The Foolproof Train Station Exit Strategy
India
Rickshaw-wallahsThe train whistle blasts, announcing our impending arrival in Varanasi. It is nearly midnight and I know exactly what awaits me outside the station: a bloodthirsty battalion of rickshaw-wallahs, outnumbering potential fares at least 50 to 1. The odds are even worse for me – a white woman traveling alone is their proverbial golden goose. Rickshaw-wallahs and taxi drivers, the thieving, belligerent vultures of Asia and bane of travelers everywhere, are particularly loathsome in India. It will be a Herculean struggle just to get one of them to transport me for four times the local fare. Even then, he won’t go where I tell him to go but will pirate me off on a nerve-jangling, all-hours Hassle Tour of the city’s commission-paying hotels. If I’m lucky, I’ll just get cheated and not actually mugged. The mere thought of leaving the train fatigues me.
Aside from the trauma of exiting the station, I love traveling by train and find it especially satisfying in India. Not only is the rail system here efficient, comfortable, and unbelievably cheap, but for the duration of the trip I get to travel cross-country with Indians – not touts, not shopkeepers, not taxi drivers, just regular people with somewhere to go. Overnight journeys are a big occasion, and every Second Class Sleeper compartment hosts a convivial little party. People travel with their children, grandparents, cousins, in-laws, and spinster aunties. They pack baskets and tiffins and boxes of fantastic home-cooked food: chapattis, biryanis, samosas, sweets – and insist that I join them by handing me an overflowing plate. When the chai vendors come by, we take turns purchasing 4-rupee cups of tea for everyone in the cubicle, even though we all agree it’s terrible chai.
Indian train travelers don’t waste any time getting to know their seatmates. Many people speak fluent English, but even if it’s a struggle to do so, they always inquire about my travels and my life in the U.S. They often ask questions that Westerners might consider rude, or at least very nosy. Here, however, it’s considered rude NOT to have a highly personal conversation with the stranger sitting next to you. On one long ride from Jhansi to Mumbai, I perched alone in my upper berth, reading and sleeping off a virus, oblivious to the festivities below. When I finally climbed down to disembark, a gray-haired gentleman in the lower compartment anxiously inquired if everything was all right.
“Yes, everything is fine”, I assured him; “I just have a bad cold.”
“I was so worried about you sitting up there alone,” he told me. “No one was talking with you, and I was afraid you wouldn’t feel welcomed in India!”
He then gave me his cell phone number and made me promise to call if I ran into any problems in Mumbai. On other trains, I have been asked home to dinner, invited to family weddings, and offered eligible nephews in marriage. India must be the easiest place in the world to meet “real” people – just get on a train. For the record, some Western women report harassment by Indian men on the trains, but for some lucky reason, I encounter men who lift my bags up to the luggage rack, offer me chocolates, and show off photos of their families. Alas, when the train ride ends I have to return to the outside world where I am no longer a fellow rail traveler but a tourist, a walking wallet, easy prey. Fortunately, at Varanasi station I discovered a wormhole back into the lap of Indian kindness. I call it the Foolproof Train Station Exit Strategy and I now implement it religiously. This is how it works:
As the train groans to a halt, I jump from the carriage and quickly strap bags to my body, leaving one arm free for slapping, if necessary. With the bags in balance, I bulldoze a path to the exit. Outside, hundreds of cycle and auto-rickshaws bank the parking lot in tightly packed rows, the drivers appearing to my tired mind like sinister choirboys about to burst into unholy racket. They spot me and descend, howling and snarling like feral dogs. I do not speak; I avoid eye contact and NEVER stop moving. Rickshaw wheels wobble into me from all sides, talking heads bobble and lunge out of the dark, bony fingers snatch at my sleeves. Using my bags, elbows, feet, knees, whatever it takes, I plow doggedly onward to the road. Once I’m out of the parking lot their forces weaken; only about a dozen manage to squirm through the horde and follow me. A few more materialize from the street. No matter – keep moving.
