4 April, Kolkata (since 2001, the new name for Calcutta),
23:30
Mumbai to Kolkata, 1300 slow miles
(I’ll try to post this tomorrow; it was too crowded at 21:00 at the local internet place to
ask about plugging in with my network cable.)
Soooo, here I sit in my hotel room in Calcutta (did I ever
think I would be saying that to anyone, ever?) I have just done the cold-water, wash-cloth bath. I do
have AC, and that is a luxury, certifiable by the “luxury” tax imposed.
Who knows if the tax is real, and if real, what of it will ever reach the
government. So why is there not hot water?
It is Friday night late, but this day seems to have begun on
Wednesday. I left for Kurla
Station early from Raj's, about 18:00, and got a taxi; always smile broadly with clenched
teeth and roll your R's or the Bihary cab drivers won't understand you! We traveled over and around the famed
Dharavi slum (tours available at www.realitytoursandtravel.com)
to what is officially called Lokmanya Tilik Station, and got my coach and berth
assignment without too much hassle. I met a Brit, 56, on the bench in front of
car B2 and struck up a friendship. He was in the next compartment, had
been to India 19 times before and was able, just off the top of his head, to
tell me that #20 in a 3AC car was a lower berth. God knows where he is
right now. I guess I should have stuck with him tonight when he got off
at Sealdah Station; I would have been no worse off than I am now, and I
might have had him with me. But I digress.
We left Mumbai on time, and pretty soon we were tucking into
the Chinese option for dinner:
fried rice with chicken. Richard, the Brit, joined me for dinner
in my compartment, both because we had an extra spot and because his
compartment was just one extended family and him. Across from us was a very fastidious Indian man who
immediately commandeered the table, was messing with his bag and stuff the
whole way, and was, at regular intervals, making homemade bhelpuris, what the Lonely Planet describes as “ a riotous mix
of sweet, sour, hot, soft and crunchy sensations” all wrapped in a wet betel
leaf, the diverse ingredients of which he had packed in a neat, tin box. There was also a family in my
compartment, a woman, her mother and her two children. We ate and bedded down, and then awoke
miles east and on schedule.
The steady stream of vendors started up again the next
morning. Garum chai, coffee with
milk, “pani bottle” (water), “egg boil” (hard boiled eggs), “cheeps and
beescuits,” pakoras, “veg cutlet.”
After a “bread omelet” (read omelet, along with two slices of buttered
bread), I struck up a conversation with the woman, Momita. She is from Guwahati, is a lawyer with
an engineer husband, and she took me under her wing immediately. She will book a room for me when she
gets home, on the Brahmaputra River and across from the court house. It is there I will met Jim (Aussie) and
Ann (S. African.) More about them
later.
There was the steady rotation of reading,
staring-out-the-window-while-listening-to-iPod, conversing, sleeping, eating,
and monitoring our progress on my map.
The latter was a hit with everyone, including “Mr. Bean” Singh, Momita’s
son and mother, and Richard, who has vowed to “buy one just like it when I get
back to London.” I feared losing
it it was so popular. And we got
another compartment-mate in Raipur, a young, tech-savvy businessman with an
unpronounceable name. Dinner
arrived, followed by night, and we were just one hour behind schedule.
Then came the second morning. Momita thought that we had been stationary for most of the
night. When we found out where we
were, my map revealed that we had put only 50 additional miles behind us. Mr. Bean’s schedule revealed that we
were now 7 hours behind schedule.
And finally Richard related that the last time this had happened to him
in India they’d been told that a derailment had caused the delay; later he’d read news about a Maoist
raiding party in the area that had disrupted trains in the area causing them to
be stopped and/or diverted. Soon
thereafter we too were told that there had been a derailment on a “goods
train.” Hmmmm. We’ll see in tomorrow’s news.
So the second (extra) day dragged on, the same rotation, and
only the businessman’s India Today magazine broke the monotony. He and I had an extended conversation
during which he explained in great detail the situation in Pakistan, and how
Musharaff can get away with not stepping down. Momita realized she would miss her flight to Guwahati, but
her cell phone was dead and she had to get special permission to go to 1st
class to charge it. And I ate
another curry platter with rice.
Day turned to twilight and it was soon dark. India has only one time zone, so the east is known for its early
dawns, the west for its late sunsets.
And finally we were here. This train, which was billed as a two-night, 36-hour
journey, clocked in at nearly 46 hours, two nights and a very long extra
day. Now, 10 hours late, and feet
swollen from sitting, we pulled into Howrah Station, Kolkata, right on the
banks of the Hooghly River across from Fort William, site of the legendary
Black Hole of Calcutta. I said farewell to Momita, until April 10th, and
Richard and I commandeered a cab for the drive across to Sealdah Station, where
he would try to make it out of town north toward Sikkim (three consecutive nights on the train.
I doubt he made, but I will never know. The streets were something out of a
movie, one that you would disbelieve as overdone. Taxis, busses, auto-rickshaws, barefoot rickshaws, and every
kind of person, lahks of them (1 lahk = 100,000), going in every possible
direction, horns blaring and police standing by just watching. It is like nothing I have ever been in,
or even seen. One begins to feel
how it must be to be pulled from a car by mob.
Together we crawled and honked our way to Sealdah Station
where Richard got out. He had the
name and location of the hotel where I was heading, and he would join me in
case he couldn’t get a train. What
we hadn’t considered was what to do if there was no room at Hotel Broadway,
which there was not. And thus it
was that I was taken here, the Hotel Majestic not the Hotel Maria as I had
asked. So, somewhere out there is
Richard, either on another train or in this frenetic maze of motion and noise
that is Kolkata. God only knows.
What I do know is that I found dinner too much hassle to
consider. Besides, I needed to
somehow expel all the rice I had eaten on the train. And all I wanted to do was find an internet place to let
some folks know that I was indeed alive, somewhere in Kolkata. Tomorrow I will try to get my
bearings. I booked a train to
arrive at 08:35 to avoid this stress;
arriving at 19:00 was quite stressful.
Waldo, is in Kolkata with 15 or so million in-your-face
people. God help the planet!
