Kiki and I walked to the Rajaji Bhaven at 3am to buy last minute tickets for the Mumbai Express. The streets were quiet, save for the occasional dog who bristled and barked. Electric lights shone from a few windows and illuminated sheet metal shop coverings, empty fruit carts, wilted strings of flowers and bits of newspaper. Kiki was silent. She hugged her pillow to her chest while I tossed a sleeping mat from hand to hand, sometimes slinging it across my shoulders, sometimes under my arm. A mangy yellow dog with scabs and ringworm spots began chasing us; I flinched, thinking about how I don’t have a rabies vaccine, but Kiki kept her eyes cast down and her shoulders hunched–in another world. A bald man in a grimy buttondown grunted as we passed, then rolled over and went back to sleep on his doorstep. Chennai was a boring city, Kiki muttered, a safe city, especially Basent Nagar…all clear and worry free, even at three in morning. A car rolled past, then the street became silent–the same sort of private, uninhabited silence of no one awake and no one around that had characterized Perth after six in the evening. I realized that I missed it and stretched my arms.
When we arrived at the ticket depot at 4:30am, there was already a line. I counted eighteen people on mats and crouched on the sidewalk in front of the gates. Kiki said the depot would open at 8am. Train reservations fill up quickly in India, so if you want to take a last minute trip, you have to reserve tatkal tickets, which are released two days before the train departs. Althouh the number of tatkal tickets depends on the number of cancellations, they usually disappear about half an hour to an hour after sales begin. Last time Kiki had bought a tatkal ticket, she had to arrive at 3:30am to ensure success; the time before, she had arrived at 7:30am, and by the time she got to the ticket window the seats on her train were long gone. The ticketmaster behind the window had given her a very smug, condescending look when she complained. “You should have been on time buying the tickets,” he had said. She protested that she had arrived half an hour early and the ticketmaster laughed. “Try six hours early! Some people spend the night here!”
We lay our sleeping mat on the sidewalk and claimed spots 19 and 20 in the queue. Kiki assured me that we had a good chance of getting the takal ticket–the first thirty people were usually successful. I don’t know how she came up with that figure, but she didn’t pause to explain. In a minute she had passed out of the mat, her arm over her eyes. I lay next to her. A man joined the line and motioned that we should move our mat, but I shook my head; it was my space. He sat cross-legged behind us–number 21–while I curled into a ball in a effort to shield against the mosquitos. I dreamed about my family dying. We were in the middle of a jungle full of banana leaves and mold and flying beetles, and when I fought the man who had murdered my sister, I bit him like a dog.
At 5:45am, Number 21 kicked me in the butt. He was running towards the gates trying to maintain his place in line, while twenty or thirty young men rushed past, shouting and elbowing. “COME!” Number 21 bellowed, then added a few words in Tamil for emphasis. I slung my backpack on my shoulder and took a step toward the gate, then realized I couldn’t leave Kiki behind. There was no time, so I followed Number 21′s lead, and kicked her in the butt as well. I told her to meet me inside with the mat and the pillow.
Chaos had erupted inside the compound, everyone cheating and arguing and jockeying for a better position. I tried to join in the fray and push to the head of the line, hoping that people would give way because I was a girl (and a Westerner), but Number 21 grabbed my arm and positioned me in front of him. “Stay,” he commanded, puffing his stomach and looking up his nose at me. He had handlebar mustache. I scanned the line and saw I had been demoted to number 35, but decided to listen to the mustache man, formally Number 21 and now Number 36. He handed me an English and Tamil order form, which demanded information about my name, address, train line, preferred method of payment, etc. I filled it out while the man tried to help me in Tamil, pointing every now and then at and empty box and insisting that I fill it in. I shrugged my shoulders in response and tried to communicate that I couldn’t finish the form–I didn’t have all the information.
Kiki wandered inside the enclosure, set the sleeping mat on the ground across from the line and fell asleep again. Every now and then a young man stared at the curve of her hip or the way her hand draped across her head. At around 7:30am, she woke up and sat next to me. Several woman in saris arrived and joined their husbands or boyfriends with steaming cups of chai. Kiki eyed them mournfully, and wished that a breakfast vendor would set up shop in the courtyard.
Half an hour later, the ticketmasters opened the depot doors and everyone filed inside–this time very quietly and orderly. Number 21/36 wheeled me into the seat in front of him and ten minutes later I was standing at ticket counter watching the ticketmaster print a receipt. Kiki and I celebrated with a breakfast at the fast food joint down the street: thirty ruppees for chai in a metal cup and a liberal serving of Masal Vadai (fried lentil pancakes) with mint chutney. Arounds us, the neighborhood woke up. Cars honked and auto-rickshaws tailgated bicyles. Fruit sellers arranged their wares, while the smell of mango and car exhaust drifted down the street.
I didn’t tell Kiki, but I was relieved to be traveling again. I wanted to be on my own.
