Chai! Chai! Chai!
India
“Chai! Chai! Chai!” came the strangled wail that jolted me from my early morning slumber. It sounded like the painful cry of a scalded cat, but it wasn’t. It could be only one thing – swarms of Indian Railways chai-sellers, laden with pots and urns. It was five in the morning, and I was travelling from some place to some other place – I can’t quite recall – in second-class sleeper. At that point, I wished that I wasn’t. I would have given almost anything to be lying in the comfort of my own bed rather than on an upper berth surrounded by countless strangers and chai-sellers.
I could have quite easily been left in peace for another four hours, but this was an Indian train. As was usual, people were coming to life early and by about six, were out of their berths and sitting, eating or just glaring out of the window. I can’t understand why most people arise so early and then sit bored witless for hours when they could pass the time by sleeping. Maybe the chai-sellers have a lot to do with it. They prowl the corridors shouting and screaming as if their particular chai is the last available chai on the planet, and instil a sense of urgency by making everyone feel that they must order some before it runs out. Unfortunately, it never does. There is always an endless supply of chai and chai-sellers – all day and half of the night – no matter what. If there is ever a nuclear holocaust I am convinced that an Indian Railways employee will emerge somehow from the rubbled landscape with a shiny urn and the cry of “Chai! Chai! Chai!” will be the only sound to be heard.
It wasn’t unusual for me to be annoyed by the early morning chai-sellers. I am used to them appearing en masse at some un-godly hour, but that has never made me any more accepting of them. This journey was like one hundred others I had taken before. They arrive on the scene just at the precise moment I am beginning to doze-off. The whole night is always spent tossing from side-to-side, trying to ignore the noisy clattering of wheels on track and the whirring sound of the fans. The train continues to slam sideways and up and down as it goes along and I become increasingly paranoid and preoccupied with thoughts of imminent derailment. I can never sleep – well not until around five or six in the morning. It is then that after a sleepless night I begin to feel mentally jaded and sleep kicks-in. Alas, the chai-sellers soon put a stop to that.
I decided to order a coffee, working on the basis that if you can’t beat them, then you’d better join them. I wanted coffee even though the chai-seller only appeared to have tea. But to my surprise he smiled and pulled out some coffee powder. “Fantastic”, I thought. Then, astonishingly, he puts a spoonful of coffee into a cup of tea! He has no hot water – only hot chai. I look at him, giving one of my “Are you stupid?” stares. He doesn’t understand. I give him five rupees, shake my head and make a deliberate expulsion of air – a sigh of complete and utter disbelief and resignation. India has made me an expert in the art of head shaking and sighing with complete and utter disbelief and resignation. Before, I set foot in the place I was a novice. I’ve come a long way after years of frustration – a very long way.
In a way, the chai-sellers represent the hyperactive part of India that visitors can find both fascinating and infuriating. A sense of urgency often prevails and makes the place exciting and electric. Walk along any main street and you will feel it in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Vehicles from auto-rickshaws to mopeds dodge and weave in the latest jam and accelerate at pace just to get into the most unlikely gap in the traffic. And walk along any street shoulder to shoulder in a mass of humanity only to have someone slither into a space in front of you where no place appeared to exist.
Why all the urgency when really there is no call for it? India exhibits a frenzy that, if transferred to the West, would be a recipe for stress and bad-temperedness likely to cause coronary overload. I often feel like telling people to chill-out – but surprisingly people are chilled-out in the midst of it all. Indians seem unfazed by all of the hyperactivity and exude an inner calm that westerners tend to lack. So it is to be expected that the non-stop chai-selling often irritates someone like me, and the wailing and bellowing that accompanies it. But there is another explanation: I am British!
A lot of people have come to regard complaining as a British art form. If this is so, then I’m a bit of a late developer and India merely happened to bring out the best of me in the complaining stakes. I tend to do a lot of it these days.
Australians condemn us Brits by asking, “What’s the difference between a 747 and a POM (Brit)? The 747 stops whining when it gets to Sydney airport!” I think they say this because many of us Brits are brought up to search for a place called Wit’s End. I have scoured many a map looking for it, but have never found it. It took me some time to realise that it is not a mountain peak or far flung point on a peninsula. Wit’s End is the pinnacle of a metaphorical journey: the end product of an inner quest for self-realisation.
The journey to Wit’s End is peppered with frustration whereby you say to yourself things like – this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work, why doesn’t it work, why can’t things be different? After years of this you finally reach the point of realisation: the world is a pain in the backside and will never be how you would like it to be. Wit’s End – the point of self-realisation – a kind of British version of “enlightenment”.
Anyhow, I lie down once more, nursing my hybrid chai-coffee drink, and become conscious of the swollen bags beneath my eyes and a clanging headache, resulting from sleep deprivation. The dawn was breaking. I caught a glimpse of the ugly, scorched landscape from the window. I wanted to be somewhere else; anywhere but where I was.
Eventually, my train pulled into the final station and a thousand passengers alighted (or should that be a thousand chai-sellers?). On the adjacent platform another train was about to begin its journey. It was jam-packed with passengers and, of course, bursting to the seams with – yes – chai-sellers.
As I checked into my hotel and entered my room, I was greeted by swarming mosquitoes and an overflowing waste bin. I switched on the ceiling fan and the mosquitoes fled to the far corners of the room. The fan was the noisy type: it was a highly effective mosquito repellent but made a constant rattling sound, which kept me awake for half of the night. It was either that or switch it off, leaving the way open for the mosquitoes to swarm. Anyone who has ever slept in a mosquito-ridden room will know that it is no fun whatsoever having mosquitoes annoyingly hum past your ears all through the night. In my case, when this happens I start to think that I’ve been bitten here, there and everywhere and spend too much time scratching imaginary bites and itches. Paranoia sets in. So on this occasion the rattling fan is a necessity. The journey’s end is often more hard-bitten than what we ever imagined or hoped for. Compared to my hotel room, Indian trains aren’t so bad after all.
So perhaps what is should be treasured because it can be a whole lot better than what may be. The new tomorrow can be worse than the old yesterday. You don’t have to end up in a third rate hotel room to appreciate this.
One day, someone may build a monument to world-travellers. If they do, I hope it is modelled on, of all things, a ceiling fan. Then all travellers who visit the site will be transported in thought to a hot night in Asia lying in bed, tormented by the sound of some noisy fan, pesky mosquitoes or the cry of “Chai! Chai! Chai!”. Then, at that point, they will get the inexplicable urge to do it all again and hit the road; the human desire to keep striving; to keep moving on; to keep journeying. Itchy feet and wandering minds; or should that be itchy minds and wandering feet? It doesn’t really matter. It’s all about travelling through life, scratching those imaginary itches, and hoping they will get better – imagining another time, a different place where the tomorrow is better than the yesterday. Just because things never seem right, doesn’t mean they’ll always be wrong. More chai anyone?
