A Long Way Home Page 4
A group of Hindu kids played hide-and-seek near the temple, and I would join them for hours, even though there weren’t a lot of places to hide. During the hot season, swarms of tiny glow bugs came out at dusk. We’d catch them in our hands and then let them go, amazed by the flickering light they put out. I enjoyed the company of these kids, but one night when I showed up, I was told I couldn’t play with them anymore, probably because they’d discovered I lived on the Muslim side of town. At first I was devastated, but eventually I got over it and found other pastimes. I’d leave Shekila at the house for a while, knowing she could safely pass the time by herself while I was out. I’m sure this is illegal in the West, but in my town it wasn’t uncommon when parents had other things to do, and I’d been left like that many times myself.
Once during my rambles I got lucky: a shop owner asked if I could peel the potatoes for pani puri, which is a puffed, crisp, savory treat that is fried, submerged in cold spiced water, and then eaten. The man sat me down with a big bowl of potatoes, and I started peeling. It took ages, and he told me not to eat any or he would send me packing without my payment—which was to be six of the cooked pani puri. Even though the owner kept a sharp eye on me as he was going about his business, I still managed to furtively pop a few pieces into my mouth, and they seemed to melt on my tongue.
It was torture to handle such appetizing food and not be able to eat it. When the man turned his back for a moment, I decided to risk it one more time and slipped what I thought was a small piece of potato into my mouth. The burning sensation told me that I had accidentally eaten a chunk of salt that had fallen into the bowl. I was dying of thirst, but I knew I couldn’t ask for water, and somehow I managed to continue peeling the rest of the potatoes. After I had finished, he made up the dough and cooked the delicacies. I was paid my six pani puri, and thus managed to fill my stomach and also Shekila’s.
• • •
By the time Guddu and Kallu were about fourteen and twelve, respectively, they were spending very little time at home. I didn’t see them more than two or three times a week. They were mostly living off their wits, scouring the streets for whatever they could find to subsist on and sleeping nights in railway stations, where they sometimes earned food or money for sweeping. Most of the time they stayed at another town a few stops down the train line, about an hour away. They would tell me “Ginestlay” was no good, so they were going to a place that sounded like “Berampur”—at the time, I could never remember its name. Apparently it was easier to find money and food there, and they had started making friends, too, all of them getting around by jumping on and off trains.
When I got to be about four or five, occasionally my brothers would take me along with them. If a conductor ever asked for a ticket, we simply got off and hopped on the next train. We’d pass through a couple of very small stations—just platforms in the middle of nowhere—before arriving at the “Berampur” station, smaller than the one at “Ginestlay,” and on the outskirts of town. I would beg for money, saying “Eka rupaya”—“one rupee”—or just stand behind someone until he either gave me something or chased me away. I found that if you tapped a person lightly on the side, you’d find out more quickly if they would give you something or not. But my brothers would only let me go as far as the station; I couldn’t go wandering off into the town, where I might get lost. So I’d hang around the platforms while they worked, then go back home with them.
Some nights we played hide-and-seek in the cargo carriages that had been offloaded, which could have been very dangerous if a speeding train went by, as often we were running between tracks. Once when we were playing, a policeman shooed us off and told us never to come back. We simply moved our game to another part of town. My brothers and I often didn’t have food, but we had freedom, and we liked it.
• • •
One night, when I was five years old, I was at home, tired from a day playing out in the streets, but excited that on this night almost the whole family was gathered for dinner. My mother was home from work and, more unusually, Guddu was there, too. Kallu was the only one missing.
That evening Guddu stayed for about an hour while the four of us ate together. As Guddu was the eldest, it was he that I looked up to the most. He hadn’t been home for some time, and I missed hanging out with him and Kallu as a gang. I’d begun to feel I wasn’t a little boy anymore, to be left at home while they were out in the world.
After dinner, when our mother went out (perhaps to see if she could get us some more food), Guddu announced that he was leaving—going back to “Berampur.” The thought of once again being left behind without my brother, a little kid stuck at home with nothing to do, was too much. I jumped up and said, “I’m coming with you!” It was early evening—if I went with him, there was little likelihood of him getting me back home that night. We’d have to stay together. He thought about it for a moment and then agreed. I was thrilled. We left Shekila sitting on the floor and were gone before my mother returned. She probably wouldn’t have been too worried, with me in my brother’s care.
Soon I was laughing as we sped through the night, Guddu doubling me on a bike through the quiet streets to the train station. A man who lived beyond the center of town hired out bicycles for less than one paisa, and sometimes Guddu rented one to get to and from his jobs more quickly.
I’d traveled with my brothers before, but that night was different. I was going off with Guddu without a plan for when we were coming home or where we might sleep, just like he did with Kallu. I didn’t know how long he would let me stay with him, but as we raced through the streets, I didn’t care.
