Theresa Lewis

Many people dream of visiting some far away place. My dream, since I was a child was to visit India. I had a great aunt from there and I loved to listen to the stories my mother told me about India. One day, my dream came true. Although my husband was not from India, he was of Indian origin. After we were married, we went to visit some of his family who still lived in India. They were scattered form Maharashtra Province to Andhra Pradesh Province. It was a thrill of a lifetime to realize my dream.

While there, I soon learned that India was a land of extremes. There was extreme wealth and extreme poverty side by side. The heat was extreme compared to Canada. Bugs and rodents were prolific. I found out the hard way that there were giant cockroaches that would eat your clothes while you slept unless the clothes were stored in steel cabinets at night.

In spite of the many hardships of life in India, I did my best not to focus on the negative aspects of that country. I was there to meet my husband’s family and to learn as much as I could about life in India. My learning experience meant taking a trip to Agra to see and experience the wondrous beauty of the Taj Mahal.  To get to Agra, it was a day long trip by train from where we were staying. I had instructed my husband to purchase first class tickets for our journey to Agra. My brother-in-law accompanied us on our journey.

Before taking the train, we had done some shopping for treasures to take back to Canada with us. No one in the marketplace had shopping bags. All purchases were neatly wrapped in old newspapers and tied securely with string and handed to us. We soon found out how awkward it was to manage all the packages and not drop some of them.

Once we three were aboard the train, it was apparent to me that first class in India was a far cry from first class in Canada. In India, it simply meant that we got a seat in a coach that was less jammed with people and there were tiny six inch fans in the corners of the coach to cool us, I thought. Well… not exactly. The fans were to keep the flies at bay. They relied on the speed of the train and the open windows to keep us cool from the scorching heat. The heat was so unbearable that it caused me to have a migraine headache, possibly from dehydration.

In India, the appropriate dress for a married woman was either a sari, or a long dress, or long skirt. I chose too wear long skirts. It was mandatory for me to also wear long sleeve blouses to protect my sensitive skin from the searing heat. On my feet, I wore the customary flip-flop sandals that most of the natives wore. I should mention here that flip-flop sandals are fine to shuffle around, but they are not designed for running, especially not for running over stones.

Once we were seated in our compartment, I felt the need to go to the washroom. When I got to what they loosely referred to as the washroom, I was appalled by the condition of it. There was nothing but a hole in the floor with an angled board behind it. The board was spattered with what I am guessing was a century of feces from millions of users with diarrhea. I nearly vomited from the stench.

All of a sudden, I heard a commotion on the train. My husband came running and grabbed me by the arm and said we had to get off the train immediately. Not understanding the Hindi language, I obeyed and followed. Everyone seemed to be in a state of panic.

To disembark the train, we had to jump down in the trench where the tracks were. I never gave a single thought to our possessions. I simply followed the orders that were barked at me. I ran in the same direction as the rest of the passengers. Boy, did I ever run. My feet went around like windmills in a tornado as I clutched my skirt and petticoat to keep them from dragging along the debris in the trench. My feet hurt terribly from the pounding on the pebbled track way. There were rodents by the thousands that squealed and scattered as we rapidly encroached on their territory. I tried not to take notice of the rats and kept on running until I thought my feet were bleeding.

Someone said to put my arms up over my head and stand with my back to the platform.  The platform was higher than my head. Not knowing what else to do, I obeyed the command. I felt someone grab my wrists tightly.  Suddenly, as if by some freaky miracle, I was floating through the air like a butterfly in the hands of strangers and was delicately deposited on the platform. My heart was practically pounding out of my chest. My saliva had vanished and in its wake I was left with a tongue that felt four times its normal size. My brain momentarily ceased to function.

Before I could wrap my brain around what had just happened, strangers were coming up to us and handing us all our packages and our suitcases. I was in a horrible state. I still had to go to the washroom in the worst way. I frantically looked around for a bush to hide behind so I could relieve myself, but there wasn’t even a blade of grass to hide behind.  Just when I thought I was about to disgrace myself in front of all the other passengers, I heard that another train was coming and we were to get on that one. I held on as best as I could. My heart was still racing, my head was pounding and my bladder was holding ten times more than it was equipped to hold. I was in agony. My head felt like it was split in two. At that moment, I was so demented from pain that I really didn’t care if I disgraced myself, or not.

By the time the next train pulled into the station, I was nauseated. I managed to get on the train and headed straight for the washroom. To my horror, it was in the same condition as the previous one. I bit my lower lip, tried to hold my breath and entered the disease infested cubbyhole of a washroom. The train started to move. I gathered my skirt up in one hand and tried to perch over the tennis ball sized hole in the floor. I was being as careful as humanly possible not to touch anything. As the train lurched forward, bobbed up and down, and rocked from side to side, it was virtually impossible to keep my balance. In a crouched position, I spun around and came face to face the the splatter board. I shrieked.  Before I knew what happened, my left arm shot down the poop hole in the floor, right up to my shoulder. In a flash of horrified shock, I remembered the rats that swarmed in the pit beneath the train. I was afraid that my hand would be eaten off by starving rats. Without touching anything else, I managed to extricate myself from the poop hole without having to let go of my gathered up skirt. My shriek of horror caused me to inhale deeply. The stench was so bad that I gagged and nearly vomited. My left arm and sleeve were covered with excrement.  With my bladder now empty, I looked for a spot to wash my hands, left arm and blouse sleeve. Yes, in the bouncing and jostling of the train, I managed to pee on my feet. There was no no toilet paper, so drip dry was the way to go. I wanted to wash up but there was no sink in there. Beside a faucet about a foot from the floor stood a small plastic jug. Initially, the jug had been red, but from centuries of use it looked like it had been painted with blackish-brown tar. I reasoned that it was meant to get a few drips of water in to splash on one’s butt, but there was no way on this earth that I was going to touch that thing.  I came out of the cubicle and found a wash basin in a public area at the end of the compartment.

The wash basin was about as big as a soup bowl. On the side of the basin was a bar of black soap that was smaller than a soda cracker. First, I had to wash the soap then I had to wash my hands. I pulled my arm out of my sleeve and washed it the best I could. I doused my sleeve with water while I did my best to scrub it clean. With my wet sleeve dangling, I returned to my seat in our first class compartment that we now shared with another man. By the knowing smiles on the faces of those in our compartment, I have no doubt that they knew why my left sleeve was so wet. I felt no need to explain.

Even though I had managed to relieve myself, I was still suffering from sore feet, a migraine and I had the shakes. I lay down on the wooden bench and wanted to cry, but I no longer had the energy to do even that. I felt the train slow down as we pulled into the next station. Tea in clay cups was offered to the people in our compartment. After all, this was first class. We all took our tea and my husband told me we were supposed to throw our clay cups out of the window when we were done.

I finished my tea. I looked out the window and saw that the coast was clear then I threw my cup out onto the ground as the train sped along. The others did the same. My husband still had a sip left, but he looked out the window first then finished his tea and tossed his cup out without checking a second time. An old man had been walking along beside the passing train and my husband’s cup hit him square in the forehead. It must have knocked the poor old fellow out cold. The sound of the cup impacting the fellow’s head was sickening.

Needless to say, we took a plane back to where we were staying with family.