach, my shirt plastered to me like a wet rag. It is the world’s longest city beach; and quite possibly it’s most polluted too. Every square foot of the yellow-brown sand is littered with food wrappers, plastic bottles and human excrement; a kilometer south of the fort, the estuary of the River Cooum dumps it’s foul smelling cargo of concentrated sewage – picked up on it’s meandering course through the city’s bastees and slums - into the Bay of Bengal, only for it to be washed back ashore by waves already slick with oil from the container port. The stench of the river is inescapable: it pervades the hot, humid air of Chennai day and night. Nobody swims from Marina Beach, or sunbathes on it either: for the disapproving Tamil Nadus it is a place to walk, relieve oneself and indulge at one of hundreds of identical Cold Drinks, Snacks, Juice and Ice Cream stalls that march across the sand in wide avenues.
I hail an auto-rickshaw and ride through the choking, fume filled streets to Central Station. I tap train number 2007 MRS-MYS into the self-service enquiry system in the booking hall; there are forty-seven seats still available for tomorrow’s Mysore Shatabdi Express, the fastest way out of the pressure cooker of Chennai. I walk back to Kennett Lane and find the Vasanta Bhavan “Meals Ready” food hall. My south Indian thalli arrives on a platter lined with banana leaves – bowls of samabar and subje, chutney, vegetable masalas and pickles arranged around a central mound of rice which is shored up on two sides with chapatis. Every so often I decline the waiter’s offer to top up this or that bowl with even more of the delicious food; for next to nothing I can eat as much as I like, but one helping of the “Unlimited Thalli” is more than enough.
I walk across the road to the economically named Beer Garden and order a Kingfisher. The small courtyard is packed with very drunk Indian men, their raucous laughter and shouted conversation drowning out some Indo-fusion pop music that plays from a speaker hidden behind the serving counter. I stand in a corner, trying to be inconspicuous and failing miserably. I begin to feel very uncomfortable as bloodshot eyes and leering smiles settle on me; a group of fat, sweating men with half a dozen empty McDowells whisky bottles lying scattered across their table turn to stare at me. One of them says something I cannot hear and they shriek with laughter. At another table a nasty looking young man with a ridge of scar tissue running from his right ear to the corner of his mouth pours a quarter pint bottle of some cheap spirit into his glass and drinks it in one long draught. His burning eyes don’t leave me for a second. Tamil Nadu has some of the most restrictive liquor laws in India, and yesterday was a “Dry Day”, when no sales of alcohol are permitted. And the result of this policy can be seen tonight in the Beer Garden: while these men might have got drunk last night, their state enforced deprivation has driven them to tonight’s excess. In Orissa, the label on the back of a Kingfisher bottle will tell you “Liquor Consumption Is Injurious to Health." In Tamil Nadu, it warns “Liquor Ruins Country, Family and Life.” Perhaps it should really say this: “The State Of Tamil Nadu Compounds The Problems Of Liquor Consumption With Pointless, Punitive Legislation And Is In Itself Injurious To Health.”
I leave my half-finished Kingfisher on a table and quickly leave the bar. I look back to see if anyone has risen to follow me out into the darkness on Kennett Lane and see Scar face squabbling with another drunk for possession of my discarded beer: clearly Juthna – food or drink contaminated by others’ lips – doesn’t extend to the injurious pursuit of liquor consumption.
I turn the air-conditioning to the highest setting, switch on the ceiling fan for good measure and lie on my bed in the Hotel Chennai Gate. Outside my window Sooty and Sweep have yet to resolve their differences; inside the pocket of my daypack is my ticket out of Chennai and Tamil Nadu. I have absolutely no intention of looking back; or ever coming back, for that matter.

Night Train To Madras

I leave the Ghandra Hotel at 3am for the early morning slow passenger train to the state capital Bhubaneswar, and then wait on platform 4 with a cup of chai for the Howrah-Chennai Superfast Mail. It is running an hour behind schedule and finally pulls in at 7.30 behind a WAG-7 electric – ostensibly a freight-only locomotive – sending a kingfisher to flight from it’s perch on the overhead line. The station announcer reels off the carriage formation in Hindi and English, and I find coach AH1 – a 2AC-cum-1AC hybrid – twenty-third place from the engine. The carriage attendant checks my reservation and directs me to ‘Cabin C’, which is in darkness, the curtains drawn and two sleeping figures in the right hand bunks of the 4 berth compartment. I quietly stow my bag beneath the left side lower bunk, and then take my Wills Classics and notebook and stand at the open door so as not to disturb my traveling companions at this early hour. The train is immensely long – 24 coaches including the second class ordinary sleeper behind mine – the WAG-7 disappearing from view when we round the long, sweeping curves that follow the coastline of the Bay of Bengal. There are unreserved, sleeper class, first class, two tier and three tier air-conditioned sleepers, a pantry car, a luggage-brake van and a guard-cum brake van. There is even a mobile RPF station in one of the coaches to deal with passengers’ complaints – or to deal with passengers. The RPF – Railway Protection Force – is a small army numbering thousands that is deployed across the 63,000 kilometre system, and in addition to providing security for trains and passengers, it has the power to prosecute 29 types of offences, including the serious ones of sabotage and train wrecking. Everything else is the domain of the GRP – the Government Railway Police, supported by whichever militia or paramilitary unit that happens to be passing by. But the sight of large groups of these AK-47 and Lachti-armed soldiers is not at all reassuring – quite the opposite, in fact. They descend like birds of ill omen on the stations and strut around the platforms and booking halls, staring passengers into silence, stalking the corridors and compartments of trains with impunity. Wherever they land they leach the colour and animation from their surroundings, poisoning the air with menace, tension and the threat of violence. They are looking for trouble; and if they cannot find it, they can make it. But still, Trains At A Glance tells me that I can expect to be compensated if maimed or killed in an Untoward Incident – like rioting, dacoity or violent attack – and that I would receive 5,000 Rupees if grievously injured in what is described as Shootout, something the RPF are no strangers to.