I still vividly remember the ride. I sat on the bar just behind the bike’s handlebars with my feet resting on either side of the front wheel axle. It was a bumpy trip, as there were potholes everywhere in the road, but I didn’t mind at all. There were a lot of glow bugs flying in the air, and we passed some kids chasing them. A boy yelled out, “Hey, Guddu!” but we rode on. I was proud that Guddu was known about town. I had even heard him mentioned once when I was on a train—I thought he was famous. We had to keep a good lookout for people walking on the street in the dark, especially when we went under the low railway bridge. Then Guddu said we’d walk the rest of the way; maybe he was tired with me on board. So I hopped off and he pushed the bike along the main street to the station, past the busy chai sellers. When we were near the station entrance, Guddu hid the hire bike behind some thick bushes, and we walked across the overpass to wait for the next train.
By the time the train noisily pulled in and we had scuttled aboard, I was already becoming sleepy. We got as comfortable as we could on the hard wooden seats, but the fun of the adventure was starting to wear off. I rested my head on Guddu’s shoulder as the train left the station. It was getting late, and we’d be on the train for about an hour. I don’t know if Guddu was having second thoughts about letting me come, but I was starting to feel a bit guilty, because my mother usually needed me to baby-sit Shekila while she was at work, and I didn’t know when I’d be back.
By the time we got off at “Berampur,” I was so exhausted that I slumped onto a wooden bench on the platform and said I couldn’t go on without a rest. Guddu said that was fine—there were a few things he needed to do anyway. “Just sit down and don’t move. I’ll come back in a little while and we can find somewhere to sleep the night.” I lay down, shut my eyes, and must have fallen asleep straightaway.
When I woke up, it was very quiet and the station was deserted. Bleary-eyed, I looked around for Guddu but couldn’t see him anywhere. There was a train at the platform where we’d got off, with its carriage door open, but I didn’t know if it was the same one, or how long I’d been asleep.
I’ve often wondered exactly what I was thinking right then. I was still half-asleep and I remember being unnerved by finding myself at the station alone at night. My thoughts were muddled. Guddu wasn’t around, but he’d said he wasn
’t going far—maybe he’d got back on the train? I shuffled over and climbed the boarding stairs to have a look. I have a memory of seeing some people asleep on board and stepping back down from the carriage, worried that if they woke up, they would call the conductor. Guddu had said I should stay put, but he was probably on board in a different carriage, working, sweeping underneath the seats. What if I fell asleep on the dark platform again and the train pulled out and I was left alone?
I looked into a different carriage and found no one, but the empty wooden bench seats were more comfortable and felt safer than the quiet station—Guddu would come and get me soon, smiling, perhaps with a treat he’d found while cleaning. There was plenty of room to stretch out. In a few moments, I was sleeping peacefully again.
This time, I must have slept properly. When I awoke, it was broad daylight and the full sun was glaring straight into my eyes. And, I realized with a jolt, the train was moving—rattling steadily along on its tracks.
I jumped up. There was still no one in the carriage, and the landscape outside the barred windows was passing quickly. My brother was nowhere to be seen. I had been left undisturbed, a small boy asleep, alone on a speeding train.
The low-class carriages weren’t connected to each other with internal doors. Travelers boarded and exited their carriage from doors on the outside at each end. I raced to one end of the carriage and tried the doors on either side—they were both locked, or wouldn’t budge. I ran down the other end—the doors there were locked, too.
I can still feel the icy chill of panic that hit me when I realized that I was trapped—at once a feeling of weakness, hyperactivity, and incredulity. I don’t recall exactly what I did in that moment—screamed, banged the windows, cried, cursed. I was frantic, my heart beating triple time. I couldn’t read any of the signs in the carriage. I ran up and down and looked beneath all the benches, in case someone else was asleep somewhere. There was only me. But I kept running up and down, yelling out my brother’s name, begging him to come and get me. I called for my mother, and my brother Kallu, too, but all in vain. No one answered and the train didn’t stop.
I was lost.
Slowly, I found myself shrinking from the enormity of what confronted me, hunching up into a protective ball. For long hours, I either cried or sat in a quiet daze.
After hurtling along in the empty carriage for a long time, I roused myself to look out the window to see if I could recognize some landmarks. The world outside looked similar to the outskirts of my village, but there were no distinguishing features. I didn’t know where I was headed, but I’d traveled much farther than ever before and was already far away from home.
I entered some kind of hibernating state—my system shut down, I suppose, exhausted at trying to deal with what was happening. I wept and slept, and occasionally looked out the window. There was nothing to eat, but there was water to drink from the tap in the filthy toilet cubicles at the rear, with their pit holes open to the tracks below.
Once, I woke up to realize that we’d stopped—we’d pulled into a station. My spirits soared, as I thought I could catch someone’s attention on the platform. But there wasn’t a soul to be seen in the gloom. I still couldn’t budge the exit doors. I beat them with my fists and screamed and screamed as the train gave a lurch and started moving again.
Eventually, I was spent. You can’t remain in a state of sheer panic and terror indefinitely, and both had run their course. Ever since, I’ve thought that must be why we cry: our bodies are coping with something our minds and hearts can’t absorb by themselves. I suppose all of that crying had served its purpose—I’d let my body work through my feelings, and now, surprisingly, my mind began to feel a little better. I was exhausted by the experience and fell in and out of sleep. When I think back now and relive the full horror of being trapped alone, with no idea where I was or where I was heading, it’s like a nightmare. I remember it in snapshots—awake at the windows, terrified; curled up and drifting in and out of sleep. Where did Guddu go? Why did he leave me? Why isn’t he on this train? Where is it taking me? I want to be with my mother! Where is my sister, where is my brother—where is my home? I think the train pulled into some more stations, but the doors never opened, and no one ever saw me.
