Haunting Eyes

‘Now you need to stay close!’ Janu tells me, wrapping one arm around my waist and taking my other hand as we walk under the metal grid that is the roof of Howrah train station. It seems as if a whole world is living inside these red brick arches. It’s like someone has turned up the volume on all my senses: a woman’s voice is blaring train times over a tannoy; a little girl with an infected-looking sore on her mouth is shadowing us: ‘Babu, babu, babu . . .’ she pleads, hand outstretched; now a family is settling down to rest, spreading out thin cloths on the concrete floor, one for each child to lay their heads, right in the middle of all of this mayhem.

There are little kiosks and traders selling chai and hot samosas, seemingly plonked right in the middle of the station. Weaving our way through all of this we finally find our way to a queue of shouting people clamouring for tickets. In front of us a blonde teenage girl wearing a rucksack and a tall thin boy in a grubby ‘Make Chai, not War!’ T-shirt are holding up the queue as they try to work out which train they should be catching. They’re heading for Darjeeling. Behind us, people are stepping out of line to shout at them to hurry up. Janu turns to the boy and asks if he would like some help. The boy’s worried expression twists into a grin, and for a moment I think he might hug Janu, who is calmly talking to the ticket man on their behalf.

‘Thanks, man. I’ve never been so stressed!’ He clutches his tickets as if they’re gold dust. His girlfriend looks at me.

‘Cheers!’ she smiles, wiping the sweat away from her brow. ‘Namaste!’

I find myself joining my hands together in response. She must think that I’m from Kolkata. Janu looks from me to the girl in amusement.

‘Cholo!’ He laughs, taking my hand and waving to the grateful couple.

‘That was the easy part!’ He glances up at the departure boards above our heads that clackety-click into place every few seconds. I wonder how it’s possible that from one station you can get to so many destinations. Peering up at all the place names I’ve never heard of, I get the feeling that this is somewhere I’m going to come back to again and again because I want to visit everywhere.

Finally our platform comes up on the board and we’re off again, weaving our way through bodies and backpacks. Around the train there are a hundred different wires connecting the power, and between these lines tiny monkeys leap and play, looking down on the mass of ant-like humans. Now I see why Anjali was so fascinated by these monkeys when she was a little girl. They have crazily human faces – some look bored, some look cheeky, one looks as if it’s broken-hearted. Janu checks the tickets once more and then climbs up the steep metal steps of the slightly rusty blue and white train. He offers me his hand and pulls me aboard.

There is not a single spare seat all through the first carriage: there are mothers, fathers, babies, a tall man in a turban holding a briefcase and children playing a board game; the carriage is bursting at the seams with people.

We walk on through the train until we come to some old-fashioned carriages with faded dusty curtains at the door. A woman is sitting on a brown leather bench with three children. As she sees us peering in she moves a skinny boy of about six or seven on to her knee. She tells an older girl to put her toddler sister on to her lap and gestures for us to take the two spare seats. Janu thanks her.

It would be hard for anyone not to stare at this family, because if you saw them on a train in London, the children would probably be signed up by some modelling agency and make a fortune, with their grey-green eyes and their beautiful skin. But the whole family are dressed in frayed clothing and their eyes and thin limbs speak of how hungry they are. The woman catches me looking from one child to another and she sits up straighter, holding her son to her proudly. She glances from Janu to me. I think she’s trying to work out who we are to each other.

As we pull out of the station I start to feel the mass of the city fall away from us. The windows in our little carriage are open, and as the train picks up speed the breeze cools us slightly. Something about the atmosphere has lifted, as if, as the fields open out, the air becomes less confined too. Janu leans back on his seat and sighs happily.

‘I always love going home.’

The woman and children look up at us with new interest at the sound of Janu speaking in English.

‘Isn’t Kolkata your home?’ I ask.

‘It is . . . but a piece of me always stays in the village. Look!’

The train slows to a stop as a small herd of cows wander across the track ahead of us. ‘This is why we are calling this the cow-belt!’ explains Janu.

I look across a vast earth field and watch a man pulling a plough through the dusty soil. You can see in the sinewy muscles of his legs how much strength it takes for him to pull the heavy cart along each furrow. As the train speeds up again he disappears into a golden haze, whipped up by a gust of wind blowing across the loose, dry earth. I’ve seen so many tiny moments of people’s lives since I’ve been here, moments that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I will always be wondering what happened to School Girl and Dust Boy, and Sunil and Kal, just like Grandad always wondered what happened to that orphan baby boy he carried out of Howrah station all those years ago. ‘What would you like to think he grew up as?’ I once asked Grandad. ‘A doctor of course!’ laughed Grandad, clapping his hands together.

