On the Road, Day 3

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Somewhere in the desert the car stopped. Ami jolted awake.

“Dev?”

“Sorry Madam. Train is coming.”

She looked around. There was no sign of a train, just pale, dry earth as far as they eye could see. Not sand, really. More like dust. The tracks were set up a bit from the rest of the land, on a little hill. People had gathered at both sides of the crossing, leaning on the closed crossing arms in anticipation of the coming train.

Dev climbed out of the car and wiped his forehead, looking around.

Ami imagined that he’d talk to someone, point out that the train was nowhere to be seen, that they could cross in plenty of time. He’d explain that he was driving a tourist, an American at that. He’d get things moving.

Instead, Dev lit a bidi and squatted in the dirt near another man. The man said something through his betel-stained lips and Dev laughed.

Ami opened her door and stepped into the warm mid-day air. A swirling wind blew her hair in her face. She unwound her scarf from her neck and covered her head. Almost instantly, a group of small children, who until that moment had been as absent as the train, appeared at her elbows.

“Madam school-pen,” they chorused, touching her in light little pinches.

Dev looked up, but didn’t do anything.

“No school pen,” Ami answered in vain. They continued to clamor for chocolates, rupees and any number of small items until one of the caught site of an older child attempting to hoist a kite on the unpredictable breeze.

Somehow, dragging Ami with them, the kids surrounded the boy with his kite, all craning their necks upward to watch the action.

The kite’s owner looked shyly at Ami and offered his string.

She took it. It had been years since she’d flown a kite. She tugged a bit at the thin line, encouraging the shoddy paper kite higher into the atmosphere. It resisted her prompting and crashed onto the railroad tracks. The kids all ran, in a swarm, to fetch it back.

Still no train.

“Tough luck,” said a man just behind Ami’s shoulder. She whirled around, surprised that the man was really no more than a teen-ager, his moustache just a silken suggestion over his lip. He was holding a very fat baby, its eyes rimmed with kohl.

“Your baby?” she asked politely.

“No. This is my cousin-sister’s,” he smiled broadly.

Ami didn’t understand the cousin-sister thing. That could mean pretty much any female in the vicinity.

“You are English?”

“No, American.”

“Very good country,” the boy offered his assessment. “Michael Jackson. Terminator. You are living in California?”

“No, Philadelphia.”

He looked back blankly, then regrouped. “You are coming to my house for tea. Yes?”

She gestured toward her car and the tracks. “The train…”

“No problem. Train is not coming for a long time. You are taking some tea, then the train is coming.”

Ami glanced at Dev, who was now sitting among a group of men. He seemed quite comfortable. “Okay,” she answered, and followed the boy away from the tracks toward a row of houses that sprung up along the colorless dust.

It crossed her mind that no one knew she was there. Still, the boy leading the way looked harmless. A teenager, only her height at best. She felt impervious to danger, too far away from anything she considered real to be affected.


The house, which sat on the edge, balanced between the village and the dust, was a fairly elaborate affair, with a set of steps running up to a carved entranceway. The entire outside had been white washed, though not too recently, and the steps were crumbling, rejoining the desert.

Ami followed behind the boy, through the entrance way and into a darkened hall. “What’s your name?” she called to her host.

He smiled. “I am Murad” He pointed her through the hall, which opened into a courtyard. An older woman appeared from one of the rooms that surrounded the courtyard, pulling her sari hem over her face. “This is my mother,” Murad announced.

“Nice to meet you,” Ami said awkwardly. The woman didn’t meet her eyes.

“This is my American friend,” Murad told his mother. He handed over the squirming child, and the women peeped suspiciously at the tall westerner tracking sand into her house. “You make tea,” Murad instructed in English, then repeated his instructions in Hindi.

The mother cast a disapproving glance over her shoulder, but trudged dutifully off toward the kitchen.

Ami felt like an intruder, and was thinking of leaving when Murad took her arm and steered her toward a room. “This is my room,” he pointed. “You will come in?”

