Boys without Names (3 page)

W
e have second-class tickets, the cheapest fare. Aai boards the train first, then Naren, Sita, and I. Once I get in, Baba hands me the luggage, piece by piece. He is the last one to get in. We turn into the corridor that goes through the entire car and is lined with windows. On the other side of the corridor are compartments. Each one of them is fitted with long wooden benches that face each other with windows at the end.

The first two compartments are full. Baba goes to the third one and we follow him. While he slides our luggage under the bench Aai cushions the seat with the tattered rug from home and instantly it becomes our space. She sits in the middle with Naren and Sita on either side. Baba sits on the other side of Naren by the window, and I on the other side of Sita. I am on the aisle and the corridor separates me from the window on my right.

I like the way Aai, Baba, and I protect Naren and Sita, but sometimes I envy the twins. As long as they are near I never get to sit by Aai and whisper to her. Even when Aai is not there, the two of them are always together like a pair of
gorus-chinch
seeds nestled in the same pod. I know I'll miss my friends and I feel guilty about not saying good-bye to them, but the twins have no such worries. First, because they don't understand that we're leaving our village and may not return, and second, because they are each other's best friend and will always be together.

People pour in. The bench across from us gets filled up with three men and two women. One of the men is large and takes up more room than Baba and Naren combined.

Even with the furiously whirling fan above, sweat trickles down my back. I get up and try to open the window across the aisle, but it seems to be stuck. It needs more force. I take a deep breath and apply all my strength and still can't move it an inch. At the moment I turn around to sit down, someone skinny with thick, black hair plops down on my seat. Aai opens her mouth to say something, but it happens so fast that her words never come out.

“I was sitting here,” I tell him.

“Were you?” he asks.

“Yes. I just got up to open the window.”

“You get up, I sit down.”

Baba leans over and shows the man our tickets. “These are our seats.”

“Good man, there is nothing like ‘your seat' or ‘my seat.' We're all travelers and sit where we find a place, and when our station comes, we move along. You're not taking this seat anywhere and neither am I.”

“True, but my son was sitting there.”

“
Was
is not the same as
is
, is it? Haven't you heard about the law, ‘the land belongs to the one who farms it'? There should be another law: ‘the seat belongs to the one who occupies it.'”

“That's not—I mean, you can't just take my seat. It's not right,” I say.

The man laughs. His teeth are even and clean. “Right or wrong, I don't know. It doesn't matter. I take this train every week and always find a seat. But I don't claim it as my own. Do what you want to do, you won't be able to move me from here.” He shrugs and looks straight ahead as if I don't exist.

“Bhai,”
Aai says tenderly. “We are fellow travelers and space is scarce. We don't mind sharing. We will move a bit and you move a little too, and make room for my son.”

As soon as Aai calls him
bhai
, brother, the man's expression changes from smug, smirky, and superior to soft, sheepish, and sorry. He wiggles and draws his legs together. Baba, Aai, and the twins all do the same, so there is enough room for me to squeeze in. I'm not as comfortable as I was before the man took half of my space, but it is better than standing the entire trip.

The man slides his bag underneath the seat. “Do
you want me to open the window?” he asks me after he straightens up.

“Sure.”

When he gets up I think about scooting over to claim the space back. Aai smiles. “Don't,” she whispers.

He turns the knob away and pushes the window open. “It was locked,” he says as he sits back down. “Did you see how I unlocked it?”

I wonder why he is giving me lessons in window opening. He doesn't sound arrogant, though. “Yes,” I reply.

The train starts, and as it picks up speed, the breeze filters in. I don't feel so suffocated and sweaty anymore. Naren and Sita fall asleep, resting their heads on Aai. Two of the men across from us have dozed off and one of them snores loudly. The women whisper in a language I don't understand.

Outside, trees, huts, and people zip by. For a while, it is fun to watch. I should have kept my notebook out to write, but I am so cramped that it would be difficult. Even if I did, the man next to me would be able to read every word. That is something I don't want.