I’m looking out of the window but I can’t help glancing at the family sitting with us. The girl about my age has long, perfectly curled eyelashes, and when she lifts her head I try my hardest not to stare at her eyes. They are also an amazing grey-green, like those of the rest of her family, but she has an ‘I will not be defeated’ look, which reminds me so much of my Nana Josie. I know it’s nothing more than an expression, but it’s as if she’s challenging me not to look away, to really see who she is. Those eyes could haunt you.

The little girl starts to moan and her mother picks up a metal tiffin tin and begins to unpack the tower of bowls, handing a layer of watery dhal, a tiny portion of rice and a quarter of a chapatti to each child. They eat slowly, savouring every mouthful. The woman is just about to take a bite of her chapatti when she changes her mind, placing it back in the tiffin tin and offering it to Janu and me instead. Janu smiles at her and shakes his head. She shrugs before biting into the flatbread hungrily. I can’t believe that she can be this generous when she has so little for her own family.

When the little girl has finished eating she jumps off her sister’s knee as if this tiny bit of fuel has got her going again. She leans on Janu’s legs to stay upright as the train jerks along, and he gets her giggling by taking a coin from his pocket and making it appear and disappear in his palm. She squeals every time he makes it reappear. Everyone in the family laughs, except the girl my age, whose haunting eyes follow my every move. I wonder if she’s thinking the same as me – what makes me lucky enough to be born into my life? If that is hatred in her eyes, I wouldn’t blame her.

Janu has handed over the coin and now the little girl is tugging at my charm bracelet . . . she’s taking the artichoke heart and rubbing the silver metal against her gums. She must be teething. Her sister pulls her back to stop her, but she clings on to the charm in her mouth. My arm is outstretched halfway across the carriage now as her sister tries to prise the bracelet from the child’s mouth. My little sister Laila once put this charm in her mouth and wouldn’t spit it out. It’s like tiny children know how precious it is. I figure the easiest way to end this tug of war, without the little girl choking on it, is to take the bracelet off and let her sister deal with it. She nods at me as if she’s understood my plan, and starts to tickle the little girl under her arm. As she falls about laughing, she opens her mouth and out pops my charm.

The older girl glances down at the charm for a moment and then hands it back to me before staring out of the window. I follow her gaze along the meandering path of the river. Great storks are nesting in the trees, and a family is washing and drying great lengths of sari cloth on giant rocks.

‘Come on, Mira!’ Janu says, suddenly standing up.

Just as I’m about to leave the carriage the girl reaches towards me and squeezes my hand tightly. I look deeply into her eyes and try to understand what she is saying to me. I feel I have to look at her, that it would be cowardly to look away. I’m still holding Nana Josie’s charm. I wonder if she thinks that my charm can bring her luck. I drop my bracelet and my precious artichoke-heart charm into her hands because I have everything and she has nothing. As I stand on the platform, the girl pushes her face up to the window and mouths the words ‘thank you’ her haunting eyes seem to soften.

The girl is waving to me as the train moves off. She opens her hand and my charm glints, catching Janu’s eye. He starts to run towards the carriage door, but the train is already going too fast. She smiles. Forget all the models you see in magazines. I think she might be the most beautiful girl in the whole world.

‘Pickpockets! You have to be careful – of course they have to find whatever they can.’ Janu shrugs. ‘Was it valuable?’

‘Not in money. It belonged to my grandmother. But the girl didn’t steal it. I knew she wanted it, so I just sort of gave it to her,’ I explain, still trying to make sense of what I’ve done as a sudden heaviness enters my chest.

Janu stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have.

‘I think she needed it more than me. And it just felt like the right thing to do!’

He shakes his head and frowns at me. ‘Her ma will find it, and she will sell it. You don’t understand the way things work here. You think your silver charm is going to change her life?’ His anger gives a hard, cold edge to his voice.

Janu strides on, still shaking his head. I can hardly keep up with him as he goes towards a cluster of straw-roofed, earth-covered buildings with pads of cow dung drying on their sides. I feel sick. Of course he’s right. What was I thinking? How could I have given away Nana Josie’s charm?! What good could it possibly do? Janu must think I’m an idiot, a silly girl who thinks she can make things better. I’ll never see my charm again. I slump down on a large boulder at the side of the road and stare and stare at my empty wrist. I have never felt so far away from home.

Janu’s walking back towards me and holding out his hand. I try to cover up my face as the tears spill over. He must think I’m always crying, which is funny because I usually make sure I keep my tears locked safely behind my bedroom door.

Janu perches on the stone next to me and takes my wrist gently in his hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

But he’s right. I should never have given the bracelet away. I feel naked without it.