Around India in 80 Trains (16 page)

Worried that the last train would leave without us we arrived at the station after tea where a queue had begun. Blinds were drawn down over the window and as 60 minutes ticked by, impatient passengers banged on the glass, then loitered nearby, as though it would speed up the process. As the crowd grew, so did the width of the queue. Most tickets had been pre-booked and as this was the last train of the day, there would only be a handful available. God have mercy on anyone who tried any tricks. In the meantime, the history on the walls provided valuable entertainment:

BY THE GRACE OF GOD - THE NERAL-MATHERAN
LIGHT RAILWAY -
A BRAIN-CHILD OF THE LATE HONOURABLE
MR. ABDUL HUSSEIN ADAMJEE PEERBHOY
WAS DULY CONSTRUCTED BY HIS RARE
ENGINEERING SKILL
FROM 1901-1907, AT A STAGGERING COST OF Rs
16,00,000/
FINANCED BY HIS ILLUSTRIOUS FATHER
LATE SIR ADAMJEE PEERBHOY (KNIGHT)
WHO WAS THE THEN OWNER OF THE MATHERAN
RAILWAY.
MR. ABDUL HUSSEIN ADAMJEE PEERBHOY
WAS POPULARLY KNOWN AS “MATHERAN
RAILWAYWALA”
PRESENTED BY HIS GRANDSON
ADAMJEE ESMAILJEE MOHAMMED ALI PEERBHOY
1983

My name sounded so boring in comparison.

As opening time neared, people started to slink in at the sides and hand money to those at the front of the queue. Having waited fourth in line for over an hour and with our return home now at stake, I jutted both elbows up and stood firm as a young woman in a salwar kameez appeared at my side. It reached the witching hour and the blind flew up behind the glass. Within seconds the queue broke apart into angry rabble while the woman next to me edged forward with me, avoiding eye contact. Queuing is a rarity in India but if you are the next in line, you do not stand behind the person being served. You stand next to him. If possible, you stand next to him with one elbow lightly touching his ribs, so that when he moves you are guaranteed your spot.

My turn was next so Passepartout ducked out of the queue and four people scrambled to take his place. He and Ed watched from the sidelines as a hurricane blew up. Angry Marathi sounded out what could only be the foulest of insults and a man in a baseball cap elbowed me in the back as he grabbed the girl in the salwar kameez and shouted his halitotic abuse into her face. I was beginning to love Mumbaikars. No wonder Mumbai was the centre for the film industry: their natural flair for dramatics was enviable. Even the monkeys had arrived in a group and were pulling distractedly at their tails and watching with interest. Eventually a policeman arrived blowing his whistle and waving a stick to break up the fight.

It turned out that there were enough seats for everyone in the queue and for the next two hours we wound down the hillside, six to a cabin, touching knees and rubbing elbows. Leaning out of the window I was horrified to find my view blocked by a row of men hanging from the side of the train, which explained the abandoned chappals seen on the way up. Train 24 was so delicate that I was scared they would weigh down the carriages and pull us all over the verges. A sign in the compartment even warned passengers to ‘keep windows open during storms or bogies may get thrown’, which Ed loved. Most of the hangers-on had either hopped or fallen off by the time the train was halfway down the hillside, but one passenger had come prepared and was wearing a motorcycle helmet. He had the foresight to bring a helmet, but not to book a ticket.

The ground flattened out and the train rattled its way past a village where mothers pumped water from rusting butts, scraping pans and preparing their evening meal. Kids in khaki shirts wearing no underwear ran alongside waving at the windows, waiting for recognition. It had been a tiring but thrilling few days, and Mumbai had not let us down. Its locals had treated us like family and I knew I would be back, but for now it was time to leave the city and look for a new adventure.

7 | Sexual Healing

As the sun slid down behind the distant hills, the train came to a halt at Karjat and for the next two minutes, rocked gently as her bankers were attached. The newly added pusher engines gave the 80-year-old an extra boost to climb up the mountainous route to Lonavala, where she would again pause for breath, before continuing to Pune. Her royal highness, the Deccan Queen, was one of the most well-loved trains of the Indian Railways, known fondly by her subjects as the ‘Blue-Eyed Babe’. She sashayed onto the scene on 1 June 1930, as a weekend special service that shuttled horse-race fans from Bombay to Poona. However, she was the reserve of the white sahibs and only by 1943, after Indians were allowed on board, was there considerable demand for a daily service. Gradually, the Queen became known as a husbands’ special, carrying commuting men to Bombay and returning them to their families at the weekends. Even today, if her majesty is running late, all other trains are pulled to the side to allow her to pass.

Our encounter with the Blue-Eyed Babe was purely by chance. We had planned to take the overnight Mumbai Express from Hyderabad and arrive in Pune on 13 February but the train was fully booked, so we held back by one day. On the 14
^th
morning, over a breakfast of dosai and coconut chutney, I picked up
The
Times of India
and read the headline:

The Osho ashram, now called a resort, was our only reason for visiting Pune. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, or ‘Osho’ as he later preferred, was a self-styled, controversial spiritual leader, famed first and foremost for his fleet of Rolls Royces and alleged orgy-filled ashrams. He was born into a Jain family but renounced all religion, developing his own methods for meditation and cultivating an enormous following, largely comprising disillusioned westerners. He claimed that his meditational devices, which included chaotic breathing, dancing and whirling, were ‘needed just to clear the rubbish that Christianity has created, and to bring you to a state of naturalness, simplicity ... And from there the only way is witnessing, which is called, by Buddha, Vipassana
’.
Vipassana, which means ‘to see things as they really are’, had long been on my radar after a couple of my friends had undergone the 10-day silent meditation courses and returned in unimaginable states of calm. Why Osho felt that his forms of meditation were prerequisites for Vipassana was, as yet, unclear.