The man takes out a pack of cards with a blue cloud pattern and asks me if I want to play. I do, but I am ashamed that I don't know how to play real cards. I have never had a complete deck, so Mohan, Shiva, and I used to combine our decks and make up our own games. Sometimes we had two kings of hearts and no queen, and other times we had only one nine. It was fun, because each time
our decks changed, our rules changed. But I don't know any proper games.

“Watch this,” he says, getting a clipboard out of his bag, “I am going to play solitaire.”

He lines up seven cards facedown on the clipboard resting on his lap. He lays one card faceup on the first one and the rest of them facedown. There is a pattern to his arranging, because he puts a faceup card on the second one and the rest of the five facedown. When he is done setting up his game, he still has cards left in his hands and checks them against the open cards. He lines up king, queen, jack, and so on, red on black and black on red. I find it very interesting.

“Did you get it?” he asks.

“A little.”

He stops, looks up, and asks, “What's your name?”

“Gopal.”

I name him Card-Man. He teaches me the game and I like him, but I remember Baba's warning. “Be careful in the city and don't let anyone know our names, where we come from or where we're going. I don't want strangers to find out that we're new in the city.”

Somehow, I think Card-Man knows we're going to Mumbai for the first time without our telling him. He hands me the deck and glides the clipboard toward me. “Now you play.”

The cards are monsoon-grass smooth and slide off my hands. I play one game of solitaire. Then I gather up the
cards. Card-Man is looking out the window with a steady gaze. It reminds me of how Naren becomes still before he falls asleep. When I hand him back the cards and the clipboard he slips the cards in his pocket, the clipboard in his luggage, and closes his eyes.

I must have also fallen asleep because I wake up just as the train slows down and comes to the stop called Kalyan.

The noise on the platform is like a million buzzing bees punctuated by whistling birds and barking wild dogs. Naren and Sita are awake and hungry. Aai opens the aluminum container of
roti
spread with the last of the pickles. First, she offers them to Card-Man.

He takes one
roti
and bows to Aai. We each take one too. The shouts of vendors are loud. A boy younger than I pokes his head through the window and asks,
“Ek chai?”
to the Card-Man. They seem to know each other.

“Six.”

The boy looks puzzled.

The Card-Man points at us. “For my family.”

I look at Baba and Aai in horror. We probably don't have money and even if we did, we wouldn't want to waste it on tea. But as quick as he sat down on my seat, the man pays the boy and begins passing the tea glasses to us.

“We're grateful for the
chai
,” Baba says.

“And I am grateful for the
roti
. You can get tea anyplace but not such delicious homemade sweet
bajra roti
and pickles.”

The tea is steaming hot and I sip slowly. I haven't even finished half of it when the train whistles. The twins are still blowing on their tea to cool it. I panic. “How are we going to give the boy the glasses back?”

Card-Man puts his hand on my shoulder. “Enjoy it and don't worry about the glasses. He will collect them later.”

“Does he travel on the train?”

“Not officially.”

The train goes forward before it stops again. I'm puzzled and so are the twins. “Why isn't the train moving, Baba?” Naren asks.

“I'm not sure.”

“We have a red signal. Until it changes, we can't move,” Card-Man explains.

“When will that happen?” Naren asks.

“As soon as you finish your tea.”

“How will they know I've finished it?”

Card-Man laughs. “Just enjoy it.”

The reddish-brown tea, the color of our moist farm soil, is strong and sweet. I feel so refreshed after drinking it that I wonder if I will be able to fall asleep again. Finally, the boy who sold us the tea comes around and we hand him our glasses. He collects them in a carrier that holds many glasses. I get up and stand in the corridor to watch him. Since there is no platform, he puts his two carriers on the floor of the car and jumps to the ground. Then he picks up the metal carriers. Someone
closes the door behind him.

