Platform 4 (Excerpt from journal)

Slept late today, oh the luxury!! Hot shower, so often taken for granted. And breakfast, left by Shashi (a saint!), though not sure which is breakfast and which is lunch from what’s there… Blogging and emailing, having a computer in Shashi’s is a godsend, will miss it, so much taken for granted at home!!

As I write a cow is walking past me, it’s 11:30pm in Kanpur Central Train Station, platform 4. Got pissed off with Derek cos he leaves me in charge of everything all the time, so he went and found out about our train (due 3 ½ hours late… so will arrive 2:30am) and we have a joke and a laugh and we’re friends again. Didn’t even have to yellow card him (a present to each of us from Fr. Lorcan, a teeny notebook that we use to write our annoyances to each other if we can’t sort it out verbally, still unused, though Der did give me one that called me a “big stoopid head”).
Pushing on towards 12am now and the station is very busy, people everywhere, cramming onto trains, snack guys with their carts of oil filled woks and chillis and veg and deep fried snacks roll them up and down the 50 ft ramp in front of me following the platform announcements on the tannoy (either 5 guys pushing it up, or 5 guys hanging on to the back of it as it careers down the ramp!!), constant tannoy calls same the world over totally incomprehensible!, busy, busy, busy, dirt and rubbish, the smell of pollution and diesel, my mossie spray, brightly coloured saris, people smiling and waving at us, or staring, the red shirted platform attendants with bags stacked on their heads and more underarm both sides, rats on the tracks and running around, rubbish and dirt, power cuts, the tannoy every minute first in Hindi then English (occasionally very loud in some unknown language), wooly hats and scarves, beggars and deformities, limps, masses of people sitting and sleeping and watching, stares, pollution haze even in the dark, bikes, unshaven and dirty, spitting big gobs of paan stained saliva, stares and always noisy, busy, busy, busy….

It’s 4am, still waiting, decided to move into the slightly warmer “upper class” waiting room. Derek sleeps (until he sees them). A tiny mouse, and a much larger mouse/rat? The mouse zips around the floor, as Derek watches like a hawk (I laugh, think to myself-thank God their not cockroaches! Brave face.). Drink tea from mud cups, hope the stomach doesn’t mind… 5am, train approaching? So move to platform, 6am chat to a guy waiting for same train, it’s getting brighter, can see the track rats better now, don’t tell Derek about the rat that just walked a ft behind him to get into the drain.. 8am, decision time, think for a 1 ½ day trip that’s just lost a day, maybe call it a day! 8:30am almost 12 hours since we left the house to get here, ring back and ask if we can come back to the house. Haven’t slept, woozy, eat biscuits. Try to get a refund as just informed the train is cancelled, can get the 5pm one if we want, we decline. Walk out the front of the station (which by the way is like a massive multi-turreted temple, very impressive, missed that on arrival!) and bombarded by taxi drivers trying to undercut each other. Get a mini minivan with the dodgiest one, drive away from our destination but get there very quick. Tired, dulled explanations, brush teeth, collapse into bed, sleep……….