We follow the coastal strip south towards Andhra Pradesh, the bays and inlets netted off into fishing pens the size of paddy fields, the hills inland rising up behind the palms and banyan trees. The line hugs the waters edge, twisting and turning, climbing over viaducts and slicing through cuttings carved through crumbling red rock. It is reminiscent of my journey around Lake Balaton last summer, or the long day trip to the Cambrian Coast line when I was a third of the age I am now. When I return to the compartment I find an elderly Indian gentleman sitting on his lower berth reading the TOI; he greets me politely and we both place orders for food with the pantry car boy – breakfast for him, lunch for me. Of the other passenger, there is no sign; he must have left the train at Khurda Road. For the next two-and-a-half hours the train rattles along at a steady 50mph behind the WAG-7 that looks just like Franco-Indian WAM-4 that crossed the sandy lane outside Puri. I alternate between my seat in ‘Cabin C’ – it is as long as a three-seater settee and the backrest will later be folded down to become my bed – and the open carriage door, where I stand with a Wills Classic and lean out into the slipstream, the air seeming to become hotter with each passing mile. Although the train is called a Superfast Mail - as opposed to just Mail - it doesn't actually travel any faster than even the most humble Passenger train: it just stops at fewer stations, and only for 2 minutes rather than ten, which is the case with all other Mail and Express trains.

My lunch arrives at Visakhapatnam and my travelling companion departs; I will have the whole first class compartment to myself for the rest of the journey, and have a choice of four tables at which to eat my vegetable biryani and dal. The East Coast Railway freight engine that has brought the train down form Howrah is changed for a Southern Railways WAP-4 during the twenty minute stop; it is a major junction station, with a big engine shed and lines radiating to all points of the compass; some single, some double, sometimes running parallel to form a quadruple main line. We reverse and go back the way we came – my carriage now only one away from the engine – and then turn south towards Kankinda Town, crossing and looping an endless procession of container and coal trains going to and from Kankinda port. We take the line to the west, heading further inland, and cross onto the Vijayawada Division of the South Central Railway. At every station, every level crossing and from the brake van of each freight and passenger train we pass we are ‘green flagged’. The station master will be standing in front of his office whenever a train departs or passes through his station, much like in Hungary or Slovakia; but in India, he will have two flags – one red, one green – and will signal to the train that all is in order, or wave a warning if it is not. Likewise the crossing keeper outside his hut, and the guards inside the brake vans of the trains we overtake or meet coming in the opposite direction. Our train has no cab-to-shore radio to warn of danger, but the driver and guard each have a walkie-talkie and use them to communicate the flag signals: even if we are ‘red flagged’ because a problem is spotted further down the train when the engine has already passed, the guard will alert the driver to bring us to a stop. Simple, but effective.

The dinner I ordered at Visakhapatnam is served to my compartment when we stop at Samalakot; it is 6.30pm and already nearly full dark. Although I simply specified a ‘veg meal’, I know exactly what I will be eating: there are two whole pages of Trains At A Glance covering the standard menus of IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation). I know that a Standard Mail/Express Breakfast (In Casserole) Vegetarian will consist of either: A) bread butter, 2 slice with 10gms butter chiplet + cutlet, total weight 70gms; B) idli & vada (4 nos); C) upma & Vada (4 nos); D) pongal & vada (4 nos). And I know that to accompany this I will have coffee in pots (285 ml) + 2 coffee sachets + 2 sugar pouch + 2 disposable paper cups of 170 ml capacity, all of which will be served on a tray with a disposable mat and with good quality and stainless steel cutlery. The Rajdahni and Shatabdi trains serve a higher quality breakfast, lunch and dinner than the Mails and Expresses, and fill an entire page with dense, complex smallprint. I eat the Rice Pulao or Jira Rice or Plain Rice of Fine Quality (150 gms) with the Paratha (2 nos) or Chapati (4 nos) or Poories (5 nos) and Dal or Sambar (thick consistency 150 gms) and drink my Packaged Drinking Water in Ealed Glass (300 ml) which would probably be better described as a sealed glass. I Smoke a Wills Classic at the open carriage door and buy a cup of hot, sweet coffee from a wallah on the platform at Vijayawada. The carriage attendant makes up the lower right bunk of my compartment with military precision, and I sit in on the cushions opposite with my book bathed in the glow of the reading light. I am tired but cannot sleep, despite having been on the train for 15 hours already; besides, it is impossible to ignore the WAP-4’s blaring air horns, and my cabin is directly over the carriage’s leading wheels, which clatter and bang over junctions and points. I turn off the reading light, open the curtains and lie on my bed: I can see out, but nobody outside can see into my darkened room. It is totally black outside the window, not even a distant cooking fire to be seen, the stars hidden behind a blanket of night-cloud. Surrounded by darkness and deprived of any visual reference point, my fatigued mind plays tricks with me as I bounce and roll with the motion of the train: suddenly the carriage is plummeting downwards, then it is climbing at forty-five degrees; is the train really sliding sideways, or is it chasing it’s tail in tight circles? At some point exhaustion must have overcome my deceptive imagination, because it is now 4 o'clock in the morning and the outskirts of Chennai are beginning to gather by the lineside.