I wonder if the boy goes to school or if this is all he does. If his family is very poor, then he must work to help his family. Maybe he just works in the morning before school starts. This thought makes me feel better.

The boy waits between the two sets of tracks. A few minutes later, I hear a rumble. The boy's hair flutters in the wind. A fast train whizzes by. Its massive wheels could grind anything that came in its path. A chill passes through me. This boy must do this every day and very carefully or else.

“Or else” is too scary to think about.

After the fast train passes, ours gets going. “We have a green signal,” Sita cries.

“You're a smart girl,” Card-Man says.

The
chai
boy is still waiting between our train and the next set of tracks. I take my seat. “Why is he not going back?” I ask Card-Man since he seems to have all the answers.

“He is waiting for the slow train that comes from the opposite direction. It will stop like ours and he will get on. Then he will go to his tea stall to refill his carriers with fresh glasses of
chai
for the next train.”

“He owns a tea stall?” I ask.

“No. He works for someone.”

I just hope he doesn't have to do this all day long, every day.

 

Baba dozes off. Naren and Sita want Aai to tell them a story, so she does. “Once in a forest, there lived a timid rabbit. She was afraid of getting lost, so she stayed close to her home by a banyan tree. One day a storm swept through the jungle. The wind hissed and howled. The trees swayed. Their trunks and branches cracked and whipped. Then something fell smack on top of the rabbit's head. It startled her.
‘Oui maa!'
she exclaimed. ‘A part of the sky must have fallen on my head.'”

“But it hadn't. Silly rabbit,” Naren says.

“Don't talk in the middle,” Sita says, “or else I'll seal your lips with
nimba
gum.”

“Where're you—”

The big man sleeping across from us opens his eyes and gives the twin a stern look. They both fall quiet. Aai continues. “Just then a twig above her snapped. ‘The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Run, run, run,' the rabbit said, scampering as fast as her little legs could take her.”

Aai used to tell me stories while I helped on the farm, and it made the weeding and harvesting go faster.

I have heard this story many times over, and my mind wanders off.

Outside, the land flies by. We are far away from our village and our neighbors. Mohan and Shiva must have left for school. If they don't see me at school they might come by on their way back to see me. How will they feel when they find out we have left? They won't know where we have gone for sure, but it wouldn't be hard for them
to guess, since Jama lives in Mumbai. Where else would we go? I wonder if they might be a little jealous like I was when Mohan visited Mumbai with his older brother.

Maybe they would be mad at me. When Shiva's father died he was so angry he wrote
Baba
in the dirt and spit on it several times. Then he cried like a baby. I don't want to make my friends sad and upset. I wish I could have written them a note explaining why we had to leave. Then they would have understood. But I didn't do that and now if they are angry with me, they might write my name and spit on it, too.

I just hope Baba and Aai find good, steady work in Mumbai so I won't have to worry about anything except my studies. Maybe Baba will find a job like Jama and will have money to buy new clothes for all of us and I can get books to read. I won't have a
nimba
tree by the pond, but the books will help me do the same—get away from everyone. Maybe we might go see a movie and meet a film star. What would I say if I met Shahrukh Khan?

As the train slows down, so do my thoughts. The next station is Thane. Card-Man hands the deck of cards to me. “They're yours,” he says.

“But…”

“No problem,” he says. “Keep them and play with your brother and sister. And if they don't want to, you can always play solitaire like I taught you.” He winks at me.

“Are—are you…” I am so shocked that I don't know what to say. This stranger has taught me a game and now
is giving me his deck of cards. “Thank you,” I mumble.

I slip the cards in the cloth bag on top of my notebook after Baba takes out our luggage from under the bench. Aai wakes up the twins just as we pull into the platform. As soon as they get up I fold the rug and hand it to Baba. Quickly, he stuffs it in one of the bags.

“Chala, chala,”
Baba says as he rushes toward the door carrying the jute sacks.