There seemed to be no such thing as personal space in India. If
someone is sitting next to you, they might as well be sitting on top of
you. Needless to say, I disagreed with Oscar’s predilection for our
surroundings and I certainly wouldn’t have called it luxury. The only
difference between this carriage and the last was that we were now
sitting down. Within the first two minutes, both of the guys I was
sitting next to had fallen asleep on me and one of them was drooling.
The people around us who were awake were busy inquiring about our
names and countries of origin and whether or not they could have
our watches as presents. One of them was original and asked if he
could have my boots.
After a fitful sleep, punctuated at every stop by hordes of people
selling food and drinks and making sure everyone in the vicinity of
five-miles knew about it, we saw the dawn rising over the arid plains.
As we stopped at a station, the chorus of Indian tea (chai) and coffee
hawking started up again: ah…chaichaichaichai, chayeeeeeand
coffeecoffeecoffee coffeeyayyyy…the voices of the sellers weaving in
and out of each other created a magnificent, Mephistophelean choir
in which each peddler’s individual trademark chaitune or coffee
jingle wrestled for your frazzled attention. I bought a cup of chai off
one poor man and when I was finished, hurled the clay cup out the
window and onto the tracks as I had seen the Indians do the night
before.
On the tracks next to us was another stopped train, heading in
the opposite direction and I noticed that everyone in it was staring at
me. When I stared back at them they still didn’t look away. I began to
notice the same behavior among the people I was sitting with in my
compartment and found it very unsettling. Continuing to look out the
window, some moving figures under the train next to us grabbed my
attention. It appeared that two pigs were huddled under the far end
of one of the carriages and had their snouts pushed up the underside
of the train, underneath the lavatory. They were in fact sitting
patiently under the toilet as if it were a candy dispenser, waiting for
their next meal. Morbidly I watched, as they fought over the fresh
offerings. Perhaps that was what everyone had been staring at. So far,
subtlety didn’t appear to be a common element of the Indian daily
routine. As our train pulled out of the station with a lurch, I turned
my head away from the window and casually scanned the
compartment that seemed to be filled only with a sea of staring
brown eyes, only now the sea of eyes was staring in a new direction.
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
144
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