Finding the train and the right car is easy and as the coach begins to move it is almost empty.
This is going to be a piece of cake, I think-- but stop-by-stop the coach fills until it is a crush.
The men coming aboard wear turbans, curled beards and mustaches-- the women wear colorful saris, heavy make-up and lots of glittery jewelry, all so very different from the dreary and repressed Moslem world I have just left!
Most of the men are chain-smoking, holding their thin leaf-wrapped cigarette protruding from between the fingers of their clenched fist and sucking the smoke out of a hole formed by their thumb and forefinger. I have never seen anyone smoke like this before.
Some youths, red mouthed from chewing beetle-nut talk to me (talk-spit, talk-spit!) Their glazed eyes stoned, they disjointedly discus their university exams. I eat the railway luncheon: three kinds of blazing hot spiced curry and rice. I like it, but I wonder if I can digest it. Well, it is all there is.
Out the window hazy fields and trees with plenty of perching birds slide past.
The hardwood plank seat gets harder by the mile. Peach-colored sunset and at ten p.m. we roll into Delhi.
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