Travels

The man sitting on the floor on my left offers me a samosa wrapped in oily newspaper. I manage to extend my arm to take it – just.
- Ah, sir, thank you, sir! (I speak like them now, like the Tamils, wobbling my head from side to side and with a nasal, quick accent plastered on my English words. I would not be able to get rid of it for about 2-3 weeks after leaving India)
- You’re welcome, sir!
Why, oh, why, didn’t we book sleeper tickets in advance? I’m trying to find a spot, a square centimeter on my body that is not sweating like Hitler in the cauldron. I’m also trying to find a limb that is not numb from being squeezed on all sides but one by equally sweaty men. No success. I’m still not desperate enough to stretch my legs in front of me. That’s boogie land, the puddley stinky scary space between the two squat toilets.
I look over my shoulder and exchange a wave with Nick the Puppy. He’s managed to squeeze himself on one of the luggage racks. It’s not one of those luggage racks above the seats, perpendicular to the length of the train car. No, it’s one of those 15-cm-wide (only) racks that follow the length of the carriage. The Puppy’s right leg and arm half dangle over the side of the rack. He’s wearing a very strained smile as he waves at me. I’m sure some of the old bags stuffed on the rack at his head contain smelly food.
Now we know why these train cars are called chicken class. I also gain some respect for the activists who fight against the battery farms. Those chickens too must feel like a g-string squeezed between sweaty buttocks. At least I’m not about to end up in the lead role in a McChicken show.
10 more hours of this. I wonder how long before I break and stretch among the puddles. After all, we’ve only been on this train for 15 minutes or so. Truth is – hand on heart – we did not expect it to be so bad. Forget all those photos we’d seen of Indian train travel, with men hanging out the windows, taking a nap on the carriage roof, brushing their teeth on the front of the engine; they must be sick jokes. It could never happen to us. Well, it’s true; it’s not quite as bad in the South of India it seems: nobody is traveling on the outside of the train, catching the wind in their hair. Although I’m starting to wonder if that wouldn’t have been better. More convenient, I would say, having the wind in your hair than the stench of piss and…hm, the other one.
Two hours on and the space between toilets doesn’t look so unappealing anymore. Ah, but to stretch my aching legs without having to cause a ripple in the squatting ocean of train-traveling humanity on the floor…That’s when it dawns on me: I have a thermal mat and a sleeping bag. Don’t ask me why anyone in their right mind would bring these in a 40-degree Celsius oven of a train, but it’s better being covered in your own sweat than in everybody’s piss, is it not?
The last thing I see just before I fall asleep, after stretching the mat in boogie land and squeezing myself in the sleeping bag, is a pair of brown dirty bare feet coming out of the toilet and dripping some yellowish-brownish liquid on me as they step over my cocoon self. Yiiiiuukkk, zzzzzzzzzzzz!
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Come in? Mummy, I don’t wanna wake up? Kill that woodcutter? No, I must be dreaming…
Bang, bang, bang! I’m not bloody sleeping; someone is banging on the toilet door. I open my eyes. A little old lady in a colourful, impeccably clean sari is banging desperately on the toilet door to my left.
Bang, bang, bang! For Shiva’s sake, lady, I wanna sleep, can’t you go pee in the right-hand toilet? I’m sure it’s free. Just let that poor shmuck in the left-hand toilet nurse his bloody diarrhea.
I am wide awake now; I see a couple of big guys approaching the toilet, rolling up their sleeves (South Indian men are usually quite small. Not these two). They start banging on the door too; is the wood really starting to crack or am I still partly in Dreamland? No answer from inside the toilet, no ‘fuck off and let me take a dump, you bastards’ as you’d expect. Which actually is starting to turn my sleepiness into suspicion: something’s going on.
The door finally cracks open and a small, thin guy with a voluptuous moustache steps out, dripping (of course)…hm…liquid on my sleeping bag. One of the rolled-sleeves bodyguards (A) grabs him by the shirt’s lapels and bangs him hard against the end of the carriage. The other (B) slips inside the toilet. He comes out holding the old lady’s wallet. He’d found it stashed behind the squat toilet’s metal pissing-guard. He hands the wallet to the old woman and as a continuation of the same motion he smashes his fist into the thief’s chest. The air leaves the small-mustachioed guy’s lungs in a rush accompanied by a wimp. Which bodyguard A seems to interpret as an invitation to slap the brains out of his head. Bodyguard B kicks at the thief’s knee and I’m literally surprised it doesn’t snap. The thief – probably sincerely regretting now stealing the old lady’s wallet and the few pieces of gold jewelry from a baby in the carriage (these weren’t found) – screams and wriggles only to be lifted off his feet by bodyguard A and smashed again against the wall at the end of the carriage. Bodyguard B realizes he’s standing on something soft. He looks down at me, then at his own feet, makes sure he’s standing on my mat and sleeping bag and not my legs, smiles and gives me a head wobble. I give him one back, pull my legs and sit on my ass. Then he gets back to reminding the small guy why thieving is a bad idea. Ten minutes later, the two policemen who pick him up at the next stop continue the education with the help of short wooden police batons, while our train moves slowly away with its cargo of sweaty, stinky, sleepy, squeezed battery chickens.