The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  “Sahib,” the rickshwalla said, “you were sended to me!”

  “What are you talking about, Venky? I found you all by myself. No one knows about you … you’re my secret weapon.”

  But the rickshawalla had more to say:

  “No, Sahib, you no understanding! You were sended to me by angels … from Heaven!”

  Venky was obviously drunk.

  “I thought you were sober,” I said. “You should know better than this.”

  “But Sahib,” he replied earnestly, “I am no drunk. I will no be drinking again. You were sended to me … you are warning from God. I was drinking … wasting money. Sending little bit to wife in Purulia only. God sending you to me!”

  “Venky,” I replied, “if you’re not drunk, then you’ve gone mad. How could you possibly think I was sent from Heaven?”

  He lay out on the ground, as if mimicking a corpse.

  “Konkalwallas,” he shouted, “this was sign!”

  Venky was eager to explain how the horrors of the skeleton factory had jerked him into a new, unknown life of moral rectitude. He had witnessed a vision … not God or angels, but skeleton dealers and their corpses. Somehow, he now saw me as his savior. But there was no time for the adulation.

  “Venky,” I said, “I’m going on a trip. I need your help.”

  “Trip? Oh, very nice. Where you to going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When you are going?”

  I tapped my watch.

  “Immediately,” I said.

  The rickshawalla gave me an uneasy glance.

  “I need some ideas,” I said. “If you could go anywhere in India to meet a godman … where would you go?”

  “Holy man … sadhu?”

  “Yes, that’s right …”

  Venky thought long and hard. He masked his face with his spindly fingers. A minute passed. Five more minutes slipped away. The rickshawalla seemed to have fallen into a trance. Perhaps the sudden shortage of alcohol had been too much for his addicted system.

  “Venky!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”

  “I thinking, Sahib.”

  “All right, well stop thinking now. What have you come up with?”

  Venky raised a finger in the air, as if he were testing the direction of the wind.

  “I going to Jamshedpur Mental Hospital,” he said, pointedly.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Bihar.”

  “But I'm not mad. At least, I don’t think I am.”

  “Yes, Sahib. You no loony. Famous sadhu at Jamshedpur Mental Hospital. Very popular.”

  “Is he mad?”

  “Oh, no, Sahib,” came the reply. “He no loony … he just living there.”

  “Hmm, an asylum for sane people: sounds like a great idea.”

  I pulled the map from my back pocket and hunted for Jamshedpur.

  “Well, that’s quite close … due west,” I said when I had found it. “I suppose it’s a start.”

  Venky patted the seat of his rickshaw and widened his eyes.

  “Train leaving Howrah Junction,” he said knowingly. “I take you there.”

  Heaving the rickshaw’s handles up to his armpits like upturned hockey sticks, Venky padded his way north to the famous Calcutta Strand. I was horrified he should still be working barefoot. On many occasions I had offered to buy him a pair of shoes. But Venky insisted he had never worn footwear – even when he was a postal runner in Purulia. Shoes made his feet itch and sweat, and that made his work impossible. So, it was with bare feet that he dodged the potholes on that bright yet uncertain morning.

  India is accustomed to pandemonium on a grand scale. At any one time, it seems as if all nine hundred million people are careering about, guided by their own evolved form of Brownian motion. Like constellations in a distant cosmos, they move according to predestined trajectories. And at the center of each unending galaxy is India’s version of a Black Hole: a central railway terminus.

  Amid the structured chaos of the subcontinent, a special and venerated place is reserved for major railway stations. Those who enter them can never be certain of when, or where, they will emerge. Indeed, some never reappear at all. They become trapped in the cycle of polishing shoes, picking pockets and selling frothy mango drinks.

  Howrah railway station is the most visually spectacular Black Hole of all. It might not have the architectural appeal of Mumbai’s Indo-Gothic Victoria Terminus, but it boasts an inexorable blend of life. The floor’s rich patchwork stretched out like a grand kelim, covering every inch of the station. Knotted together, sealed in position like frozen atoms, there was almost no room to move. Even if they could have moved, no one would have dared. As in a perpetual game of musical chairs – without music or chairs – stand up and you would be out.

  Every conceivable type was locked in the human traffic jam. Flower sellers with bundles of lilies; a dentist with his mobile clinic – a pair of pliers; a company of Jain pilgrims with white cardboard masks; fifty schoolboys searching for cigarette ends; a nest of kittens abandoned by their mother; sixty turbaned porters, each with a bale of hemp at his side; a blind beggar with his crippled monkey; a Kali-following sadhu with a clip-on tongue, strap-on arms, a crown, and clutching a sword dipped in red paint … to them all I was an untouchable with nowhere to sit.

  When the ticket booth opened I purchased a second-class ticket on the Hatia Express to Jamshedpur. It was to leave at 21:35 hours. There was exactly thirteen hours to wait.

  Venky offered to take me back into town. But I had already fallen victim to the listless indifference of life in the Black Hole. When I explained this, the rickshawalla asked me if it was the same sort of Black Hole into which the British prisoners had been crammed in central Calcutta. I replied that, although not entirely dissimilar, there were fundamental differences. Both were dingy, pungent and packed to the point of bursting; both kept prisoner those ensnared within. But, I said, as far as I knew, the Black Hole of Calcutta had no electric fortune-telling machines, no tea stalls or eunuchs soliciting alms.

  Bidding farewell to my secret weapon, I ordered him to leave me. I would have to hurry if I was to get prime waiting position on platform nine. Once again, Venky thanked God for sending me to him. He would, he said, never drink chullu again. He was a new man.

  The first five hours passed very slowly. The platform’s newspaper stall had never seen such brisk business. In the first hour alone, I slurped my way through five Frooti mango drinks, flicked through six Bengali film magazines, and began reading a book entitled How to Breed Reptiles. When I had learnt all about breeding boxes for expectant iguanas, I mugged up How to Renovate Dentures and How to Draw Cathedrals. Magazine kiosks on Indian railway platforms always specialize in “How to” books. Shrewd passengers realize there’s no better time for self-help than when waylaid in a railway Black Hole.

  By the tenth hour, the Hole had taken total control. All earthly concepts of time and place had been suspended. Sustained by the stream of self-help publications and frothy fruit drinks, I yielded to an infant boot-boy’s petitions for employment. My shoes had, somehow, become covered in cow dung. As soon the boy had scampered away to splurge his five rupees, a herd of platform salesmen bustled around. Did I want to buy a set of billiard balls, a lime-green mohair balaclava, an eyelash curler, ten gallons of lubricating oil for a diesel locomotive, a box of live white mice, a green parrot, or a lava-lamp?

  I waved them all aside. Another shoe lad stumbled over. This one had a trolley in tow.

  “Sahib, shoe cleaning?”

  “No, thanks, I’ve just had them done.”

  The child screwed up his face. I peered down. My shoes were covered in diluted cow dung. I was about to say “How did that happen again?” when I noticed a lilac paint tin dangling from the back of the boot boy’s trolley. It was full of cow dung mix. The child hurried away, fearful of my vows of retribution. Then I scanned the platform. Far too engrossed in their newly purchased self-help
books, the other passengers hadn’t noticed the scam. First a boot boy would surreptitiously splatter the potential customer’s shoes with excrement, then he would offer to clean them. The perpetual cycle – the Calcutta Special – guaranteed a lifetime of employment.

  Two hours before the Hatia Express was to arrive, something curious happened on platform nine: the epicenter of the Black Hole. A young street entertainer set up his stall a few yards away from where I was sitting. He performed various simple sleights-of-hand and feats of conjury. A discreet crowd of porters, white-mice-sellers and browbeaten travelers huddled around. Then the boy – who was aged about thirteen – started a new routine. He coaxed a member of the crowd to hand over a fifty-rupee note. The bill was folded twice and placed in a brown envelope. The owner of the money wrote his initials on the envelope; which was then thrown into a box with similar sachets. When the man dug into the box and searched for his own envelope, it had gone. The trick was executed very skillfully. The crowd clapped each time the child duped another unsuspecting person. As I watched the young conjuror perform his trick, he began to seem familiar. Shooing away a brigade of platform salesmen, I stood up to get a better view. The boy’s face … that was it. The Charlie Chaplin smile … I knew that smile. It was the boy from the Median: the one who had tricked a hundred rupees from me.

  Wasting no time, I marched over and ordered the boy to hand over my money. I made a series of empty threats: I would tell his parents; I would call the station manager; I would expose him as a fraud. But the lad pulled a face and cackled something to his faithful audience, who turned against me. Handing over her fifty rupees, one woman commanded me to pick on someone my own size. Another shouted that I should go back to my home country. I had not seen an assembly turn so quickly from rapture to anger. With them baying for my blood, I returned to my seat, vowing revenge.

  Still an hour to wait. I wolfed down a handful of paan-flavored Polo mints. To take my mind off thoughts of retribution, I pulled out the cloth-backed map of India, and laid it down on the ground.

  After the mental hospital, where was it to be? What cities and provinces should a journey of observation take in? Narrowing my eyes, I stared at the multitude of names. First, I circled Calcutta, then Jamshedpur. Why was Hyderabad already marked? Did the Master intend me to go there? After all, this was his map. Gokul’s miracle asthma cure was a good enough reason to go there. My breathing had become more strained each day, and an asthmatic inhaler had had little effect. I needed a miracle. Another motive to visit the city was to see the Rock Castle Hotel: favored as a writing haunt by the explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger.

  Although sketchy, Gokul’s information was that the Gowd family’s miraculous asthma cure took place in early June. That was still three months away. I required another destination before Hyderabad. What about Bangalore? Nowhere had ever seemed more exotic than the city’s sixteenth-century Bull Temple. I etched a circle around Bangalore. I would ramble south first, then backtrack to Hyderabad by the start of June.

  Enough map work for now, I mused, putting the cloth-backed chart away. A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation.

  Twenty minutes ahead of schedule, the Hatia Express gushed into the station. The Black Hole was galvanized into action. A thousand red shirted bearers scuttled about, swaggering like junior seamen after a night on shore. Each of their heads bore a sinister palm-leaf package.

  As waves of passengers clambered over each other to board the train, I again noticed the young ruffian. This time there was no militant crowd supporting him. So, I collared him.

  “Give me back my hundred rupees!”

  “Oh, there you are,” said the boy, almost as if he was pleased to see me. “All right, here’s your money. I was just looking after it for you.”

  The child handed over two fifty-rupee notes. His afternoon’s hoaxing must have brought in a considerable sum if he was prepared to reimburse his victims.

  “You must need the money more than me,” he said arrogantly, in fluent English. “You’re dressed worse than a beggar! Where are you going … to sleep with the sewer rats?”

  “How dare you insult me?” I said. “I’ve got no time to talk to you, you horrible child … I’m off to Jamshedpur on the start of an important journey.”

  With that, I scrabbled up the thrashing ladder of passengers into the appropriate carriage. The thought of a window seat all to myself was almost too much to take. I lounged about, flexing my arms like a psychotic whose straitjacket had been untied. The sense of glorious extra space didn’t last long. Well before the train pulled out of Howrah, I was squashed up against hundreds of others like a dried date in a box.

  On the dot of nine thirty-five the Hatia Express sheered out from Howrah Station and into the unknown.

  The man sitting beside me whipped open a reinforced pewter-gray attache case which was resting on his lap. I told him that I felt like Dick Whittington heading off for fame and fortune; and that all I needed was a cat. The man’s face twisted in a confused smile.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. White-ting-don,” he said politely. “J. P. Kamaraj at your service. Call me J.P.”

  “No, no … I'm not Whittington. I just feel like him.”

  The man adjusted his hairpiece, which was skew-whiff. The crude swath of dark hair resembled a horsehair oven mitt.

  “You have a cat?” he asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not. I’m on a journey of observation.” I tapped my bag. “No space for cats,” I said.

