To the Ends of the Earth

I started out with three Tamils in my compartment. After they changed, unstrapped their suitcases, unbuckled bedrolls, and had a meal (one gently scoffed at my spoon: “Food taken with hand tastes different from food taken with spoon—sort of metal taste”), they spent an immense amount of time introducing themselves to one another. In bursts of Tamil speech were English words like “reposting,” “casual leave,” “annual audit.” As soon as I joined the conversation they began, with what I thought was a high degree of tact and courage, to speak to one another in English. They were in agreement on one point: Delhi was barbarous.

“I am staying at Lodi Hotel. I am booked months ahead. Everyone in Trich tells me it is a good hotel. Hah! I cannot use telephone. You have used telephone?”

“I cannot use telephone at all.”

“It is not Lodi Hotel,” said the third Tamil. “It is Delhi.”

“Yes, my friend, you are right,” said the second.

“I say to receptionist, ‘Kindly stop speaking to me in Hindi. Does no one speak English around this place? Speak to me in English if you please!’ ”

“It is really atrocious situation.”

“Hindi, Hindi, Hindi. Tcha!”

I said I’d had similar experiences. They shook their heads and added more stories of distress. We sat like four fugitives from savagery, bemoaning the general ignorance of English, and it was one of the Tamils—not I—who pointed out that the Hindi speaker would be lost in London.

I said, “Would he be lost in Madras?”

“English is widely spoken in Madras. We also use Tamil, but seldom Hindi. It is not our language.”

“In the south everyone has matric.” They had a knowing ease with abbreviations, “matric” for matriculation, “Trich” for the town of Tiruchchirappalli.

The conductor put his head into the compartment. He was a harassed man with the badges and equipment of Indian authority, a gunmetal puncher, a vindictive pencil, a clipboard thick with damp passenger lists, a bronze conductor’s pin, and a khaki pith helmet. He tapped my shoulder.

“Bring your case.”

Earlier I had asked for the two-berth compartment I had paid for. He had said they were overbooked. I demanded a refund. He said I’d have to file an application at the place of issue. I accused him of inefficiency. He withdrew. Now he had found a coupé in the next carriage.

“Does this cost extra?” I asked, sliding my suitcase in. I didn’t like the extortionate overtones of the word baksheesh.

“What you want,” he said.

“Then it doesn’t.”

“I am not saying it does or doesn’t. I am not asking.”

I liked the approach. I said, “What should I do?”

“To give or not to give.” He frowned at his passenger lists. “That is entirely your lookout.”

I gave him five rupees.

The compartment was gritty. There was no sink; the drop-leaf table was unhinged; and the rattling at the window, rising to a scream when another train passed, jarred my ears. Sometimes it was an old locomotive that sped by in the night, its kettle boiling, its whistle going, and its pistons leaking a hiss with the warning pitch of a blown valve that precedes an explosion. At about six A.M., near Bhopal, there was a rap on the door—not morning tea, but a candidate for the upper berth. He said, “Excuse me,” and crept in.

The forests of Madhya Pradesh, where all the toothbrushes grow, looked like the woods of New Hampshire with the last faint blue range of mountains removed. It was green, uncultivated, and full of leafy bluffs and shady brooks, but as the second day wore on it grew dustier, and New Hampshire gave way to Indian heat and Indian air. Dust collected at the window and sifted in, covering my map, my pipe, my glasses and notebook, my new stock of paperbacks (Joyce’s Exiles, Browning’s poems, The Narrow Corner by Somerset Maugham). I had a fine layer of dust on my face; dust furred the mirror, made the plastic seat abrasive and the floor crunchy. The window had to be kept open a crack because of the heat, but the penalty for this breeze was a stream of choking dust from the Central Indian plains.

At Nagpur in the afternoon, my traveling companion (an engineer with an extraordinary scar on his chest), said, “There are primitive people here called Gondis. They are quite strange. One woman may have four to five husbands and vicey-versy.”

I bought four oranges at the station, made a note of a sign advertising horoscopes that read MARRY YOUR DAUGHTERS BY SPENDING RS. 12 ONLY, shouted at a little man who was bullying a beggar, and read my handbook’s entry for Nagpur (so-called because it is on the River Nag):

Among the inhabitants are many aborigines known as Gonds. Of these the hill-tribes have black skins, flat noses and thick lips. A cloth round the waist is their chief garment. The religious belief varies from village to village. Nearly all worship the cholera and smallpox deities, and there are traces of serpent worship.