At six a.m. a guy comes around yelling. It’s reveille!
My drug salesmen must have gotten bored and left because I am alone with only about a thousand other Indian train station bums.
I immediately line up in a rapidly forming queue. Cursing and snarling, I hold my place and buy a ticket to the Nepal border—it’s as far as the train goes.
It helps to be big and mean in these queues and I am bigger than most of these people and, by now, experienced enough to act as mean as a professional wrestler.
I buy my third-class ticket and, after a bewildering search in the railway yard I locate my coach and grab a seat.
The usual circus of side-show beggars soon arrive, but instead of arousing my compassion, their theatrically emphasized deformities arouse my disgust and anger, which my struggle in the ticket queue has pushed to a dangerous level. I manage to keep my cool, but mentally kick several of the misshapen, whining, persistent bastards right through the coach window.
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