An Indian departure

I sat on the space between two chairs and spooned bits of a sweet fried dough ball into my mouth between sips of very dense tea. Around me plates clattered, cows tails swished, children leaned against a wall and cracked green chickpeas into their mouths. Another dusty rural Indian afternoon.

The bus stopped and the sun beat down. We said our goodbyes as someone threw our luggage into a hole in the back. There was no mistaking the rickety mother of all tin cans, complete with dingy upholstery, a slightly tilted wall clock, and Indian pop soundtrack for the super deluxe two by two which we had been waiting for. We took our seats near the front, amid the coming and going of legions of other passengers, and enjoyed the open window as the bus rattled and threw dust all the way back through the Indian jungle towards the nearest town with a train station, Riagarh. 

By the time we had arrived there it was dark, and my friend had turned my lap into a compost pile for all the peanut shells and banana peels she had attempted to throw out the window. Our train was scheduled for eight pm. With our suitcases miraculously stuffed in a tiny motored vehicle, we were just in time.

Just in time to drag ourselves through a smaller version of the Kolkata refugee camp and glance at the much abused whiteboard listing train times. Our super fast express was fifteen hours late. So we wheeled our suitcases to the nearest hotel without even flinching at the thought of a night spent in a real bed of sorts. Delightfully Indian, our room came complete with an electric mosquito repellent (used immediately), plastic bathroom stool (should you choose to sit under the faucet to take your cold shower), and no top sheet. Get away from me you nasty blanket were the last words I heard from my friend as I drifted into a dusty sleep. 

We awoke to the depressing news from the train station whiteboard. A fifteen hour delay turned to eighteen, and would change to become later with each passing hour. I begged my friend to stop checking it. After a breakfast of samosas eaten hot and greasy off of the mornings newspaper and a walk to the bustling tea shop next door for a quick burst of sugar the windowless hotel room did nothing to ease my mounting regret at the time lost. So we decided to take in the city.

Oh Raigarh. You forgotten city lost in the bowels of India. Is there another place that can compare to you in terms of dust? Are the cows which grace your heaps of garbage in the middle of the street part of the permanent decor? Do your citizens enjoy the slickness of beetlenut spit stains on their bare, broken feet? Did your buildings wilt from the combination of heat and time or where they so depressed to begin with? When did car exhaust become your perfume of choice? Oh Raigarh, perhaps your pride lies only in the occasional monkey sighting and extremely delicious lassi... if so, well done.

I bought a cell phone battery from a man whose features I cannot remember at all.

We made our way back to the hotel in no hurry whatsoever as the hours passed by and our train remained absent. I selfishly mourned the loss of time that I could have spent in Kolkata, that city of dreams and nightmares where the curious wrestles with the ridiculous in a pit of filth so fascinating that no western mind can fully absorb it, and in so doing became aware of my own avoidance of my Father's heartbeat for Raigarh.

Sitting on a forlorn bench as flies crashed into my face and took up residency on my legs, watching the leeringly deserted tracks at the Raigarh train station I sensed a pulse so deep and aching that it could only have come from the Creator of the people of this small place. Despite the fact that I took inordinate relief from angrily throwing peanut shells onto the floor, and nearly went completely silly when my friend began to sing in Hindi accented English I've been waiting on the superfast express, all the live long day... I feel certain that our train was twenty one hours late because my Father wanted to share that heartbeat with me. I failed miserably to understand it, but I received it anyway.

I was in no mood to board the train, which I wanted to kick, by the time it arrived... but board it we did.

The night was long made longer by the fact that no trains were allowed to travel that area at night and we sat on the tracks for six hours in the bleary midnight darkness. I took up pacing the car. The slow rhythm of the wheels on the tracks seemed to be mocking me and got slower as we neared our destination. I was immensely grateful for the tea and samosa wallahs who hopped on from station to station to hawk their wares to the nearly empty train car where we sat.

As we neared Kolkata train station I stared out the windows at other trains pushing past us filled to the brim with every imaginable aspect of humanity squished on tired wooden seats and leaning out the doorless metal openings. The train station was again a blur of people and packages and pain and potential as we dragged our patience thin bodies to the prepaid taxi line. A man took our bags and loaded them demanding a tip afterwards. My friend drank from a rouge water bottle we didn't know. The taxi wandered dangerously through the ceaseless traffic. The air was so thick it was chewable.

Arrival at the house of friends who had picked me up at the airport and taken me to the train station nine days earlier was a little like waking up in the garden of Eden, had it been populated with hilarious Hindi English accents and fussy family members. To my delight, we were forced to taste everything edible in the house. I learned to make something delicious out of red carrots stewed in milk. We bought some Indian mixtures at a disastrously organized shop across the street. Between food tastings and meals and laughter I found myself drawn to their large, ninth floor window from which I could view at my lesiure a city I hadn't the time to meet. 

Later that night, our abused bags once again stowed in a car trunk, we drove out of the apartment complex and stopped immediately on the street outside. You MUST have paan, our host asserted. Visions of teeth stained the deep orange color of halloween nightmares caused me to protest, albeit weakly. Upon the urging of my friend I followed our host to the tiny stall which appeared to grow out of the wall itself where paan was bought. An older man sat with a large belly over thin crossed legs surrounded by enough jars of indescribable substances to make the Macbethan witches green with envy. He used his pinky fingernail to mix varieties of slime and powder around on a leaf, folded the leaves into neat parcels, coughed, and handed them to us. I walked, nearly stunned, back to the car.


Chew it slowly, when you have too much juice you can then swallow it, instructed our host after affirming that there wasn't any beetlenut in the leaf parcel of strange. Before I had time to even make eye contact, my friend had stuffed hers in her mouth and I shrugged and followed. Then my mouth exploded with taste like an altoid mint gone horribly Indian and I chewed until I understood the curious delights of oddly stuffed leaves. My mind tingled with dreams of paan tours of Kolkata as we bumper car-ed our way to the airport.

After a trip through the rustic airport so convoluted that I had to write it down in order to remember should I ever go back and have to navigate it on my own, the clock neared one am and we took our seats on the plane.

I leaned my exhausted head against the window and before we had even left I became quite confident of a future return.