India Diaries: The Great Indian Railways

I landed in Chennai the next night and for the first time instead of a domestic flight, took an overnight train, the Cheran Express, which goes all the way from Ahmedabad to my home town, Coimbatore. This was taken up mainly to convince myself that its really not a big deal, travelling alone in an Indian train, especially in the ‘safe’ South, where a stolen hand-bag is the worst that can happen. A kind cousin and family helped me through the chaos of the train station. But once I got to my berth, I was ON MY OWN in a compartment packed with strangers. As usual, I was fumbling around the tiny space, because my enormous Samsonite bag was some twenty kilos too heavy for me to handle. Two men from seats adjacent to mine promptly helped me stuff my bag under the seat. Only once that was done, did I notice that both men were so starkly contrasted, they could have been in a Social Studies text book. One was a middle aged Muslim man, wearing a long beard, poly-cot Kurtas and a lace cap. He was travelling with his elderly parents, the father dressed similarly and his mother totally veiled in her long, black hijab. As luck or drama would have it, the other man was in starched white, with a vermillion cast-mark on his forehead, a beaded rudraksh neklace and yellow threads around his wrists, looking as blatantly Hindu as possible. I blustered a thank you, and they both smiled at me sympathetically and at each other knowingly, since I was obviously an ignorant, NRI fool. It was almost immediately time to turn in. Of the Muslim family, the son had the uppermost berth while his parents had gotten the middle ones. I asked the son if his mother would like to exchange berths with me, since I had the lowest one. But he smiled and said ‘no, no, no problem, thank you very much!’, before heading to the toilet with a Pepsodent toothbrush. The lower birth on the other side, was occupied by RSS man, who, boisterously insisted on giving up his berth for the old man. Old man took it up gratefully. I followed RSS man’s suit and gently pressurized old lady to switch berths with me. It didn’t take much convincing, of course. By the time, the son was back from the train toilet, he found his parents curled up in the bottom berths like snug bugs. ‘Ah! You exchanged!’, he said to his mother. ‘Yes. But they gave it to us. Voluntary.’ She said the last word in English. The son grinned at RSS man, ‘Thank you!’ RSS man smiled right back, ‘Inshah Allah’