Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (25 page)

"I'm a Punjabi, I could live here easily," he said. "But my wife was born in England. She'd find it hard to adjust in a village."

"What would it be like for her?"

"Maybe too quiet. But I tell you, village life is good. Plenty of food, cost of living is low, no stress. I don't need nightclubs. I'd like it." He seemed a bit rueful that he was heading back to England. "This India is different from the India I left. Some people are coming back."

"Building houses?"

"Plenty. Big villas. Not many in Amritsar, because it's a border town. No one wants to risk living so close to Pakistan. But Ludhiana is quiet and safe. Jullundur, too. There, you see?"

We were passing a cluster of houses in a walled compound.

Kumar said, "We have two growing seasons. You see all this wheat?" I did, it was unmissable, green and gorgeous, silky in the sunshine. "This will be harvested in a few weeks. Then the rice will be planted, and the rains will come and fill the paddy fields."

"This whole place is connected, too," Kuldeep said. "Those farmers look like rustics and hicks, but they all have cell phones. Hardly anyone uses a land line."

"What do they worry about?" I asked.

"They worry about democracy, as I do," he said. "The scheduled classes, for example."

By scheduled classes he meant the lowest castes in India—the Dalits, the so-called Untouchables, whom Mahatma Gandhi called Harijans, Children of God. What Kuldeep was questioning was a system that had its American parallel not only in affirmative action programs for minorities, but also in the stubborn resistance by the rest of the populace to the preferential fast track.

"They are now better-off than we are. They have so many advantages. These advantages were written into the law, to lift them up, and these laws have never been taken off the books. It's becoming a problem."

"How many people are we talking about?"

"A big group—maybe thirty percent of the population."

"What else worries you?"

"The north-south divide—lots of friction. The Punjab and Haryana are feeding the whole country," Kuldeep said. "So much of the country's water comes from here. And what are we getting for it?"

Interesting, this man from Ilford, Essex, growing passionate and indignant about resources in the Punjab. He did not live here, but this was where his heart was.

"The pity of India is the bad roads—bad for so many reasons. We are not keeping pace with other countries with respect to roads. Corruption, mismanagement. It can take hours for a simple journey. Everything else is going ahead, but not road building."

Kumar said, "And there's the population. Look at this."

The railway car was full—more than full: all the seats were taken, many people were standing, luggage was piled to the ceiling, and every time we rounded a sharp bend or stopped suddenly, passengers toppled and fell. The platforms of passing stations were jammed. People hung out the windows. People jostled, and there may have been passengers on the roof—it was a common occurrence. Everyone was civil, but there was no escape from the mob.

And for all the talk of modernity, the train was in tough shape—very dirty, broken seats, filthy toilets, loose wires tangled in the passageways, chipped paint, and the usual stinks.

Yet, amid the chaos and the crowds, life went on, the conductors punching tickets, passengers making phone calls, food sellers squeezing from car to car, calling out, "Cutlet! Cutlet!" or "Ess krim! Ess krim!" or
"Jews! Mungo jews!" or "Chicken rice!" or "Pani! Vutta! Pani! Vutta! Buttle vutta."

"What's your biggest worry?"

"The division between rich and poor is growing," Kuldeep said. "It's huge at the moment and it's getting worse. Many people have everything, but also many people have nothing. How to fix?"

To change the subject, he said he was looking forward to the England-India cricket match in Delhi. "It's tomorrow. You should go."

"Maybe I will," I said. "Who should I be watching?"

"The bowler, Harbhajan Singh. They call him Bhaji—he's great."

That was when I was certain Kuldeep was a Sikh. He had no beard, no turban, no steel bracelet. He had been Anglicized, but still he rooted for India, still was loyal to his race and religion: he mentioned the only Sikh player on the team.

Stretching my legs on the platform between coaches, taking the air, I struck up a conversation with Mohinder Singh. He was a businessman, living in Ludhiana, but on his way to Delhi. I mentioned that I had just come from Uzbekistan.

"We sell lots of woolen goods from Ludhiana to the Stans—Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan," he said. "Pullovers, scarves, mittens. They buy from us. We export everywhere. Bike parts. Ludhiana was in the
Guinness Book of Records
as one of the largest makers of bikes. Because of the successful bike industry, the motorcycle company Hero Honda located here."