But as time passed—perhaps even twelve hours—some of the resilience I’d built up when exploring my own town started to reassert itself. I began to think, If I can’t get out by myself, then I’ll just have to wait until someone lets me out, and then work out how to get home. I would behave like my brothers would behave. They were away for days at a time; I could do that, too. They had shown me how to find a place to sleep, and I had looked after myself before, finding things and begging. And maybe if this train took me away from home, it could take me back there.
• • •
Gradually, over what might have been six or more hours, the countryside became greener than I’d ever seen it before. There were lush fields and tall trees with no branches but great shaggy bunches of fronds at their tops. When the sun came out from behind clouds, everything exploded into bright green light. I saw monkeys running through the tangled undergrowth by the sides of the tracks and amazing brightly colored birds. There was water everywhere, in rivers, lakes, ponds, and fields. It was a new world to me. Even the people looked a little different: sharper, taller, and lighter in complexion.
After a while, the train began to pass through small towns, and I saw kids playing by the tracks while their mothers cooked or did the laundry on the back stoop. No one seemed to notice a lone child at the window of the passing train. The towns got bigger and closer together, and then there were no more fields, no more open country, just more and more houses—streets and streets of them—roads and cars and rickshaws. There were big buildings, too, many more of them than at home, and buses and trucks and tracks with other trains running along them. Everywhere there were people and more people—more than I had ever seen, more than I could ever have imagined in one place.
Eventually, the train slowed, and I knew it must be approaching another station. Was my journey at an end this time? The train coasted until it was hardly moving at all, then gave a sudden lurch and stopped altogether. Wide-eyed, staring from behind the bars of the window, I saw crowds of people swarming on the platform, hefting luggage as they strode about. People were rushing everywhere, in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, and suddenly someone opened one of the doors to my carriage. Without a moment’s thought, I ran down the aisle as fast as I could and leaped out onto the platform. At last I was free.
Only later, from the safety of my bedroom in Hobart, when my parents pointed it out on the wall map, did I find out the name of the city I’d traveled to. Not that it would have meant anything to me at the time. But I had arrived in what was then known as Calcutta, the sprawling megacity famous for its overpopulation, pollution, and crushing poverty—one of the most dangerous cities in the world.
I stepped off the train truly with nothing but the clothes I was wearing, barefoot, in a grimy pair of black shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt with several buttons missing. I had no money, no food, and no identification of any sort. I was hungry, but I was used to that, so it wasn’t too much of a problem yet. What I really hungered for was help.
I was thrilled to be free of my carriage prison but frightened out of my wits by the huge station with its pressing crowds. Frantically, I looked around in the hope of seeing Guddu pushing past all the people to come and rescue me, as if he might have been stuck on the train, too. But there were no familiar faces. I was paralyzed. I had no idea where to go or what to do. I instinctively stepped out of people’s way. I called out, “Ginestlay? Berampur?” hoping that someone would tell me how to get there. But no one in the rushing mass paid me the slightest attention.
At some point, the train I’d arrived on must have pulled away again, but I don’t remember noticing. Even if I had, I doubt I would have been too keen to jump
back aboard after being trapped for so long. I was scared into inaction, afraid that wandering off somewhere would make things worse. I kept to the platform, occasionally calling out, “Berampur?”
All around me was a confusion of noise, with people shouting and calling to one another or huddled in babbling conversation—I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. Mostly they were just very busy, pushing on and off trains in the great crush, struggling to get to wherever they needed to be as quickly as possible.
A small handful of people stopped to listen to me, but all I could manage to say to them was something like “Train, Ginestlay?” Most just shook their head and walked on.
One man replied, “But Ginestlay is where?”
I didn’t know what he meant; it was just . . . home. How could I explain where it was? After a moment, he frowned and moved on. There were a lot of children begging or hanging around the station looking for whatever they could find, as my brothers did back home. I was just one more poor kid crying something out, too small and timid to make anyone stop and listen.
I steered clear of policemen out of habit. I was afraid they might lock me up, as they’d once done to Guddu. Conductors, police, anyone in uniform—we’d avoided them all. It didn’t occur to me that now they might be able to help.
I stayed on the platform even after everyone had left, having failed to get anyone’s attention, sleeping on and off, unable to move away or think of what to do next. Sometime the next day, tired and miserable, I gave up trying to find help. The people in the station weren’t people at all but a great solid mass I couldn’t make any impact on, like a river or the sky.
One thing I knew was that if a train had brought me to where I was, a train could take me back. I also knew that at home the trains on the track opposite the one you arrived on went back the other way. But I’d noticed that this station was the end of the line, where all the trains came in and stopped, and then chugged back the way they had come. If no one could tell me where the trains went, I would find out for myself.