Indefinately Delayed

Sitting on the train. A formidable eleven hours delay. A wait which carried me through the afternoon and into the night. A platform divided into 'classes'. A empty room full of chairs and a scattering of well dressed men. A full room empty of chairs but full of a patchwork of blankets as families mark their temporary territory and lay in wait. Information seems to be sacred and not for either classes. A woman with a spick and span English accent reads out the following:

“Your kind attention please! Train number 4005, the Lichchavi Express is indefinitely delayed. It will arrive sometime later.”

A dozen trains appear to be late, as the lady over the loud speaker never seems to have a moments rest. I pull my shawl around me, and feel a little less visible and a little less female.

A mini army march into the waiting room. A line of olive uniforms, stern looks and wooden sticks clenched tightly in each hand. It appears that the local entertainment for the Indian army on a Sunday night is to harass travellers. Those seated in the metal chairs of 'executive class' did better than those kicked from the floor in the adjacent waiting room.

A group of Tibetan nuns asked me when our train was arriving. They didn't understand Hindi or the spick and span English accent of the speaker woman. I told then, 'Later'.

Every hour I would move along the platform, feeling eyes all over me, but safe under my shawl and holding my height as my only defence from the hundreds of young bored men. I reminded myself that curiosity is harmless, and the energy I feel directed towards me is most probably an apparition of my paranoid mind. However, it does become tiring to feel constantly watched. I queued for a glass of sweet milky chai and bought another shiny packet of glucose cookies to nibble on. An old women with bones for legs and shawls for flesh lay bundled up at the edge of the platform. I tried to decide if they were beggars or passengers but unable to decide if my offers of cookies would cause offence or relieve hunger I ended up sharing them with the Tibetan nuns.

It amazes me that for a country so in love with curiosity that more people don't demand to know why they are being made to wait hour after hour, for what ultimately results in either the trains cancellation, or a night sleeping on the platform floor only to be woken by the sticks and boots of the Indian Army? I reason that for many people a journey on a train is not a daily occurrence. These travellers are not commuters, and if they are it is usually a one way or a seasonal ticket. For most of the people their journey on a train is an expensive affair – even in the cheapest seats the ticket may cost the equivalent of a weeks work, or if the family are subsistence farmers, then the 'price' of money is even higher. The distances to be covered are not a few hours, but hundreds of kilometers as the trains crawl across the entire countryside and the entire country. Filled with over a thousand people, carrying entire families, and many lone men.

The lowest tier of the 'highest' class. It is quiete. It has a plug for my lap top and sheets for my bed. There are 36 such beds in this class; out of over 1000 places on this train. I am travelling from Varanasi to Delhi - 780 km, and this ticket cost me 700 rupees. I feel in a parallel luxury world. The one which the thousands of Indian millionaires must frequent as they share this country with the millions of destitute.

I am staring out of the window, across patchwork fields dotted with palms and bodhi trees. I watch as boys appear from now where, holding hands as they walk along the train tracks. I watch as the green landscape seems to stretch into the horizon, without sign of a house or hut. I have now been on the train for sixteen hours. I have watched in envy as men jump off at the station to refill water bottles and to buy bags of samosas, while running along the platform as the train decides it is time to move on. I can tell we are approaching the capital as the chai wallahs have started staying on the train between the stops. In front of me sits my empty water bottle and four empty plastic chai cups. A day of watching, reading, thinking and waiting. I wait to appear in New Delhi, back in the chaos, smell and dirt of 'civilisation' and wonder what a different country this would be if it were not for cities?