Jullundur was also a big maker and exporter of sports equipment. Soccer balls, cricket bats, cricket balls, hockey sticks. For religious reasons, many Hindus will not make anything involving leather, which they deem unclean. Sikhs, with no such sanction, have cornered the market.

He said, "Lots of agricultural land is being converted into housing colonies. There's a big housing boom in the Punjab. Not just locals but nonresident Indians from Canada and the U.K. investing in real estate. Small farmers sell up their land and use the money to send a son to the U.K. or Canada, to emigrate and make a go of it. Hoping he will succeed and send money back."

He asked me if I had been in India before. I told him that I had last been in Punjab thirty-three years ago.

He asked, "What do you think is the biggest difference?"

I said, "What you're doing now. Talking about progress and praising India's economy. Confidence and self-esteem. I never heard that before."

He agreed, saying, "And phones. When we lived in Simla, my father was a paramilitary. Twenty years ago it was almost impossible to have a telephone. I remember the day we were notified that we could have a telephone. We rejoiced!"

"How long had you waited?"

"Two years!" he said. "Now it isn't a mark of status. Even rickshaw wallahs have mobile phones."

We were watching the Punjab go past from the breezy passageway of the express train. With its fields of wheat, the women in shawls and the men in turbans, bicycles on the dusty roads, the countryside was unchanged from what I had seen all those years before. But Mohinder Singh's confident mood and the good humor of Kuldeep and Kumar were something new. My memory of India was of people looking to the past. What struck me now was meeting Indians who looked to the future.

I said, "What do you think is India's problem?"

Mohinder Singh said, "Crux of India's problem is overpopulation. As soon as we build any kind of infrastructure it becomes inadequate because of," he shrugged, "we have too many people."

***

BUT AFTER ALL THE TALK
in the Shan-e-Punjab (Glory of the Punjab) Express of the success of India, the wealth of Punjab, the national renewal, all the optimists got off the train in the darkness at New Delhi Station to find the old India stubbornly clinging to life. A thousand passengers disembarked, burdened by bags, suitcases, sacks, children, old grannies, and jerry cans of ghee, to find thousands more waiting for onward trains under the glaring lights—brighter in India than anywhere else I've been, the dazzling light that prevents you from seeing things.

The permanent residents of the station lay stretched out under sheets and blankets. Mark Twain, who saw such crowds of travelers and squatters, includes a satirical two-page description of a big-city railway station in India in
Following the Equator
(1897). And then he loses his jollity; he is baffled and disturbed by the squatters: "These silent crowds sat there with their humble bundles and baskets and small household gear
about them, and patiently waited—for what?" The squatters were still there, still waiting, the scene unchanged, Twain's words as true now as they had been a century ago. The people were sleeping, hundreds of them, completely covered, big and small, some like corpses in body bags, some like campers, some like mummies; lying in family groups under the lights at the Ajmeri Gate side of the station.

All the optimists from Punjab who got off the train with me walked past these hordes of homeless sleepers, beggars, squatters. The distressing scene, another fact of Indian life, was so obvious no one mentioned it, or even glanced at it.

In this dry season the Delhi air was a settled cloud of dust, of smoke, of car fumes, a fog of eye-stinging grit, and most of all a sweetish stink of too many people, the emanation of their outdoor habits that clots your nostrils. It is not a city smell but a suggestion of deforestation and desert and pulverized brick and wood-fueled cooking fires, the odor of humanity, which is also an odor of death. Even in the pitch-darkness of one of the frequent Delhi power cuts, you would know you were in an overpopulated place that existed in a crisis of old-fangledness.

I stayed in the Delhi hotel where I'd stayed before. It was now luxurious. In a mood of self-pitying nostalgia I remembered how, long ago, I had tried to phone my wife in London from here and had met only frustration—her faint and evasive voice, not much warmth, and then a rising tide of static. "Speak louder," the hotel operator said over a sound like crashing surf on the line. Phoning was no problem these days. As the man had said, "Even rickshaw wallahs have mobile phones." From my window I could see that the dust cloud of the night had resolved itself into a grainy fog that hovered over the great horizontal city—no skyscrapers but many tombs, domes, monuments, mosques, temples, riverside forts, ancient walls, and obelisks, wreathed in the vapor that had a human smell.

