Supportive Railings

The whole of India travels by train. Rail lines constructed by the British span all throughout the vast country, connecting almost all major cities and a significant number of the smaller towns. Based on my observations, the train stations are some of the most crowded places here – a statement that carries weight considering it’s India I’m talking about. In most trains, there are five classes of cars: the three air conditioned classes (1 AC, 2 AC, 3 AC), sleeper class, and a general class. First AC gives you a private cabin with an upper and lower birth and is accompanied by the regular elitist amenities. 2AC has booths of 4 beds, two upper, two lower, that run perpendicularly to the direction of the train on one side of the aisle. On the other side are an upper and lower birth running parallel to the train. . Each is equipped with a curtain and you get a pillow and blankets. The upper bunk is hinged, so that during the day it can be detached on one side to swing down and become a backrest, while the lower bunk becomes the seat. 3AC is essentially the same except there is an upper, middle and lower birth. But, it’s sleeper class is where all the action happens. Sleeper class is the same set up as 3AC, except there’s no sheets, pillows, curtains, AC, the beds are older and a lot less padded, and it’s recommended that you sleep holding your bag. This has been my regular means of travel. Why? Because it costs about 6 dollars for a 14-hour overnight train ride.

Because so many people travel by train, there’s always a wait list for tickets. If you don’t book at least a week in advance, there’s a good chance you wont get a ticket. But, as long as you have a wait list ticket, you can still got on the train (even if its wait list #400). You are permitted to stand/sleep in the aisles near the bathrooms and, provided someone can “accommodate” you, you are allowed to sit in sleeper class while people are still sitting and sleep on the dirty floor of the booths at night. What this really means, is that in sleeper class there is about twice as many people as actual paid tickets, meaning that there isn’t much choice of whether or not to “accommodate”. This is probably the major advantage of the AC classes – your comfort is ensured, as wait list ticket holders are prohibited from entering the booths.

I found this quite annoying each time I travelled. I felt like I had paid for my ticket and bought it on time, why did I have to share my seat with someone who hadn’t done the same. Sure… I could have told them to leave, but that didn’t seem to be the way things worked in sleeper class. I chalked it up as one of those “you get what you pay for” kind of things.

Most recently, I took the train to Varanasi. Overnight Friday night there, overnight Sunday night back: I didn’t want to miss any work. Malik had a little bit more to do this weekend, so he also took the train on Friday there, but came back in the same day with the Saturday night train.

The ride there was a great success. We met some other tourists that I later had dinner with that night. On the way back, it was a little bit of a different story. Because of an unexpected Sunday night traffic jam on the way to the Varanasi station, I almost missed my train. I caught it with about 5 minutes to spare, but when I got to my birth, there was someone else’s stuff there. Normally this would be expected, but I had the upper birth, and normally the wait list tickets cram into the sitting bench made by the middle and lower beds and the upper birth is kind of reserved for the person that actually has that ticket, as it always remains horizontal. The other thing that made it weird was the fact that the guy who owned the stuff was white, and considering the usual travel demands of those in Western society, it was unlikely that he would travel on a wait list ticket that would require him to sleep on the muddy, buggy, urine smelling floor. Naturally I pulled out my ticket, and showed him that it was my seat. He then pulled out his ticket, and we stared blankly for a couple seconds. We had identical seat numbers. So, I went and checked the confirmation list that they post on the outside of the train. It listed his name. I looked down at my ticket only to realize that there had been a booking error – the man who had booked my ticket had put me on the same train as Malik instead of the one the night later. My train had left the night before, and I had no ticket for this one.

At this point, I didn’t really have a choice as to whether or not I was going to take the train – I needed to get back to work for the next morning. Also, because I had arrived late, I didn’t have to option of going to the booking office and seeing if they had any last minute cancellations. I just got on the train with the plan to buy a wait list ticket from the ticket counter. I was going to have to sleep on the floor… for 14 hours.

As the train started to move, I sat down in the seat nearest to the door. A man almost immediately came up to me and told me it was his seat. I told him I didn’t have a confirmed ticket and asked if he could “accommodate”. I had become the person sitting in someone else’s rightfully owned seat.

Overhearing me explain my situation, one of the guys in the booth who spoke perfect English told me not to worry and that I could buy a general ticket from the ticket counter and would probably not be fined for riding with no ticket – because I didn’t even have a wait listed one.

I talked for a while with the guys in my booth, answering the usual questions: “You are from which country?” “How do you find India?” “How long have you stayed?” After a while I found out that the guy who advised me about the ticket had the upper birth, so I asked him if I could lay up there while he was still sitting. My plan had evolved so that I was going to sleep as much as possible before everyone else went to bed, and then just stay up the rest of the night. This concept seemed a lot more appealing than sleeping on a floor that seemed permanently dampened with something similar to the ambiguous liquid you find on the bottom of a uncleaned public bathroom -is it water? Is it urine? Are the brown smears from muddy shoes or…? I don’t know.

I slept for two hours until he woke me. At this time, I realized that there was still a bed open in the booth. So I moved all of my stuff to this bunk, trying to extend my sleep until the person who had the ticket for the bed got on the train. I was asleep for another hour until he shook my foot to wake me. While I collected my stuff to prepare for a rough 9 hours ahead, one of the other guys on the lower bunk offered to let me sit by his feet while he slept. The man who kicked me out of his bed was surprised to learn that I didn’t have a confirmed ticket. In a tone that was apologetic for waking me, he told me to sleep back on his birth while he visited friends on the train. Thankfully, I went back and passed out again. I didn’t unpack my blanket or the sweater I had been using as a pillow again because I figured he’d be back in an hour or two. But, he never came back. He gave me his bed for the whole night. And… the best part of all of this was that when the ticket counter came around, I was sleeping. So, the guys in my booth told him that I did indeed have a confirmed ticket, that they had seen it, and that he shouldn’t wake me, as I had to work in the morning. I never had to buy a ticket.

I am still blown away by how much everyone in my booth had my back. The train ride that I was sure was going to be the most uncomfortable night of my life turned into a solid sleep because of kind gesture after kind gesture by all of these strangers.

I come from a society where we really only look out for ourselves and the ones we love. “If I paid for this ticket, why should I have to share my seat with someone who didn’t?” The act of accommodating for someone we don’t know is usually accompanied by an eye roll. We don’t really think about the situation that person might be in. Would it really impact us that much if we let them sit at the end of our birth while we slept? Not really, but it would mean that they don’t have to sit on the dirty floor. To be honest, I’m quite embarrassed about my thoughts regarding this before my journey home. I learned a lesson of empathy from this whole experience. And, I learned why telling someone to leave your paid seat really isn’t the way of sleeper class. Everyone is taking the train because they have somewhere to be. Why not help them get there a little more comfortably?

In the morning, I looked for the man who let me sleep in his bunk, but I couldn’t find him. I never did find out where he slept, but I can assume he probably wasn’t as comfortable as he allowed me to be. So, in the one in a billion shot that he ever reads this, Thank you.