A sentimental journey on the night train to Goa
Rahul is waiting for us at the entrance to Dadar station. Inside, the cement floor is surprisingly clean for the number of people waiting, sitting on benches, lying on the floor, sleeping or eating, women with children in their arms and hands. A man balancing two heavy suitcases on his head dodges those coming his way, others drag the suitcases behind them. Through the overpass we reach our line. More people wait near the dark precipice of the rails. Beyond the abyss lie the blue coaches of another train, with the windows closed by bars. We don’t have to wait long for our train to arrive. Distracted by Rahul, we didn’t check where our coach was going to stop on the very long platform. We see the one with our number gliding past us, followed by many others, we have to run to reach it before the train departs.
On long journeys, the inside of the coaches is always the same, each compartment has six beds stacked vertically, three on each side, and the one in the middle is folded during the day to allow us to sit on the bottom one. No doors separate each compartment from the hallway, and on the other side are two more beds running perpendicularly. Rahul’s is in one of those. The train is almost empty and he takes up the entire seat, lying on his side, elbow on the seat and the hand holding his head.
“What do you think of my Vishnu pose?”
“Rahul…” says Sara, in a tone reminiscent of Sadhna’s. He laughs, and since there’s space, moves next to us to talk about his romantic issues.
In Amsterdam Sara became Rahul’s confidant. His time in Europe was coming to an end, and his mother was putting pressure on him to get married, which meant she wanted to arrange him a bride. He tried to solve the problem himself before returning home, he even proposed to a Korean friend we also knew well, an offer made without flirtation, as a convenience agreement. Rahul had a lot of female friends in Amsterdam, but the next step was more difficult… One of his biggest surprises in Amsterdam was to see how Indian students came together, crossing the religious, linguistic, caste, and partly even gender barriers that always bound their relations in India. In Europe, shared cultural references made them closer rather than distant and, why not, so did the dark skin tones in contrast to the tall pallor of the Dutch. Women were a recurrent subject among Rahul and his Indian friends living in Amsterdam, they didn’t know how to approach them without a marriage proposal, weren’t equipped to seduce them. On the train he cannot speak so openly, anyone can hear us and these issues may easily raise a controversy with more conservative people. He just tells us that his mother and aunts gave him an ultimatum and began to make a selection of possible wives. What terrifies him the most is ending up with a peasant who has never left her village, who doesn’t know a thing about anything.
“What about Sadhna?” asks Sara. “Her parents also pressure her to get married? She must be a great catch!”
“They mentioned it” says Rahul. “But she doesn’t want to hear about it until she finishes her PhD.”
It’s hard to know what Sadhna actually thinks, perhaps she’s not amused that they want to take control of her life. Sadhna is more reserved than Rahul, sober and modest as befits an educated brahmin. However, she’s not confined to this conventionality, she plays her role in a relaxed way, so relaxed that it seems to be drenched in lethargy, if not boredom or sarcasm. I imagine her arriving in Amsterdam, much more insecure and with an unyielding desire to keep the precepts brought from home unviolated, in a new world, smaller than Mumbai and infinitely more permeable. In four years all this had dissolved, there was an entire world beyond India and it wasn’t just in books, she had experienced it. Despite everything, her experience was much more restrained than Rahul’s. Rahul was one person in Europe and a different person in India, she kept being the same, evolving without splitting, and she would not be ashamed if her parents caught her by surprise in the streets of Amsterdam. I’ve never seen her drink or smoke, she wouldn’t even vaguely talk about her love interests, not with Sara and much less with me. Her friendships with men were scarce and always modest. Even with Rahul, whom she has known for many years, it would be uncomfortable to meet him alone for reasons other than work.
For Sadhna, Rahul didn’t feel any romantic attraction, it was the fear of the unknown that also led him to consider her for marriage. Sadhna was under the same pressure and they got along well, their friendship had grown deeper during the years away. But if he had actually proposed, would he have had any chance of being accepted by her or her family? With no obvious traces of arrogance, Sadhna and her family display a certain bearing, a sense of position and decorum that are much more pronounced than what we see in Rahul. Might it be just a difference in personality? Can personality even be separated from the socially ingrained caste consciousness? Reversing the castes, if he was the brahmin would Rahul have reached down to touch tSadhna’s father’s feet? I don’t know… The reality of castes is not immediately obvious to us, who don’t know how to decipher the language, the codes and the signs. In Mumbai, perhaps more than anywhere else, luxury and misery often overlap in the same street, and at first glance the stratification doesn’t seem to be different from that resulting between the poor and the rich elsewhere. However, there seem to be many other layers.
The train picked up more passengers on the way, Rahul has to give up his place beside us to his rightful owner. However, his seat was meanwhile taken by an older man, who now refuses to leave. Rahul laughs nervously while talking to him.
“No, he doesn’t come out” says Rahul, turning to us. “He says I’m young and he’s old, he has to sit down.”
“Tell him to go to his place” I say.
“He has no place. It’s one of the advantages of the AC coaches, they don’t let anyone in without a ticket.”
“Maybe he’ll leave if WE ask him.” I say, ready to make a scene, call the conductor if needed.
Rahul clings to the bunk’s iron steps. “Don’t worry, give him time. Many trains are fully booked a long time before the departure, if you really need to go somewhere you have to board and when the conductor comes you bribe him to let you stay. I’ve done it many times. Let him sit for a while and maybe he’ll go away. If not, I’ll put cardboards on the floor and lie down between the beds.”
Perpetual Motion is a serial novel. Go to the Table of Contents to read previous posts.
Next: Naked bodies and naked truths, on the beach of Arambol, Goa.