Across from every train station, there is a humble, all-night curry shop. These eateries are nearly identical: an open platform with a corrugated tin roof, a few bare tables and plastic chairs facing the street. In one corner, a neat row of vats bubble next to a smoking clay-pot oven. I clamber up on the platform, drop the bags next to a table, sit, listen, and look. I’m alone, no longer encased in a moving mosh pit of oversized bicycle wheels, flailing arms and yammering mouths. They are gone, trapped behind the invisible front wall of the curry shop. The Great Wall of Silence. I would kiss it if I could see it.
The restaurateur approaches, wearing an enormous wine-colored turban and a polite, tight-lipped smile.
“Would you like something, Madame?” He inquires in staccato English, gesturing toward the menu painted across the back wall.
“Yes!” I reply, beaming my brightest smile, “but I’m afraid I don’t read Hindi. What can you recommend, sir?”
He twirls one end of his elaborate mustache, rocking his turban from side to side, considering.
“Our mixed vegetable curry is a very nice dish, Madame. I can recommend it to you?” he says, with some trepidation.
“That sounds perfect. I’ll take one, please.”
Relieved at the ease of this transaction, he offers a genuine smile at last, stretching his whiskers wide to expose four paan-stained hippopotamus teeth in an expanse of empty gums.
“Yes, Madame! One mixed vegetable curry!” Anything else, Madame?”
“Do you happen to have fresh naan?”
“Oh certainly, Madame! We have excellent naan-only fresh naan here!”
“Wonderful! I’ll take two pieces, please.”
“Yes, yes! Two pieces naan! Very good, Madame!”
He whisks away, positively buoyant. Now I can sit back, relax, and ignore the row of beady eyes floating in the darkness of the street. If I were to listen carefully, I would hear grumbling and teeth-gnashing from that direction, but I choose not to. In ten minutes flat, the restaurateur delivers a fragrant, steaming vegetable curry and two piping hot pieces of fresh naan. He returns as I’m sopping up the last spicy drops of curry and inquires about my enjoyment.
“It’s delicious!” I say truthfully, “Simply outstanding!”
He glows with pride.
“I only wish I could get such excellent Indian food at home in California,” I sigh.
He is thunderstruck.
“Madame, do you mean that you are coming from California, in United States?
I confirm this is so.
“That is very surprising, Madame!” he sputters, tapping his chest eagerly, “Because I am having a brother in California!”
So far, everyone I’ve met in India knows someone in California.
“And my brother,” he continues, bursting with excitement, “He is also having a restaurant!”
Astonishing. An Indian restaurant in California, of all things. We chat about his dream of visiting the Golden State, and I vow to dine at the brother’s restaurant the next time I am in Bakersfield/Costa Mesa/etc. Thirty minutes have passed since I left the happy microcosm of the train, yet I am still calm. The same festive atmosphere infuses the curry shop. When I point to a hotel name in my guidebook, the restaurateur nods with authority.
“Yes, Madame, that is a good hotel and is not so far from here.”
“And can you recommend the best way for me to get there, please?”
My friend turns around and scans the line of jackals hovering behind the blessed Wall. Frowning, he raises an index finger and points. One rickshaw-wallah one-jumps obediently through the Wall like a trained circus animal. The restaurateur barks at him in Hindi and then turns back to me, smiling benevolently.
“Madame,” he announces, “this man will drive you directly to your hotel and no place else, and the fare will be exactly ten rupees. Do not worry!”
Ten rupees is the local price. The banshees back in the parking lot were demanding fares of 100, 150. And while obtaining the Indian price for me is a great gesture of respect, the real score here lies in that magical phrase, “and no place else.” It’s like a dream. I look at the driver, whose aggrieved expression indicates he may have just swallowed a bug. The restaurateur glares at him and he speaks on cue.
“Madame, I will drive to your hotel-directly and no-place-else,” he recites glumly, “and the fare will be ten-rupees-exactly. Do not worry!”
I exchange fond farewells and email addresses with the restaurateur, while the rickshaw-wallah shoulders my bags to the street. As we bounce through the dark streets I realize that I have made a life-changing discovery with this strategy, but what I’m really looking forward to is my next outing to an Indian restaurant in California. I can’t wait to tell the owner that I had a meal at his brother/uncle/cousin’s place in India, how delicious it was, and how much I appreciated Indian hospitality while I was traveling.
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