Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh Read Free Book Online

scepticism shading his audience’s faces, but if he eventually revealed himself to be an android, I would feign nonchalance. The train stopped at Thane and the Swiss girls got off. Rick jabbed silently at the window, his face twisted into a ridiculous grin.
    ‘First ever Indian train. Built by you folks. Ran from Bombay to Thane in 1853.’
    Rick was travelling up to Mumbai to meet his wife after a three-month stint trekking around India by himself. She was launching a book and had been touring Southeast Asia while Rick rode the railways. A chai vendor clanked past and he raised a finger in the air, fishing a 10-rupee note out of his breast pocket which hung somewhere around his waist.
    ‘I’ll have another please, and one for the little lady, and don’t try pulling any of that shit on me again.’
    The vendor placed his vat on the floor and allowed two spurts of milky water to fill the paper cups, smiling sheepishly.
    ‘Six rupees, he told me! Six? It’s never six. It’s always five. Naughty bugger.’
    He finished the tea in one slurp, winced and tapped my knee.
    ‘You know how to work out train numbers, eh?’
    ‘Nope.’
    ‘Well, for example, we’re on the 0104 from Madgaon to Mumbai. The Mandovi Express that goes the other way is the 0103. Also, the first digit indicates which region you are in. Konkan Railway is “0”.’
    ‘How do you know that the one going the other way isn’t the 0105?’
    ‘Because they refer to them as going “up” or “down”. If a train is travelling away from its home station then you say it’s going “down”. But if it’s going towards its home station, then it’s going “up”. We’re going up, so it has the higher number. But having said that, there are so many exceptions to the rule so don’t take my word for it. Like the rest of this country, don’t try to find method in the madness. Anyway, have fun, Pom. I’m getting off here.’
    We were just pulling into Dadar Central and Rick jumped off the berth, picking up his canvas bag, and strolled off in bare feet. The Yoda of train travellers had no need for shoes after all. I moved to the edge of the seat and watched him from the window. As the train jerked and moved on, he stopped and fished a pair of loafers out of his bag, threw them onto the ground and stepped into them.
    I started gathering my things as we neared Mumbai when Passepartout surfaced with the confused look of a hamster coming out of hibernation. He tidied up his sheets, lined up our bags and grinned. A new buoyancy took over, the buoyancy of arrival. It brings with it a renewed sense of being that blossoms just before the end of a journey. No matter how long or tiring the journey, the bothersome bits are shelved and forgotten in those final minutes. Impending arrival shifts the traveller’s mindset into hopeful optimism that a new and unexplored phase is about to begin.

3 | A Royal Affair
    A hairy arm covered in glass bangles appeared by my leg and a large hand tugged my rucksack. It withdrew, then as an afterthought, shot out again to give my knee a quick scratch. Peering over my book, I looked down and saw that the wandering hand belonged to a hijra who wanted some money. While we were buried in our books, a number of hijras had mushroomed around the bench where we sat at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus: a carnival of powdered faces, sequined saris, anklets and tomato-red lips surrounded us, covering the platform with handbags, food carriers and bedding.
    Hijras are a vulnerable community of eunuchs and hermaphrodites, huddled together in their plight beneath one umbrella of transgendered ambiguity. Many eunuchs within the fold result from forced surgery and despite claims to the contrary, fewer than one in a thousand hijras are born a hermaphrodite. They flimsily embrace womanhood with garish make-up, cheap jewellery and low-cut blouses stretched around their broad backs. Shunned by society, they are nurtured within their own