It's New Year's Day morning and Josh, Sarah and I have to leave Arambol in Goa and take a bus to Bombay. I've had a couple of hours sleep, and my world is still very wobbly. My mind feels like a pile of plado. Shakily I pack my bags, drink chai and eat as much breakfast as I can. With desperateness seeping out of our voices, we ask the sellers to leave us be, just this one last time so that we can enjoy the last few moments in this wonderful place in peace. I give Lakshmi, the oldest eight year old I've ever met, my over sized sunglasses as a leaving present and she dons them, as with everything she wears, with a cool ease that consistently amazes me. It's obvious to anyone who talks to her for more than a minute that she won't be selling blankets for the rest of her life.
I'm feeling very worse for wear but we have to leave. I have to say goodbye to Dan, and I well up inside. It'll be at least 6 months till I see him again. In my fragile mood I'm all emotional, he's my rock, what will I do without him? Holding back the tears, I trudge along with the others to town.
It's back to Bombay: I must mentally prepare myself, as it'll be hot, sticky, busy, smelly, and exhausting. After a surprisingly pleasant bus journey, we get a spacious room for the day in the main train station. That evening we need to catch a local train out of the centre. It's rush hour. It's madness. We have houses on our backs and there are thousands of people trying to get home. We pile onto our train, and I manage to slip my backpack off, but the other two don't. I quickly realise my mistake - without the protection of the rucksack, I'm open to being jabbed and squeezed and pressed till I feel I'm going to explode. The carriage is 100% male, and there are cocks digging in to my back and my midriff and my front and my legs and I think I'm going to scream. There are no doors on these trains, just spaces, so at each station at the last minute there's a rush as more and more people try to jump on, and the squashing just gets worse. I try and think unrelated thoughts, rise above the discomfort, but I fail. I have to shut my eyes and bite my tongue and let out the odd expletive to marginally ease my anger.
25 minutes later and it's over. With great difficulty, we shove our way onto the platform. Sarah has to get back on to get to the airport and runs for the women's carriage which looks far more humane, but she and Josh have to have a fleeting goodbye and the train is already moving as she jumps back on.
My little brother and I are now on course for our 10 day trip to the north. We walk the kilometre or so to the mainline station, where the road is lined with slums. People living in filth, hanging around making fires on the street, some sleeping on the street, everything dirty. I'm overwhelmed by it - I can't begin to imagine the mindset in which all these people live from day to day, and it scares me how much I'm a product of my environment. It's simply impossible for me to imagine what it would be like to live here. What family life is like, always scrabbling for money. We pass a body on the floor outside the station which I assume is somebody sleeping, but a guard tells us it's a dead body. He's dead, and nobody is batting an eyelid. Again, I can't put this into perspective in my head. It's unfathomable to me that a person's whole life can be so meaningless that they are left alone, dead on the street and ignored.
I have to put these thoughts aside or I get trapped in a spiralling mental mess, and, well, out of sight.. you know the rest. It's easy to forget and get on. And we do, and now we're in the beautiful town of Pushkar, where there's a lake where Hindus come to purify themselves, and we just saw a beautiful sunset from the top of a hill overlooking the town and the mountains surrounding it. My warmth for India comes and goes, it's so in your face sometimes it can be too much. But something is always happening; it's an adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment