Ticket to India

by N. H. Senzai

  Malik . . . Nanabba. Maya remembered his body wrapped in sheets, waiting to be buried with the promised engagement ring. Warring emotions raced through her: deep sadness coupled with red hot anger. It wasn’t fair. They’d come so far.

  “It’s over before it even began,” whispered Nani­amma as tears ran down the sides of her face.

  “Naniamma,” whispered Zara. “It will be okay. . . .”

  “No . . . ,” came her defeated response. “Despite all the hope and planning . . . it’s over. . . .”

  “No!” cried Zara, two angry spots of color on her cheeks. “Don’t say that.”

  Maya took her grandmother’s hand, watching her strained features. Naniamma was stubborn even in defeat, as she struggled to keep from falling into a drugged sleep. As she faded, she squeezed Maya’s fingers and looked from one sister to the other. “So many promises. . . . My promise to find the chest . . . Malik’s to bring me here . . . All broken . . .” ­Exhaling, ­Naniamma went limp, falling into the deep, dark well of the drug’s effects.

  Zara slowly turned to face Maya, her face streaked with tears. “We also promised that we would help her,” she whispered.

  Maya nodded, painful words caught in her throat in a hard lump.

  Then her sister got that look on her face—the ­bullheaded-rhino look. She looked down at her watch, glanced at Maya, and smiled.

  9

  Runaway Train

  “ARE YOU SURE THIS is a good idea?” Maya asked again, twisting her hands as Zara propped a hastily written note for their mother against the water jug.

  “Look,” said Zara, “don’t worry so much. We traveled all the way to Little Rock last year to visit Sofia Khala by ourselves. It was easy.”

  Maya remembered. They’d changed planes in Houston without a problem.

  “It’ll be fine,” urged her sister. “We need to hurry if we’re going to make the train.”

  Maya considered her sister’s argument. Naniamma had made all the arrangements—train tickets, hotel, and car service in Faizabad. All they had to do was follow the memory map to the house in Aminpur. “But what if the chest isn’t there?” she asked pragmati­cally, hating to make rushed decisions.

  “Look, we’ve come this far, we have to see this through,” said Zara impatiently. “What if it is there—can you imagine how happy Naniamma will be?”

  Maya imagined presenting the chest to their grandmother. She would be overjoyed. And Nanabba, he’d get his ring. “Okay,” she exhaled. “We owe it to her to help finish what we started together.”

  “Good.” Zara smiled and hurried toward the door. “We’ll be back the day after tomorrow, before Mom has time to get herself totally worked up.”

  Pushing aside the desire to give her grandmother a kiss, since she might wake her, Maya joined Zara just inside the doorway, scanning the hospital hallway to make sure none of the nurses or Dr. Kumar was around. Coast clear, they exited their grandmother’s room and found a taxi.

  • • •

  At the hotel they packed quickly, tossing their clothes into a shared backpack. As Zara rifled through her grandmother’s handbag for money—Indian rupees and hundred-dollar bills—tucking them into her small purse along with her cell phone, Maya spotted Naniamma’s memory map on the side table. Gently folding it in half, she slid it into the guidebook and stuck the book into the backpack along with her journal and the train tickets. Zara added their passports, the iron key to their great-grandfather’s house, and the confirmation document for Maurya Hotel, hiding them all in an inside pocket.

  As Maya watched her sister zip up her purse, she paused, stomach suddenly in knots. “You know Mom’s going to be way beyond bubbling-volcano mad when she finds us missing, don’t you? She’s going to ground us for a year,” she added, trying to find a chink in her sister’s resolve.

  “Look,” said Zara, pausing a moment, face softening as if she finally realized Maya’s fear. “We can do this—how hard can it be?”

  The resistance Maya felt nearly melted, though a tiny bit remained. Her sister was right—Naniamma had already planned out the trip, step by step.

  “Okay, then,” said Zara, taking the backpack. “Let’s go.”

  The girls rode the elevator down to the lobby in silence, and as they neared the exit, they ran into Cyrus, the manager, heading toward the doors, ­briefcase in hand. His sea-green eyes brightened when he spotted them. “How is your grandmother?”

  Zara slowed, not wanting to waste time or answer too many nosy questions. “She’s awake, doing much better, thanks.”

  “Well, if you need anything, please let us know. Ms. Gupta will be taking over my post and she can help in any way you need.” He pointed to a young woman in a gray suit and bright red lipstick greeting guests.

  “Can you arrange for a taxi to take us back to the . . . hospital?” asked Zara.

  “Certainly,” Cyrus said, stepping toward the line of hotel-managed taxis. “Gopi,” he called out to a driver standing near a shiny white car. “Please take Miss Zara and Miss Maya to Apollo Hospital.” As they climbed inside, Cyrus paused. “I can accompany you if you wish, for any assistance.”

  Maya froze. Oh, no . . .

  “Oh, but it’s not necessary,” Zara blurted out.

  “Have a safe journey and give my best wishes to your grandmother,” said Cyrus.

  “We will,” said Zara as she pulled the door shut. As the car pulled onto the road, she turned to the driver. “Gopi, Delhi Junction Station, quickly.”

  “But, miss,” said the driver, confused. “Mr. Cyrus said to go to Apollo Hospital.”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” said Zara. Maya cringed at her imperious tone. “I need to meet . . . my father at the train station. He is coming in from Mumbai.”

  Gopi nodded, frowned, but didn’t argue. He shrugged and merged back into traffic, which was snarled with commuters returning home.

  Forty-five minutes later, they’d barely crawled more than a mile up the clogged road, penned in by a pack of scooters, cars, buses, rickshaws, and donkey carts.

  Maya glanced down at her watch: 6:23. The sun was low on the horizon and the train left in thirty-­seven minutes. Panic bloomed in her chest. “We’re not going to make it to the train station on time,” she whispered to her sister.

  Zara nodded, frowning. “Can’t we go any faster?” she asked Gopi, who sat fiddling with the CD, playing hip-gyrating Bollywood hits.

  “Miss, this is Delhi traffic.” He shrugged. “The station is only a few minutes away—the next left, past Mahatma Gandhi Park.”

  The sisters peered through the windshield, examining a long stretch of yellow brick that lay the ­foundation of Town Hall, which was trimmed with carved white stone. An expansive park stretched behind.

  “We can’t miss the train,” muttered Zara, jaw clenched as the car stopped yet again. To Maya’s surprise, she pulled on the backpack, took out a handful of bills from her purse, and handed the rupees to Gopi. “Come on,” she said, grabbing Maya’s hand. She pushed open the door and jumped out.

  Maneuvering past an idling city bus belching exhaust, they leapt onto the sidewalk facing a cinema. Bollywood movie posters announced the latest hits; swashbuckling heroes, with the last name of Khan, posed in tight jeans and leather jackets or snazzy suits, sharing steamy looks with long-lashed heroines in sequins. Zara sprinted past Town Hall, pulling Maya behind her. They ran past a bronze statue of Gandhi, a perch for dozing pigeons.

  Over the treetops Maya glimpsed red turrets ­rising up in an ominous violet sky. The color heralded secrecy and sometimes cruelty. Maya gulped, following her sister along the crosswalk through the main gates of Delhi Junction Station. They circumvented vendors balancing trays of candy, and shoe polishers clapping brushes to attract customers.

  6:48. Twelve minutes to find the right platform, though
t Maya, following Zara up the steps toward the entryway, where a man in a flowered polyester shirt lounged.

  “Let me help you, miss,” he called to Zara, smiling beneath a lush mustache.

  Naniamma’s voice rang in Maya’s head. Ignore anyone who tries to sell you something or tries to offer help.

  “No, thanks,” said Zara, clearly remembering the warning too, and she strode past to enter the station. Inside, she paused as a red-uniformed porter loaded with heavy suitcases crossed their path. A portly woman in a flowing mustard-and-orange sari sailed by, herding three teenage girls, all clutching their purses. Zara tightened her grip on the backpack as they stared out over the bustling Delhi Junction concourse. The immense station sprawled out in front of them, a sea of iridescent colors, swimming with travelers, hawkers, beggars, and, she was certain, pickpockets. Maya gulped, ears bombarded with the cacophony of a thousand voices, coupled with blaring music and rumbling trains. The noise dulled the buzzing of the loudspeaker, which was informing passengers of arriving trains, changed platforms, and delays.

  “Where do we go?” said Maya, clutching Zara’s arm.

  “Hold on,” replied Zara, peering along the concourse. “We need to find a train schedule that can direct us to the right platform.”

  “Excuse us,” interrupted a tired, Australian-­accented voice behind them. Zara pulled Maya aside to let a troop of disheveled backpackers pass.

  “Let’s find our train, mate,” said the wiry guy in the lead, running a hand through shaggy blond locks. “The platforms change all the time and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “But I’m famished, man,” grumbled a stocky guy beside him, tugging at his sweat-soaked T-shirt.

  “We’ll look for some nosh after,” said the blond.

  “Be careful this time,” piped up a deep voice from the back. “My stomach was raging for days after we ate that flaming chicken vindaloo at the Goa station, man.”

  “Remember what the bloke at the hotel said,” reminded the blond, snorting with laughter. “Only eat things that are hot and just out of the pot. No salads, no unbottled water . . .”

  Sharing a grin, the sisters scurried after them to an electronic display board. There it was: the ­Delhi-Faizabad Express, leaving from platform 6.

  “We only have five minutes till it arrives,” said Zara, grabbing Maya’s hand. “Come on!”

  As they hurried on, a whirring sounded from the board.

  “Hey,” said Maya, craning her neck back. “Can we just check the number again?”

  “We know already!” cried Zara, circumventing a chaiwallah, a tea vendor. “Do you want to miss the train?”

  Maya swallowed a retort and followed, though she wished she’d gotten a confirming look. They ran through the concourse toward a set of stairs to the second level, where pathways crisscrossed above the tracks. At the top step Maya paused, blinking in confusion. The platforms were not in numerical order. Platforms 2, 5, and 8 were to the right, toward the east wing of the station. Arrows directed passengers west toward 3, 7, and 9.

  Maya glanced from one direction to the other. Six, where’s six? People pushed past them, hauling cumbersome bundles and suitcases. She peered over the balcony and as she looked for a sign for 6, her eyes wavered. Hidden away, almost invisible, were packs of kids—tucked in the shadows, scampering across the tracks. That looks dangerous. Where are their parents? Then it hit her—they were street children. A ­piteous little girl sat in front of a beggar’s bowl, her arm ­missing. A sickening feeling settled in Maya’s gut. She glanced back to Zara, who was talking to a man in a crisp khaki uniform. He was slurping a cup of tea and twirling a baton. A policeman!

  “You must be going the other way,” he said, pointing with his baton. “It is the second-to-last stairs.”

  “Thank you,” said Zara.

  Grabbing Maya’s hand, she took off as the speakers crackled to life, spewing out unintelligible announcements. At the second-to-last set of stairs, a stretch of crimson metal pulled into the platform. The word “danger” popped into Maya’s head as she stared at the passenger cars, swarmed by a mass of people clambering aboard.

  “Come on!” cried Zara, yanking her down the steps just as the train’s whistle blew, giving them scant minutes to board.

  An image of a blood-soaked train compartment appeared from Naniamma’s story and Maya hesitated, but her sister pulled her toward the first passenger car. Maya glanced down at her ticket. The concierge had booked first-class air-conditioned compartments for them since their grandmother had wanted to have a private room with beds and a lockable door. The train car that stood in front of them read: “second class.” “This is the wrong section!” she cried.

  “Don’t worry about that now,” said Zara, pushing Maya ahead of her. “We just need to get on.”

  Ducking past flying elbows and bulky packages, Maya grabbed the metal rail and hauled herself up the steps onto the train. She squeezed past harried passengers and went up the cramped corridor, which extended the length of the car and was lined with windows on the left. On the right were compartments fitted with wooden benches facing each other, a bunk on top. All were full, but at the third one Maya spotted a bare spot on the floor, beneath the window. The rest of the space was taken up by an elderly couple traveling with a young woman and six children. When the old woman spotted the girls, she smiled and waved them inside.

  “Go, hurry,” urged Zara, pushing Maya inside.

  Maya climbed over luggage and prepared to sit down, her sister squeezing in beside her. Before she sat, she lay her jean jacket on the grimy floor. She’d just secured the backpack in her lap when the whistle blew and the train pulled away from the station.

  “We did it,” Zara laughed giddily, ruffling Maya’s hair.

  “Yeah,” replied Maya, a niggling feeling of doubt lurking in the back of her mind.

  “We’ll get the chest and be back in no time,” said Zara confidently.

  Maya leaned back against the wall, feeling the wind whip her hair as it whooshed through the bars on the window.

  Zara looked around the cramped but secure space. “Let’s wait a bit till things settle down. It might be better to just get off at the next stop and make our way to the right compartment.”

  “Okay,” said Maya. For once, she appreciated her sister’s bullheadedness, though she would never admit it. I’m glad we’re doing this, she thought. Nanabba would have wanted us to. She sighed, staring down at her ticket. A long journey lay before them, so she leaned over to retrieve her journal from their backpack.

  “Hey, pass me my book, would you?” asked Zara.

  “Sure,” replied Maya, double-checking their passports, money, hotel reservation, and return tickets to Delhi before finding what she needed. Under the flickering light of the compartment, she cracked open the guidebook to a map and copied it into her journal, outlining the route from Delhi to Faizabad in black.

  Sunday, September 18

  Train from Delhi to Faizabad

  Here are some facts about Indian railroads:

  1. In 1844, the first proposal to construct a railroad in India was presented to the East India Company in London.

  2. The total distance covered by the 14,300 trains of Indian Railways equals three and a half times the distance to the moon.

  3. If the tracks of Indian Railways were to be laid out, they would circle the earth almost 1.5 times.

  4. With over 1.6 million employees, Indian Railways is the world’s 9th-largest employer.

  5. The trains carry more than 25 million passengers every day, more than the entire population of Australia.

  6. The station with the longest name is Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta.

  7. Indian Railways has a mascot—Bholu, the guard elephant.

  Along with tea, the British brought the railway to India. It was a pretty smart thing to do
since they could use it to connect the huge country and rule it more efficiently. Seventy years ago, my grandmother and her family were on a train like this one, headed to Pakistan. That trip didn’t have a happy ending. Hopefully ours will.

  Maya stared down at the last line with a frown, wondering if she should explain to her teacher that she and Zara had taken off on their own. Before she could even think how to put that into words, she was distracted as the elderly woman reached up to the top bunk. As the little kids crowded around her, she brought down a huge stacked, metal lunch box. The younger woman spread out a piece of cloth on top of a suitcase, then unlatched the three tiers of metal dishes and laid them out. Spicy fragrances spilled out into the compartment as the children jostled to get closer. The woman handed each a roti, whole-wheat flatbread, filled with a scoop of potatoes and peas. She turned to the sisters and pointed from them to the food with a warm smile. Maya eyed the bright green peas. She was not a fan of their squishy green centers, but the thought of her grandmother’s comment of them being peas in a pod made her feel a bit more warmly toward the smooshy green vegetable.

  “No, thank you,” said Zara in her accented Urdu, smiling.

  The warnings from the backpackers flared in Maya’s mind and she politely shook her head too. They could not afford to get sick, no matter how good it looked. As the family enjoyed their meal, Maya sat watching the landscape beyond the window. All traces of the city had disappeared and it seemed as if they’d entered a different world. A stretch of lush farmland rolled along beside them, where women in bright skirts and shining bangles picked baskets of pale cauliflower. Past a field of corn, a group of children splashed in a pond, giving their docile blue-black water buffalo a good scrubbing. Maya returned their wave, watching them laugh and splash. Exhaustion tugging at her eyelids, she rested her head on Zara’s shoulder. When she didn’t get shoved away as she expected, she let her eyes drift shut, lulled by the sway of the train.

  • • •

  “Excusing me, miss.” A gruff voice broke through her sleep.