Ami peeped in at the single cot and thought better of it. “What do those steps lead to?” she asked, pointing to a narrow flight of stairs in the corner of the courtyard.

“Yes, come see,” the boy announced, guiding Ami up to the roof. It was just a flat expanse, looking out over the desert. Behind her, she could see into the tangle of the village, and in front of her, what she supposed was the road to Bikaner. It was rutted and narrow. There was still a crowd at the tracks, but no sign of Dev.

“Maybe the tea is ready?” she asked brightly, heading back down stairs. Murad raced after her, eager to regain his role as tour guide. Just as Ami stepped back into the courtyard, Dev burst in, along with two of the men from the village.

“You must come now, Madam,” he said darkly. “Train is coming.”

“She is just having tea,” the boy announced. “Only one minute waiting”

“No, there is no time,” Dev insisted.

Ami was confused by his stern countenance. He seemed almost rude, barging into these people’s house. But she nodded her head.

The mother bustled into the courtyard, carrying the cup of tea, but Dev brushed her aside and hurried Ami out the door.

“Thank you,” she tried calling after her, but the family only stared at her. She couldn’t even guess at what they were thinking.

“Madam,” Dev whispered urgently when they were away from the house, “You must be more careful.”

“Why? Were those people dangerous.”

“They are Muslim people,” Dev announced, as if that explained everything. He didn’t offer to expand on the subject, but only stalked back to the car. He held Ami’s door open and she slid in, feeling like a child in disgrace, without knowing why.

Luckily, the train picked that moment to arrive, and soon Dev was back at his post as driver and they were maneuvering the tracks and bumping away from the dusty little village and the children with their scrap of kite.



It was easy to ride and dream, looking out over the landscape. Daydream, or sleep with closed eyes—it didn’t matter which. The day slipped into her subconscious.

Ami hadn’t slept well the night before, despite moving to what the afternoon desk clerk, a jowly, middle aged man called “a much better room, Madam. And heater for you.” The room looked over the alley, offering an interesting view of a pig family rooting through a trash pile, the ridge of hair standing up on their backs like Mohawk hair cuts. Even though the view offered little in the way of inspiration, the bed—settled into a box-like frame on the floor—was softer, and happily buried under an assortment of faded satin-covered quilts. Plus, the one small window, from which Ami could spy on the punk-rock pig family, actually closed, which meant that the diminutive portable heater would have a chance at warming the space.

Unfortunately, the heater offered little more than a dull whirring noise, and occasional sparks from its plug.

After receiving word that Celeste had moved on (“The boy he say your friend she is leaving,” the desk clerk informed Ami, before settling back to reading his newspaper. “Did the boy say where Celeste was going?” Ami asked, hopefully, but the man only shrugged.), Ami set out on her own, feeling a bit intimidated by the confusion of Paharganj at first, but then adjusting. Really, it was just like a shopping market anywhere, only, perhaps, livelier. She let herself be lured into a few shops, testing perfumes and trying on scarves, before settling on a blue cotton shawl.

“Wool is better,” the woman behind the counter instructed Ami, peering over a large set of glasses. She was as strict as a librarian, her red tikka glaring like a stop-light between her eyes. “This time is too cold for cotton. You try nice Pashmina?”

Ami shook her head, wondering how she dared to defy the shop’s proprietress. “I like this one.” She held it too her cheek. “It’s soft.”

“Soft, yes. So you buy Kashmiri shawl. Very soft, but also very warm.” The woman was already lifting expensive squares of fabric from a shelf.

“But this is a gift, you see,” Ami attempted a new tactic. “For my grandmother in the USA.”

“You-es-say? California?”

Ami nodded. “Yes, where it’s too hot for wool.”

The woman softened slightly, and allowed Ami to purchase the thin shawl, which she wrapped in paper.

Time passed effortlessly as people moved through the market with no care for the late hour or the impending cold. Darkness was banished by the bright shop lights and inviting cafes, warmed by the heat of the ovens. Ami pushed her way into a busy restaurant where a Chinese chef stirred noodles in a massive wok over an open fire. She took an empty chair at a table of white travelers, hoping they wouldn’t mind.

