The Kamakhya Express

On a recent trip for work, I traveled 48 hours direct on my first train in India, the Kamakhya Express, from Ahmedabad (Gujarat) to Khagaria (Bihar) – see map below. Of the many crazy and ultimately rewarding experiences I had during those 2 full days, I have chosen 4 below. They should give you a good variety of the Indian experience:

Roaches on a Train: As I settled down for night 1 of 2 on my very first Indian train, hour 2 saw three baby roaches emerge from berth #8 (originally 33, I bounced to 49, 4, then 8 in a bout of pre-departure trades). Not to fear, my trusty REI headlamp was crucial in this situation. With both hands free, and a perfectly placed face towel provided by none other than the NorthEastern Railway of India, two were squashed and the third pincered down a hole in the corner, never to return. I slept semi-soundly that night, dreaming, of course, of snakes and Samuel L. Jackson.

A big, drunk Indian in a camo jacket: Hour 12 arrived and I was rudely awakened and ushered back to berth 4 where a burly Bihari awaited me. He gave a 5-minute epilogue in grunts and slurs about 2 feet from my face, and I made out “BSF”, Border Security Forces, at one point. So, he was a big, dumb, drunk soldier. India’s border security entrusted to him. Then he started slapping my knee. No touching! An hour or so later, he shut up and attempted to get into his berth. Now that was entertaining. Watching a full grown, drunk man falling down over and over like a big baby is class-A funny. It took  him about 10 minutes, and then there was a beautiful, long drunken slumber complete with snoring and farting. Right above me. The knee slapping ended right then and there.

7 Teachers and a Game of Charades: Ah how nice it was to move from 4 back to my original 33 and a berth full of 7 English speaking teachers from A’bad en route to Varnassi. We stayed together for hours 15-24. Hindi was practiced. Food was fed to me. Charades was played for hours. Of course, all the things one should do on a train were done. I had a new train family. It was a good train life. That night I dreamt of Railroad Tycoon.

The Zipperwalla: on hour 35 or somewhere around there, long after my train family had abandoned me (just as fast as they had adopted), and as I shared a lonely 6-berth compartment with a man to be described only as “kaka,” a fellow dangling hundreds of zippers jingled by us. Hmm. That was a little odd. 15 minutes later he passed again, and kaka shouted for him. I spent the next 5 minutes observing what can only be described as the ingenuity that is India. This man was the zipperwalla. His whole livelihood was based on fixing people’s luggage, jackets, anything with zippers. He expertly detached the broken zipper from kaka's luggage with a razor’s edge, threaded a needle through the side of the zipper, attached a new zipper from his keyring of hundreds, and sewed it all back up again. Flawlessly. No sign that anything was ever broken. And he did it in 5 minutes flat. 2 zippers. The cost? 20 rupees he asked, and kaka bargained down to 15. That’s 30 cents. 5 minutes earlier kaka and I had been sitting back, reading our books, as the train raced ahead, countryside whirring by, stretched out on our own lower berths, and now, I was astounded once more, by the sheer simplicity of the job that this man had, and the skill at which he performed it. By the thought of how a peddler like this would never exist in the states, how I would, without hesitation, discard a jacket with a broken zipper before thinking twice about having it repaired. And I have seen this before. In El Salvador, Guatemala, Morocco, and Ethiopia. Where strong economy may be lacking, where wealth is not so easily obtained, the informal sector flourishes, on the train platform, the street corner, the village dirt road. My 48 hours on the Kamakhya can be summed up by this one zipperwalla and the thought process he kickstarted in my head. Wherever you go in India, on trains, in big cities, in rural villages, you find the zipperwalla, or the shoewalla, keywalla, cyclewalla (to fix your bike – not to be consulted if your bike gets a flat tire though; that would be for the puncturewalla), the metalwalla, leatherwalla, and so on.

I wished I had had a broken zipper at that very moment.

And thus, in one set of clothes, 48 hours was spent, 2002 kilometers covered, 5 states spanned, 8 cups of chai consumed, 40 degrees in temperature lowered from start to finish, and an adventure sown. And in four days, it will all happen again.

I really want to play Railroad Tycoon.