General Class Ticket

I recommend that you travel by train in India. To fully grasp this nation of contrasts and the diversity of its people, one should travel once, in general class.

The polluted horizon levelled with the train tracks. The sky was an apocalypse grey with a golden tinge that gave the impression of perpetual twilight. It had just gone midday. I slouched over from the pounding heat, and sagged onto my crumpled backpack. I held a general class ticket and was waiting on platform A4 for the Shatabdi Express to Delhi. As the train rolled in 30 minutes too late and the muffled voice on the loud speaker announced its arrival, I noticed the swift movement of passengers running to meet it. When I sluggishly followed, the reason for their mad dash became obvious. Each general class train compartment was already overflowing with people, some dangling overboard from the carriage door handles. I had purchased my ticket for 65 rupees and immediately understood what that meant.

With one hollow breath I threw myself against a wall of people who had already marked the inch where they would withstand the three, or perhaps four or four and a half hour journey from Agra to Delhi. I focused on reaching the main compartment, careless about which limbs I was grabbing and then discarding as I carved out my path. Inside, people sat on strangers’ knees, hung by the ceiling rails, leant against the steel walls or made various shapes with their bodies on the train floor. I found my inch and rather than attempt yoga, I squatted in it.

At standstill, the air inside the train carried the raw scent of fried dhal and body odour. Electronic Punjabi music blasted from a boy's telephone without a wince from his neighbours. Vendors approached the windows with murmurings of “chai chai... pani chai". As the train built momentum I changed positions on the floor and came face to face with several Indian men. They leered towards me and made their intentions known by flashing grins of decaying teeth and snorting back phlegm. I shuffled the other way to face two Indian women. One looked at me from the corner of her headscarf. She wore a smattering of brown lipstick and was adorned in a plush red sari littered with diamante waves. Clearly unwell, after pondering my place in her carriage, she laid her head on her knees, defeated by her sickness. The other woman was much younger, sitting comfortably in a yellow wool cardigan despite the heat. She had a nose piercing that matched the garish bangles on her wrist. She half smiled at me in the way people do, when they know something funny about you. Then she pointed over my left shoulder at a man who was transfixed to the hint of pink bra strap peering from beneath my tired white t-shirt. I pulled a scarf over my shoulders and nodded discretely in thanks.