“Canada?” A man leaned toward her, his scruffy blond beard scratching her ear. “England?”

“No, America. USA.”

“How do you like India?” he asked, his German accent thick.

“I’ve only just arrived…”

He nodded, looking bored already, and turned back to his friends.

As Ami ate her fried noodles, realizing how hungry the day had made her and how long it had been since she’d last thought to eat something, she wondered if three weeks would bring her any closer to the state of laid-back ease those other travelers exhibited. She doubted it. But how long would it take to become that—so unconcerned, so at home, even in the clutter of Paharganj—and was it even possible to change into such a road-weathered soul, or did one simply have to be born that way?

Back at her room, Ami brushed her hair and pulled it back into a ponytail, then gave herself a sponge-bath in lukewarm water. She set her alarm clock just in case the desk clerk forgot to wake her, and burrowed under the blankets.

Sleep came, but only for a couple hours.

Somewhere around 1 a.m., a rowdy group of cricket players—or maybe they were soccer players—returned to the hotel and began a late-night party, moving from room to room, using the stairwell to shout to each other between floors. In the lobby, someone turned the TV up full volume, filling the hotel with the sound of Bollywood music.

At 4 a.m. Ami awoke from a restless dream to realize that she had, indeed, been asleep, and she sunk back into blissful unconsciousness.

Then, at 5 a.m., the wakeup calls began, which involved the desk clerk standing outside a door, banging loudly and shouting “Hello! Hello! Yes, hello!” until the door was answered. No longer fearful that she’d oversleep, Ami rolled over and switched off her alarm, and pulled the pillow over her head.


(image from www.motherjones.com)

The car wove through narrow villages, kicking up dust in the late afternoon. Ami peered out the window of the Ambassador, taking in market carts laden with king coconuts, long sugar beets, bunches of greens and piles of bright oranges. Men lounged by the road on charpoys while women hauled water in brass urns, balanced on their heads. Children played in the dirt, oblivious to the traffic of lumbering water buffalo, whizzing motor scooters, painted lorries sporting the word “TA-TA” on their bumpers, cars and bicycle rickshaws.

“What is this village?” she asked, but Dev only shrugged.

Too small to know the name. “So many villages, madam,” he replied.

“Call me Ami,” she told him, wondering if he was still angry from earlier.

“Ah-mee,” he said, then smiled in the review mirror. “Ay-mee.”

She leaned back, resumed her watch. A cow, decorated in gold-trimmed blankets and marigold garlands stood near the door to a shop, calmly munching at a garbage pile. A boy ran into the market, carrying two large roosters under his arm.

“Look at those roosters!” Ami cried gleefully.

“For fighting,” Dev told her.

Faded murals from Hindu lore graced the façade of one building. Dark-skinned men squatted by the wall spitting red betel juice onto the dirt. A sadhu, wrapped in orange robes, waited patiently in the waning sun, his long dreadlocks arranged elegantly around his head. As the Ambassador sped past, Ami caught the glint of the large silver hoops he wore in each ear. A peacock fanned its tail as they left the town and surged into the countryside.

It was well past dark when Dev finally pulled into the gravel drive of a guest house. Ami was too tired to argue about their accommodations, and her stomach was queasy from the rutted roads and the steady stream of diesel exhaust from passing busses and trucks, her head swimming from half-sleep disturbed by passing vehicles and the incessant blinking of the dashboard shrine to Ganesh. No matter how rural their journey, they never escaped the constant flow of traffic, never escaped the reach of the elephant-headed deity.

The guest house in Bikanar was plain. A concrete square of a building with spacious, dingy rooms. Ami shivered as she looked at the low bed with its single bed spread. The night air was chilly—even Dev had zipped up his fleece jacket and was rubbing his hands to warm them as he peered anxiously into the room.

“It is alright?”

“It’s just that I’m cold…” she faltered.

