Inside the Raxaul train station people were shoving and jostling in a queue for their railway tickets. It was not the main railway junction, but still there were lots of people going to various parts of India. Some were sitting on their haunches or just lying down on the floor, fanning themselves due to the heat and flies.

The Express arrived two hours late. The compartments were mostly empty. A group of neatly dressed Gurkhas set their luggage on the platform. Among them was a tall man who was rather shabbily dressed with a thick hoar of dust on his shoes. He clearly didn't belong to the group.  A smile fixed on his pale face, he was talking with a slightly older Gurkha with powerful shoulders. I talked with another Gurkha and he said if I like I can travel with them in the military bogie. Despite having reservation elsewhere, I accepted the offer.  Once in the train, I took the window seat and watched the Gurkhas settle after putting away their luggage under the long wooden seat that doubled up as a bed in the night. Soon, the train gave a signal of departure and left the station. The movement was a relief from the mid-day heat and humidity.  The tall man was sitting opposite me.

"What are you reading?" he asked me after a while, and then, without waiting for my answer, quickly added, "I like Harold Robbins. He is the only writer I truly admire." I took my eyes off the book. The train was passing through the flat countryside. "It's simply amazing how he writes, though people dismiss them as racy stuff."

Later we got introduced. He was originally a Canadian who had settled in India. He was very frank, and although he was in his 50s, with long grey hair and deep set eyes, he still had a strange youthfulness in his movements as he talked excitedly, often gesturing with his hands and eyes.

As the day progressed it became very hot. The train passed through bare fields, sometimes with a lonesome farmer working under the scorching sun while the buffaloes relaxed in the muddy pool. The houses were occasional and scattered. The Gurkha I had been talking with earlier sat silently by my side. Others were just looking out the window.  The Canadian bought some bakeries in a station the train stopped for a while. He aimlessly wandered in the station and lit a cigarette. Later, as the train moved, he angrily yelled at a vendor. Presently, a group of eunuchs came and accosted the passengers for money. One that came to us was dark as coal and wore a saree that barely concealed her protruding belly. She clapped her hands and said, "O, Pardeshi, chalo kuch do." Half-smiling, the Canadian handed her some changes, as did the others. She went and joined her group. Then a blind old man and after that a boy with badly mutilated legs came asking for alms.

I asked the Canadian the reason behind his temper a moment ago. "Oh, it was nothing," he said. "Just that the rascal was trying to dupe me taking me as a tourist. I told him I've been in India since his grandfather's time."

"But he is always afraid when I do this," he continued, smiling at his Nepali friend sitting beside him. "You know, he is a tailor caste and is always very gentle and polite to others and avoids fights. He and his wife are also very generous, always giving, but their neighbors treat them very badly just because they are low castes."

The Nepali man just sat smiling and adjusted the Dhaka topi he was wearing.

The Canadian lived in his friend's house in Birgunj from where the school where he taught was near. His daughter had married a Nepali guy and both of them also taught in the same school.

"They fell in love in Kolkata, you see. They used to study in the same college. I never objected to the marriage. I was even happy; he's a very nice guy."

At the school he was an English teacher for the junior section. Though he would have preferred to teach a senior class, he was still happy: The students liked him and their parents invited him for meals. The school was now closed for the annual vacation and he was going to Kolkata to meet his wife and son.

In the evening we were still passing through Bihar's countryside. The same flat and dry country rolled by, but this time with the red of the setting sun. The Gurkhas started talking about their respective regiments, the places they were posted to, and their annual leave. Few knew each other from before, but they seemed to be at ease with each other perhaps because there were all soldiers and shared some sort of camaraderie. One listened to them to find how being army men with close cropped hair, robust body and a sure self, they only talked about their salary, families, military postings and what truly mattered to them and how their world was so compressed and simple.

The train stopped in a station. A large Muslim family was on the platform. The ladies wore their burqa, but the veil was thrown back to reveal their face; while the men tall and bearded, seemed to be in a great hurry to enter the train. They shouted for the kids while taking care all their luggage were in.  Some people tried to enter our compartment seeing the empty seats, but the army men didn't let them in. There was a heated argument, some push and pull, but soon the railway guards came and dispersed the crowd. The Gurkha sitting by my side seemed annoyed with all this. He said that his regiment was based in Kashmir for two years, that he fought many times with the separatists and in the Kargil war too, but the worst he saw was not in the battlefield; it was always in the station. We laughed.