On a passenger train from Trichy to Chennai, I had found myself wedged in next to a lady who had first-hand experience of Osho’s talks from the 1970s. Urmilla wore her hair in a well-oiled plait and smelt of Pond’s Dreamflower powder, the remnants of which greyed the top of her back. She was working her way through a Tupperware box of watermelon chunks, pushing seeds out from between her teeth.

‘All that he taught has been stripped bare now,’ she said, eyeing me as though it were my fault.

‘There’s nothing left of his original intentions. These firangi come here, wear robes for two weeks, then think they’ve discovered something.’ She paused and eased a couple of seeds out of her mouth, ‘all spirituality died with Rajneesh’, she finished, sealing her feelings with a glob of spit that sailed out of the window, its tail trailing like a tiny silver comet.

Despite the many stories of Osho’s luxurious lifestyle, the brainwashing of his sannyasins and their willingness to be manipulated by his wily ways, I could understand his reasoning behind the abandonment of religion, that being handed a belief system at birth removes an inherent desire to find the truth. Rather than adopting a blinkered belief system about Osho, it was only fair to experience his teachings in person, at his Koregaon Park resort in Pune. In truth, I was desperate to see if it really was a screaming hotbed of sex-fuelled lunacy.

After the detour to Mumbai, the three of us boarded train 25 and arrived in Pune exactly one week after the bombing. During her younger years, the Deccan Queen had been decked out in regal splendour. Her first-class restaurant car was finished in silver oak with zebrawood panelling and glass-topped tables. The second-class dining car was panelled in maple with walnut mouldings. Third-class passengers were not allowed on board. As the British disappeared, so did the Queen’s grandeur, and we settled back in the standard chair-car carriage and shivered in the air conditioning. Our fellow passengers were mainly businessmen and office-workers, many of whom have requested the Indian Railways to set up Wi-Fi connectivity and additional mobile and laptop charging points in the dining cars. But despite their gripes, they garland the Queen every 1 June, celebrating her birthday at Pune station without fail. We celebrated our evening journey with the grande dame, with a hot veg-cutlet sandwich and a squirt of chilli ketchup, washed down with a couple of cups of tea.

That night, as our auto wound up Pune’s North Main Road, we passed a row of figures linking hands like paper chain people. Their frames were silhouetted against the glow pulsating from a host of candles. It was the remains of the German Bakery and a vigil was taking place to mark one week since the blast. A white board hung from the awning on an angle, painted with the following:

LET US JOIN THE BATTLE TO SAVE OUR HOME
WE LOVE INDIA
THINK + ACT + LIVE & LET LIVE,
THINK BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE …’

A wonky black and white peace sign had been clipped to the metal barriers that stood shoulder to shoulder, protecting the peace on the pavement from the rage on the road. Four people squatted on the bakery’s blackened floor, arms wrapped around their knees. Log-sized candles brimmed with pools of wax until small tears escaped and rolled down their sides as they sank slowly to the floor in mourning. Magenta orchids wilted quietly in a corner, mixed bouquets lay among the wax puddles, and a lily gazed at the photos of a Sudanese student and a photo of a dark-eyed beauty, scrawled with
Rest In Peace, Nadia, My Darling
. Nadia Macerini, a 37-year-old member of the ashram, had been caught in the bombing.

From the latest reports, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) or ‘Army of the Pure’ was suspected to be behind the attack, the same terrorist cell considered responsible for the indiscriminate killings at the Red Fort in 2000 and the Mumbai train attacks in 2006. It was almost 9:30pm and for a moment I considered a world without religion. These crumbled walls would still be standing. The dangling wires would be lighting up the room of Saturday night revellers, while the Sudanese student and Nadia Macerini would be laughing with their friends instead of gazing out from curling photographs. But perhaps it was not religion, but what people did with it that hurt.

At the hotel, Ed and I sat on our bed scrolling through Osho’s website while Passepartout washed his T-shirts in a bucket in the bathroom. Ed grinned. ‘Is this place gang-bang central or something?’

‘Who knows. I’ve read all sorts of stuff about it, but I guess we can only really know by going there.’

Passepartout walked past and pulled a face as he hung up his laundry. ‘I could save you time and money just by looking at that website.’

Ed rolled his eyes.

‘That’s what we call wiki-journalism,’ I replied without looking up. ‘Oh, look they have a video showing their whirling meditation.’

‘You know me doll, I’ll give anything a whirl,’ Ed cackled.

Passepartout snorted then picked up his cigarettes and walked out, slamming the door.

Ed glanced at the door. ‘Babe, how do you put up with that?’

I shrugged. ‘You get used to it. And besides when he’s not on his high horse he’s actually taken good care of me.’

‘Do you know why he’s like that?’

‘He grew up in a happy-clappy Christian household in a little town in Norway where he and his siblings weren’t allowed to read anything other than the Bible or go to the cinema.’

‘Unhappy-clappy, more like.’

‘It sounded quite stifling and I think he just had an epiphany one day that it didn’t work for him anymore.’