“No problem,” he answered gravely, and spoke to the proprietor—a young man, maybe a college student, in rapid Hindi. The two conversed in serious tones, with many of the confusing head bobbles that looked like they should signal a no, but were often followed by consent. When the other man turned and fled down the hall, Dev announced, “Okay. He is bringing heater for you.”

Within a few minutes, an archaic space heater had been plugged in and was spewing, if not warmth, at least an electrical static. Ami’s luggage appeared at her door, and the young proprietor was back, holding a carbon form. “Five hundred rupees advance fee, Madam,” he said. “Price includes dinner.”

“Dinner? Where?”

“Kitchen is just outside.” He motioned vaguely, and Ami parted with five hundred-rupee notes.

The food, served in a dimly lit room at folding tables, was bland at best, and tasted as if it had been allowed to stew for the better part of six hours. Still, it was something to settle her stomach and allow Ami to crawl into bed, with all of her clothes on, huddled as close to the rickety space heater as she could get. She felt the gloomy weight of misery descending—this wasn’t the India she’d hoped for: it was dirtier, more complicated and far chillier—and her trip was already far different from her romantic free-wheeling vision of three weeks riding trains, visiting temples, and wearing flowing kameezes. But before Ami could even shed a tear in her frustration, sleep hit her like so many horn-blowing kamikaze TA-TA trucks.


(image from www.bridgew.edu)

In the driver’s bathroom, Dev stripped to his underwear and stood over the sink, washing his face and his armpits. It seems like just two days ago I was doing this, he thought to himself. Only in Delhi, just a few kilometers from my sister’s house.

Not that it really mattered. He’d been able to have a meal with his sister’s family, which was about all the time he needed to remember that her house offered no privacy. He was welcome to stay with his sister, Meena, and her accountant husband Raju, but it meant sleeping with their two boys.

Dev loved his nephews, Sunny and Apu, but spending time with them was a far cry from relaxing. Sunny was six, already in school and insisting that everyone call him by his proper name, Sunil. No one did, of course. Apu was just four, and determined to do everything his elder brother did.

Then there was Maya, the baby. She was just a year old, still sleeping in her parent’s room, and the princess of the household. Sometimes Dev thought he liked his niece the best of all, not that he would ever admit it. But Maya never demanded that he play camel safari, crawling around on his hands and knees while his nephews climbed on his back. She also never looked at him with sad eyes, like Meena often did, saying “You need to settle down and start your own family, Dev. It’s fine for you to stay here; you know you’re welcome whenever you like. But you should let Mrs. Bikam find you a match. You know mother is worried about you.”

Maya was happy just to be held and given a bottle, or taken for a stroll in her pram. She rarely cried, and usually regarded everyone in the house with a happy gurgle.

No, it was alright to be driving again. Dev hadn’t even been surprised when he’d stopped in to the office and his boss had announced, “I have another one for you, since you’re back.”

“Japanese?” He sometimes liked them—they didn’t expect him to speak their language fluently. Often they were content to talk amongst themselves, leaving him free to pass the time lost in his own thoughts.

“No, American.”

Americans were sometimes worse than the English. They spoke fast, with lots of slang, and were genuinely shocked at the state of India. But they also tended to travel with lots of cash, and knew how to tip.

“How many?”

“Just one lady. She wants to see Rajasthan.”

Dev could drive the Rajasthan circuit with his eyes closed. Udaipur—you like James Bond? You know, Octopussy? Pushkar—you like to make nice puja? Jaisalmer—you like camel safari? It was an easy job, so he took it.

When he came back out of the bath, two other drivers were sitting at the one table in the room, smoking bidis and cutting a deck of cards. He’d seen them both before, greeted them with a friendly grin, and pulled his pajamas and kurta from his bag.

“You like to play?” One man asked, gripping the stump of bidi between his teeth.

“Sure,” Dev agreed, not so much because he liked cards, but because he was in the mood for some company while he sipped his whiskey and waited for the tension to slip from behind his eyes.