The Glorious Indian Railways (Chennai Weekend, Part 3)

When we arrived at the Chennai train station I already knew we were going to have some difficulties. When we had booked our tickets, we didn’t know about the wait list. After we booked our tickets we found out about the wait list and realized that we hadn’t actually booked tickets, instead we were on the wait list. Not only were we just on the wait list, we were around numbers 267 and 268 on the wait list. So when you’re on the wait list it means that you might make it on if some people cancel or don’t show up. But if there aren’t any open seats, or if you have trouble communicating with or bribing the ticket examiner, then you sit general class. Any time that we mentioned to someone that we might have to ride in general class they cringed and had “Oh my goodness” looks on their faces. To avoid sitting in general class we were told to just sit in the nicer part of the train and ask the ticket examiner to find us a seat. So that’s what we did. There was some sort of weird communication and we ended up just wandering through the train cars looking for the women’s car. We finally found it, but it was shut off from the rest of the cars so we couldn’t get in. We sat in the car next to the women’s compartment for quite a while, just waiting for someone to help us figure out what to do. We didn’t mind where we were waiting though, because it was just about the nicest car in the train. Eventually a ticket examiner came through and was ready to yell at us for sitting where we were until he realized we just needed help. He told us we had to wait for the train to stop, jump off, and run to the women’s compartment.

We stepped into the women’s compartment and were shocked by the condition of the car that it was. People were packed together like sardines. There was absolutely no sitting room, not even any standing room, for us. So we ended up posting up by the bathroom for a while until some people got off and there was room for us to sit. We were going to be on the train for a good 12 hours or so, so we at least needed somewhere to sit. We didn’t even have to look for seats once people got off because everyone wanted us to sit with them so we just let the eager Indian ladies seat us next to them.

For a while we sat awkwardly, hugging our luggage with no intention of ever letting go of it due to all the horror stories we have heard about theft on the trains, especially in the crappiest class ever. At one point a lady with a basket of samosas was walking through the train. We hadn’t had dinner so we bought some samosas hoping that they would hold us over through the ride. The samosa lady posted up near us. All of the sudden she hit me and told me to put my bag on the ground, as I’m sure I looked ridiculous holding onto a giant backpack. I shook my head and continued sitting with the bag on my lap. A few minutes later she hit me again, this time a little harder, and told me again to put my bag on the floor, again. Again, I refused. Then a few minutes after that I felt a little tug on my hair and turned around to the samosa lady combing her fingers through my ponytail. When she saw that I didn’t mind she immediately demanded for a hair brush. By then just about the whole car was watching. I think everyone was quite entertained, including me. I ended up with a nice Indian braid. Then she moved on to Nina and did the same. After that she (through a kind translator) asked me why I was not wearing a bindi. I told her I didn’t have one so she pulled hers off her forehead and stuck it on mine. She didn’t have more so she borrowed a bottle of red nail polish and put a dot of that on Nina’s forehead. All of the old Indian ladies throughout the ride kept telling us how beautiful we were with the braids and the bindis. We only got in trouble with them because we were not wearing any bangles, as they say all ladies should always wear bangles.



By this time we were in with all the Indian ladies. Everyone wanted to talk and find out who we were and what we were doing, etc. My favorite part was when some nice ladies on our bench started feeding us. One gave us some sort of fruit that I have never seen before. It was reddish-brown on the outside and the size of a kiwi. When we ate it the texture was like a pear but it tasted like a mix between an apple and a coconut. I later found out that it’s called a cheiku. Then another lady pulled out two rolled up pieces of greasy newspaper, wrapped in string, and insisted that we take them. We unrolled the newspaper, which was lined with a banana leaf, and inside was a dosa. Dosas are like giant pancakes, but thinner and crunchier, and delicious. They’re generally stuffed with masala potatoes or something similar (although these particular dosas were not), and come with a delightful coconut curry type sauce and a chili sauce to dip them in. Before we started eating the dosas I said something about “spicy”, which the lady who made them heard and assured us they would not be hot at all. By the time I finished eating mine I had to drink almost all of my water because my tongue was so on fire. It was delicious and made appreciated though, especially since we hadn’t had dinner.

Eventually everyone started nodding off, somehow. I thought I could sleep anywhere, but found out that the one place I absolutely cannot sleep is in the general compartment of an Indian Railways train. I think throughout the whole night I maybe got half an hour of broken sleep, but probably not even that much. This was first of all due to the fact that there were on average six people sitting (sleeping) on a bench made for three. At one point I felt something moving under my legs and realized it was a woman crawling down there to sleep. All possible space, including the aisle, was occupied by bags and bodies. Also throughout the whole night the train made multiple stops, during which people were getting on and off at each one. At one point someone got on the train and was trying to fit into some unoccupied space and accidentally stepped on one of the women sleeping in the middle of the aisle, who was of course in the way of anyone who tried to move. All of the sudden I heard lots of yelling and a few of the women around me were laughing. The girl sitting next to me translated a little of it to me, and at one point started laughing and told me “She just called her a buffalo!” Quite entertaining. That was just a tiny part of the noise of the night though. People were constantly yelling at each other, and babies were constantly crying. One mother didn’t realize that yelling at your screaming baby does not silence it.

Finally, after the longest train ride of my life, we pulled up to the Secunderabad train station and got off that train as quick as we possibly could, and, at last, made our way back home.

As much as that train ride was one of the absolute worst environments I have been in, it was also one of the best and by far one of my favorite and most memorable Indian experiences yet.