A Journey through Time and Memories

Slept on the train. As I go over the eternity spent in Varkala and mull over all the expressions and experiences and meetings, I am moved and I realise this now, into a completely new chapter of my life. This is mostly because of 2 of the most remarkable, loving people I have ever met, but of them I will write at a later time.

In the upper-birth, surrounded by sleeping Indian men (on the other side, on the other births...) I laid myself down, removing only my glasses and keeping everything else on, clothes, bangles, earrings, etc. Then I did something that I haven't done very much in India because I normally enjoy and revel in the sounds, the noise, the music of Mother India, but just this once I curled together on my upper-birth and popped my ipod speakers into my ears, spinning the white wheel all the way to the Kinks, closing my eyes and letting the monotonous moaning of the train enfold my solitary self where I laid in the dark, my only half-conscious mind drifting between the intrigues and horrors of Shantaram, of which I only have 200 pages remaining. I can't believe Johnny Depp is going to play Linbaba. The music changing from "You Got Me", to "Sunny Afternoon", my thoughts circling around the past few months, of painful love's lost, of him whose heart I broke and carmically must repent for until forgiven, of them that broke my heart -a few times each, blue eyes, black eyes: the people I've used and treated badly, the people I've liked, my friends that I miss but that literally are on the other side of the world, a distance that feels greater every day.

Alone in the train the dark of night and the joyful freedom of the Kinks carried me through memories of fleeing from Jarna over a day, in a car with 3  girls screaming to the beat of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers', "Californication", escaping deeper into the Swedish countryside to smoke cigarettes and eat lunch left-overs in the backseat on paper plates. Seeing new countries, experiencing the moisture of Brazil where it's too hot to even sweat. Going through the mountains to Switzerland, passing through a blizzard and arriving into the surprising green warmth of Swiss winters. Having wine by the Rein and talking about life and Shakespeare and all that has been. Sleeping under the stairs, failing to make a fire but managing to make tea. The canals of Amsterdam, screaming an crying and having to grow 20 years older in one afternoon and suddenly whiskey and those blue eyes and 3 months that I must remind myself with startling patience and eternal wisdom of my additional 20 years, were not wasted. There is a lesson in everything. An experience that needed to be had.

I fell asleep a few times, my mind drifting off with the final, slightly distressed thought of, "how the fuck am I going to know when the fuck the train arrives in Maduari?" The conductor only answered "yes, yes" to my crystal-clear question, "what time we come to Madurai Junction?"

I woke up somehow at around 4 a.m. to use the bathroom, (the hole in the floor leading straight out to the train tracks...) and sat chilling by the window for a bit. I'd only sat for about 20 minutes when the Madurai Junction sign appeared. I grabbed my backpack, skipped off the train, bought some disgustingly sweet chai off a man on the platform, god a bit lost, waved frenetically for the rickshaw drivers wanting to take me places to bugger off, crossed the parking lot, zig-zagged between the masses of pavement dwellers sleeping on bits of cardboard under thin woollen blankets and trash, and got into the Madurai Junction Station. The station was if possible even more packed than the parking lot with people sleeping on the floor. I gazed quickly across the station, trying to attract as little attention to myself as possible.

Breakfast. I move over to a small stand, purchase a pack of 50/50 biscuits (the least sweet ones on the market and excellent to dip on coffee or chai). Mind you I sometimes find it difficult to tell the difference between the two in India. The coffee is bloody weak as, and the tea hits you like a good smack in your braincells. Add powdered milk and PLENTY of sugar to that and they actually then become quite similar to each other.

One cup of chai, please. (Expressed as a simple tap on the metal container and one finger meaning one, please.) Two samosas, please. (Point, indicate 2 with your fingers, waggle your head. All good.) I go searching for the ladies waiting room, which up until this point always has been a separate room, sometimes with a watchman outside. This time it is simply a seating area of some kind, held away from the rest of the platform seats whilst still pretty much being in the cneter of it all. First class and AC passengers have a waiting room though. I see a somewhat distressed looking European girl seated among the women and then I decide to join her to make sure that everything is okay.

Yeah, she's been here since July and has plenty of experience from India, even if she makes a comment about AC being the way to go. The world's most bloody boring compartments ever, you hardly get as much as a whiff of chai or somebody screaming at you with colourful keychains. Or Bollywood music in the middle of the night off somebody's cellphone. I decide to pretend that I am a firstclass passenger, put on my usual haughty look that makes women dislike me and men stay the bloody hell away, and enter the waiting room without a second glance. Sometimes, and Shantaram puts this better, as a foreigner you kind of become invisible in your extreme visibility. Everyone sees and stares at you, but nobody sees what you are doing, or thinks about it twice, at all. Ever.

I just walk into the waiting room, sit down on a steel chair, cover myself in mosquito repellant (Madurai is infected with them, I recall) and enjoy my breakfast. Biscuits dipped in sweet chai, 2 samosas that turn out to be really spicy, and finally a honey-nut bar to get rid of some of the spiciness as well as the nasty aftertaste that fried spicy food leaves in your mouth.

I pop my ipod in again and go from the Grateful Dead, to Jethro Tull. The mosquitos buzz at a comfortable distance away from me, some girls in the waiting room play loud Indian popular music from their cellphones. They're very stiley, rich Mumbai girls'.

6:45. Only 4 and a half hours to go. I let the Kinks take me away again.