  With his wig once again realigned, J.P. poked about in his own case. Indian trains are full of bewigged gentlemen with reinforced VIP Luggage attache cases. Most are salesmen. Those who are not are scientists. Traveling the subcontinent in second-class carriages, they are responsible for keeping the country together.

  “I am a scientist,” said J.P. as the train gathered speed to break from the gravitational orbit of the Howrah Black Hole.

  “Really?” I said earnestly. “What’s your area of research?”

  J. P. Kamaraj clicked his attache case shut furtively.

  “Very secret project,” he said.

  “Oh, I see … well, I don’t want to pry.”

  At that moment the carriage door slid back. The brash young scam artist was standing in its frame.

  “Oh, God, not you!” I said loudly.

  J.P. looked up, as if he ought to be introduced.

  “Your friend?” he asked.

  The child sat in the seat adjacent to mine.

  “Certainly not my friend,” I said. “This is a worthless trouble-maker. He’s a contriver of the worst kind – he dupes money from the unsuspecting.”

  “I gave you back your money,” protested the child. “I didn’t need it anyway. A hundred rupees is nothing to me.”

  “Go and leave me in peace,” I said. “I'm having a conversation with this professional gentleman.”

  The child pulled a wad of worn fifty-rupee notes from his underwear. He licked his thumb and counted them with a croupier’s dexterity.

  “Five thousand …” he said. “Not worthless!”

  “Each one of those notes represents someone you’ve ripped off. You should be ashamed.”

  Turning my shoulder to the lad, I told J.P. about my pupilage to Feroze and the journey of observation. As he praised the journey on which I was embarking, the boy cut in:

  “I’m coming with you,” he said.

  “You most certainly are not.”

  “Oh, yes I am, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Why don’t you go off and defraud a few more innocents and leave me alone?”

  “Because I'm staying here with you.”

  “All right,” I said. “See if I care.”

  I was certain he would trundle away after minutes. After all, he was very young.

  “I'm sorry, J.P.,” I said. “Before we were interrupted you were telling me of your project
.”

  Forgetting that he had just advertised the secrecy surrounding it, the scientist explained all.

  “We’re developing a kind of Habbakuk,” he said.

  “Habba-what?”

  J.P. slid his reinforced case on to the floor and leant over to me.

  “It’s another codename for Pykrete,” he whispered. “We are developing an Indian version …”

  “What’s Pykrete … a kind of soap?”

  J.P. laughed.

  “Not soap,” he said. “In the war a British scientist called Geoffrey Pyke made an amalgam of ice and wood pulp, it was twelve times stronger than concrete, cheap to make, and it floated. Mountbatten and Churchill used it for ‘Operation Habbakuk’.”

  “What was that?”

  “Wait, I am telling you,” said J.P. “You see, their idea was to build huge Pykrete battleships, two thousand feet long – weighing two million tons.”

  “So what happened?”

  The scientist frowned.

  “After successful secret tests in Canada, the Pykrete project was mysteriously shelved.”

  “But why?”

  “They ran into difficulties,” said J.P. intently. “You see, they wanted to use the product to make war.”

  “Well, the tests were being done during World War Two!”

  “That’s no excuse,” riposted J.P., wagging his index finger at me.

  “Well, if you’re not intending on using it for war … what are you developing Pykrete for?”

  A warm, confident smile crossed the scientist’s face.

  “We,” he said majestically, “are building a temple on a Pykrete base … it will be dedicated to Krishna and will travel around the coast of India. The ship will stop at towns along the way and people will come aboard to worship!”

  “That’s a stupid idea,” said the scammer, who was listening in.

  “Shut up!” I snapped vociferously. But I had to agree, it was an absurd idea.

  Bolstered by the audience of skeptics, J.P. ranted on for two hours. He had grand plans for the floating Pykrete mandir. The construction would have ice gardens and fountains, a meditation center, a hospital, lodgings for the staff, a bathhouse, a library and refectory, a spacious assembly hall and a dairy farm.