Our train journey from Bangalore to Delhi took forty-nine hours. Luckily, however, a kind attendant – who never looked for a tip, much less a bribe – went to a lot of trouble and was eventually able to provide us with sleeping-berths. (These were narrow slatted wooden shelves and during the heat of the day they were too close to the roof for comfort; but we both had good nights.) Only when travelling by rail is it an unqualified advantage to be a woman in India; the third-class ladies’ coaches are usually less crowded and filthy than the rest, although men accompanying women relatives also use them.
We changed trains at Madras, where I had only forty minutes to find our reserved seats. The anxiously hurrying crowds were so dense I had to use force to make progress and Rachel understandably found the scene a little frightening. As she was in some danger of being injured by the mob I bundled her into a convenient ladies’ coach and left her guarding our kit, sitting beside an amiable European nun for company. Then I resumed my search, but because of the startling metamorphosis that had overtaken the name MURPHY at the pen of some railway clerk it was too late to move Rachel by the time I had found the right coach.
The nun was an Italian who had spent twenty years in India as a medical missionary. She mentioned that she now practises as a gynaecologist in Kerala and this reminded me of a name given me in London by Jill Buxton, before we left for Bombay.
‘Do you know a Sister Dr Alberoni?’ I asked. ‘She works in the Nirmala Hospital near Caldicot.’
The nun looked at me strangely for a moment and then said – ‘I am Sister Alberoni!’
One long, unbroken rail journey is an almost essential ingredient of travel in India, for it enables the traveller to feel that country’s vastness. North of Madras city we passed through mile after endless mile of flat, desiccated, unpeopled landscape, where one remembered that India is not at all overpopulated in relation to her area. The earth was cracked and grey and worn, and the grey-brown, dusty, ragged leaves, dangling from stunted trees in the still heat, looked like the grey-brown, dusty, ragged garments of the peasants who crowded every station, staring impassively at the train. Although many outsiders, including myself, may romanticise about the beautiful simplicity of life in rural India, there is nothing either beautiful or simple about life as it is now lived by the majority in Maharashtra, Gujerat, U.P. or Bihar.
The very poor are rarely met on a train, for obvious reasons – though my ticket from Bangalore to Delhi cost only Rs.62 – but near Wardha one conscience-smiting family did get aboard for a few hours. It consisted of a mother and five small children and they had their lunch wrapped in a leaf: two thin chapattis and a little chilli sauce at the bottom of a tin mug. They sat opposite us in a row, like an Oxfam advertisement, and when the two chapattis had been divided between six each had only two or three mouthfuls. It was plain that never in their lives had they eaten a full meal and this is the fate of hundreds of millions of Indians – the grim reality which we had evaded in Coorg. When I handed a banana to each of them they stared at me for a moment with a dreadful incomprehension, then hastily peeled the fruit and stuffed it into their mouths as though afraid I might change my mind and take it back. There was no attempt at a smile or nod of thanks; these people are so unused even to the minimal generosity involved that they received it with incredulity rather than gratitude.
Several attempts were made to board our train by ‘ticketless persons’, who are always suspect though they may genuinely only want a free ride. One nasty incident involved a youngish, ragged man with a tangled beard and a not unpleasant expression. He tried to jump on as we were moving out of a small station and I happened to be sitting by an open window beside the locked door with which he was struggling. Then a guard came along and, instead of merely forcing him to drop off, opened the door, dragged him on board and beat him up so savagely with a truncheon that he fell unconscious outside the lavatory door – and lay there for three hours, with a bleeding head. He had not long come to when the train stopped in the middle of nowhere (as it not infrequently did, for reasons of its own) and the guard again unlocked the door and thrust the man out into a hot, barren, rocky wilderness.
In Delhi we were invited to spend the night at Crystal Rogers’ Animals’ Shelter. This institution consists of an enormous, dusty compound, containing many comfortable enclosures for animals and one acutely uncomfortable bungalow for humans – or at least that is the theory. In practice the bungalow might belong to Dr Dolittle; it is so full of dogs, cats, guinea-pigs, rabbits, monkeys, mice, parrots and mynahs that we had to sleep in the compound on charpoys. Rachel was ecstatic to find herself having supper in a room where two tame monkeys were playing ball and within moments of our arrival a pack of puppies had eaten through three of the most vital straps on my rucksack. Half an hour later, as I straightened up after trying to wash myself with a quart of water in a hip bath, I almost split my skull on the sharp end of a cage that hung over the bath and contained two foul-mouthed parrots. At meal times ravening cats attempted to intercept one’s food between plate and mouth, and in the compound were countless other cats and dogs, and several injured bulls, bullocks and horses lying around looking contented. Spacious wired-in enclosures are provided for badly maimed or seriously ill large animals, whose eyes would otherwise be picked out by carrion crows. Some patients have to be put down every week, but any with a chance of recovery are given the best treatment. Moreover, each animal, from a colossal white humped bull to a diminutive white mouse is loved individually and reacts accordingly; and the whole of this extraordinary institution is run on funds raised through Miss Rogers’ own efforts.*
On 13 March, a few hours before we were due to catch our train to Bombay, I discovered that our return air tickets were missing: perhaps a monkey or a mouse had devoured them. This looked like being a major disaster, since our cheap-rate concession expired on 15 March. Most appropriately, however, we were rescued by a Coorg – P. M. Ayyappa, one of the Machiahs’ three sons, who is an Air India pilot and was then living in Bombay. His parents had arranged for us to spend our last Indian night in his flat and when he drove us to the airport, to catch a plane for which we had no tickets, he took enormous trouble to contact London and use his influence to get confirmation of our right to board the 9.30 a.m. British Airways flight from Bombay.
As we took off I glanced at Rachel, who was peering down at the ‘shattered’ environs of Bombay, and it struck me that 5-year-olds are scarcely less enigmatic than Hindus. What had the past months meant to her I only knew that from my point of view she had been the best of travelling companions – interested, adaptable and uncomplaining. Then suddenly she turned to me and said sorrowfully, ‘I don’t really like leaving India!’ And with that comment I was content.