I got a box and filled it with my coat and gloves, my fleece vest, the icons I'd bought, and my maps of Georgia and Turkmenistan. I sent the stuff home, unburdening myself. Changing trains, I had found summertime; no more cold weather until Japan. With a lighter bag, just a change of clothes in it, and my small briefcase of papers, I was eager to move on.

Looking for onward train tickets, I went back to New Delhi Station and found the international booking hall. In the past, as in Amritsar, I had paid an Indian to stand in line for me. But this was well organized—
not much of a line, and I could pay in dollars. A proportion of railway seats were now set aside for foreigners, as a way of stimulating tourism, which in India is relatively small. The state of Hawaii has more than twice as many visitors (seven million) as the whole of India.

Seeing my application, Mr. Sharma said, "You're the writer."

"That's me. Back again after many years."

Leaping to his feet, he said, "How can I offer you service?"

"Just looking for trains."

I showed him an itinerary that would take me through old India, new India, poor India, India of the miracles, India of the maharajahs, India of
The Great Railway Bazaar:
Delhi-Jodhpur-Jaipur-Bombay-Bangalore-Madras-Rameswaram, from north to south.

"Please meet Mrs. Matta, my boss."

Mrs. Matta was a middle-aged woman in a blue sari. She sat at a desk in a back office that was furnished in the Indian manner: a full Pending tray, a cup of tea, photographs of smiling children and a framed one of the prime minister, a wall map of India showing all railway lines, and a shrine to the elephant-headed god, Ganesh, with a flickering vigil light in a yellow dish.

"Famous writer," Mr. Sharma said. "Back again."

Mrs. Matta offered me a cup of tea and the visitors' book, saying, "Please add your name. Write comments. Mention your satisfaction, if you please."

I wrote,
India works because the railway works.

I had believed that on my first visit; I still believed it. Because of the vast network of Indian Railways, I could go anywhere in the country. I could sleep on the train in comfort; I could eat on it, read a book, write my notes; I could talk with anyone. There are buses in India, there are taxis and limos. But as Kuldeep had told me on the train,
The pity of India is the bad roads ... It can take hours for a simple journey.
There were many new airlines, but delays were a certainty, security checks were awful, and the airports were like garrisons, full of soldiers and impatient passengers, overcrowded and understaffed. Because they were an institution, Indian railway stations were well organized and efficient. And in India the train was the only way of being sure of leaving on time and arriving safely. The trains are slow, some people say, but in India being in a hurry is foolish and deluded—and often bad manners.

With a handshake from Mr. Sharma and an approving head-wobble
from Mrs. Matta, I left the booking hall with all my tickets, chits, vouchers, and supplementary fare receipts. The clutter and dusty pillars and uncomfortable chairs in an Indian office are no indication of its effectiveness. Out of the chaos of receipt books, carbon paper, flickering computers, and fat files tied with faded ribbon arises decisiveness and clear results, even if you can't read the writing and your fingers are smudged with ink from handling them.

I marveled at what I was able to accomplish in a morning in Delhi: the train tickets I needed, the very notebook I was looking for, some medicine for my gout (no prescription required in India for indomethacin), and the hottest ticket to be had, a seat at the England-India test match.

***

I HAD MANAGED SEVENTEEN
years of exile in England because I had not been an Anglophile—Anglophiles don't last long in England, and my detachment had kept me from being a cricket fan. I do not know the rules of the game, much less the subtleties, yet bowling, batting, and fielding are easy-to-appreciate skills, pleasurable to watch. Most of all I wanted to go to this cricket match because it was the event of the week and because I wanted to see fifty thousand Indians in one place.

I was glad I went. Cricket matches in England are famously sedate, characterized by limp hand-clapping, a yelp or two, the crack of the bat, the thump of the ball on the pitch, and now and then the bone-breaking sound of the collapsing wicket. But that was a world away from the pandemonium at Ferozeshah Kotla cricket ground in north Delhi—howling spectators, Indian flags, loud whistles, horns, flutes, trumpets, chanting. The Indian cricket crowd (so I learned) is noted for its barracking—hooting at errors, screaming at questionable calls, and the occasional display of racial insensitivity, shouting "Monkey! Monkey!" (
Bandar! Bandar!
) at black players on the British or West Indian teams.