The conversation turned to Kashmir and he said it was a strange place. Although the valley reminded him of his home in the mountains, it was much colder there. He said the local Muslim population mostly kept to themselves, but deep inside they bore an absolute hate for the army. There were always news of clashes and deaths. Separatists regularly ambushed the army patrol. Some villagers would let separatists stay in their homes, but once they begin to eye their sisters and daughters, theywere left with no option but to turn informants. He once heard about a father who killed two separatists he had given refuge in his home to save the honor of his daughter.

In the night only the sound made by the wheels against the rails were heard. The passengers were silent. Most of the lights were turned off and the windows closed walking through the corridor that went into the washroom.  The compartment door was wide open where a young man stood
looking blankly into the darkness, his hair waving in the breeze.

The train took up speed in the night to make up for the lost time in the day. The wheels were making a great noise against the rails and the
Canadian had to speak over it to be heard.

The Canadian said that when he first came to Kolkata, he was a young, wanderlust, carefree and sort of an enigma to the Bengali women. They used to tell him that they love him and wanted to have his child. But he cared less and always managed to shrug off the clinging ones until he met a dark Bengali beauty, who was nothing like any girls he had met, and with whom he fell in love and eventually settled down. She gave him a lovely daughter and a son, and he could not ask for more. He became sober. He went home to Canada few years after marriage, alone, just to meet his mother, but he found that he was already missing his wife and kids. Kolkata was home now.

"I've been very lucky, India has been good to me. People even mistake me for an Anglo-Indian these days," he smiled, "and I don't mind." He had a granddaughter whom he admired very much and showed me her photo which he carefully took out from his purse: A dainty little kid, 7 or 8, wearing a white dress and smiling.

"You know, she has blue eyes and she is the prettiest kid you'll ever see."

As it was already midnight, the Gurkhas were fast asleep. The train took up speed all night and the compartment wobbled gently.

In the morning, the train was at a station. We were now much near Kolkata. Vendors sold tea in small earthen pots to passengers. The signs and posters were in Bengali. Men, dressed in crisp white shirt, their hair neatly parted sideways, silently boarded the train at the other side of the platform.

A blind man entered the compartment, walked along the corridor and took an empty window seat. Then he started to sing in a very high pitched voice with the accompanying beat of a Dholak he was carrying. Half awake, I listened to him for a long time. One didn't understand the words, but they were clearly sad. He didn't care if anybody listened, but it seemed everything was still and silent as he sang. And he sang and poured his heart out and abruptly ended the song. He moved on from there. There was silence. The train passed through flat fields, continuously, and very fast.

The Canadian had kept the windows open all night and in the morning too even though it was slightly chilly. The Gurkha came from the washroom and started tidying up. Others were impatient and walked up the corridor and down again.  We passed a town and the Canadian told me about a very old Portuguese-built church which he always wanted to visit to light a candle.

As we slowly approached the Howrah station, we saw black smokes coming from tall factory chimneys behind long walls in a silver gray morning. The train entered the dimly lit station after changing few tracks. It was a very busy station looking from the window. People were walking in great hurry and there was lots of activity and noise. Laborers were pushing good carts. A group of peasants squatted on the floor with the bundle of belongings by their side. A lady's voice boomed across the station announcing the arrival of our train.

The train stopped and we got off. Porters were hurrying past us with loads of baggage. The Gurkha put his luggage by the side of a wooden chair and sat down. He said he has to catch another train to Orissa. He had the whole day left for him to spare till his train arrived in the evening, but he said would rather wait in the station. He had been to many cities in India and he felt they all looked the same. I said good bye to him and came out of the station with the Canadian and his friend and parted ways with them too. A huge cantilever bridge on the Hooghly River connected the two sides of the city. I left Kolkata the same night.

The writer can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Nepalnews.com Oct 31 2010