Jhanse Atta’s husband smoked a cigarette on the platform in Ongole. Orange embers extinguished themselves around his feet. I checked the clock. It was late. Hundreds of flies flew off a burlap sack as a man wiped his sweat. Had I missed it already? I couldn’t see any English signs up and down the length of the train that had pulled in. In this town, they only stop for a moment. Before I figured out where it was going, it glided away. I begged my uncle to check with the station agent if mine had already passed through. A few seconds later, as another one pulled in, I ran to the station agent’s kiosk and yelled, “Is it this one?” Behind me, a monkey skittered by, and I glimpsed its long, thin tail. We were far from the platform and even further away from where my cabin would come to a halt. We raced to the closest AC car and my uncle threw me on, luggage and all. I looked up at an agent, who was scowling in the doorway to the compartment. Instead of coming to a stop, the train had begun to pick up speed. There would be no bustle of luggage or bodies through these doors. I was on the wrong train, going anywhere, with the wrong ticket.
When India stirred, the British left. Slipped into the seams of jackets, under the cover of mass migrations and cities set aflame, pieces of India left with them. In the wake of separation, under the flow of bodies exchanging one country for another, their railways rusted. In England, they must have regretted this loss. But what they took in exchange, the Kohinoor diamond, is now the jewel of the crown.
In the 1800’s the East India Company built a steam engine and track to transport commodities a distance of twenty miles. Two hundred years later there is 65,000 km of railway, two million employees, and one lost traveller in the middle of this mercantile masterwork. The agent demanded to see my ticket. He knew I had the wrong one. Five times the cost of my ticket in bribes and payoffs managed to correct my mistake and when I finally switched to the right train in Vizag, a porter was determined to not leave me alone until he took the rest of my money. After an hour of refusing his demands, an incredibly drunk man, in the bunk across from mine, woke up and yelled at the porter, come here! I’ll give you what you want! Relieved, I locked up my belongings with the chain I carried around with me. In the heart of this metal beast, which had lost none of its’ original purpose to trade object for object, or service for service, or any combination known to produce profit, I found my place. As the train moved through the night dropping a stream of feces from its bathrooms, people squatted on the tracks after it passed, making their own contributions.
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Aug 11, 12:40 AM