The guards barely noticed me. It is strange how a red shirt and turban can make one invisible. To most people in Calcutta, station porters, like rickshaw-wallahs, are all but ephemeral, not really persons at all but creatures to be summoned when a strong back is required and dismissed just as quickly when the labour is complete.
And so it was that I passed through a ring of armed soldiers intent on questioning every soul entering the station without receiving so much as a glance.
Joining the trickle of those granted access, I ascended the great steps of the portico.
‘Hey!’ an English voice called out behind me. ‘Hey, you! Wait!’
I kept on walking.
‘Hey, you! Porter-wallah! I’m talking to you.’
I stopped and turned slowly. A red-faced Englishman in a flannel suit was hurrying towards me, scraping a scuffed and bulging valise on the ground behind him.
‘Are you deaf?’
‘No, sahib,’ I said.
‘I’ve been calling after you for about five minutes!’
Five minutes earlier I was behind a low wall, changing my clothes and tying a turban, but the English have a tendency to exaggerate, at least in front of Indians. He was standing before me now, inches from my face, sweating and trying to catch his breath. I feigned ignorance.
‘Five minutes,’ he repeated, poking the watch on his wrist with a fat finger. The watch looked cheap. So did the man. A salesman, I guessed, judging by the state of his suitcase.
‘Now take this,’ he said, pointing to it, ‘and bring it to platform 3. Three,’ he repeated, this time holding up three fingers and all but shouting the word at me as though I was maybe in another room. ‘Theen,’ he said in Bengali. ‘Theen. Three. Understand?’
He was clearly a scholar.
‘Ak tākā,’ I said, then, to show him that I too was well versed in many languages, added, ‘One rupee.’
‘A rupee? It’s five annas at the worst of times!’
That might have been true. I personally had never paid more than three, but I needed the money, especially if I was to pay back Miss Ayisha.
I shook my head. ‘No, sahib. This is worst of times. Price is one rupee.’
He blustered and threatened to report me: first to the station authorities, then the police and finally the army.
‘One rupee,’ I repeated before he elevated his complaint to the viceroy. He fell silent, looked for another porter, then truculently accepted my price.
‘Chalo,’ he said.
‘Money first,’ I said and held out my hand.
‘Daylight robbery,’ he puffed, passing me the note. I took the money and his case and made for the station concourse, all the while noting that when an Indian overcharges an Englishman, it is termed fraud, but when an Englishman overcharges an Indian, it’s called capitalism.
Despite the cordon outside, the station concourse seemed no less tumultuous than normal, with civilians, troops and luggage competing for space with jute-covered goods and the baskets of produce brought into the city by farmers each day. The noise was deafening, with military shouts adding to the usual cacophony of steam engines, confused travellers and a tannoy system incomprehensible in either English or Bengali. Finding anyone within this bedlam without physically stumbling into them would be close to impossible. Still, I had to try.
I hoped that platform 3, towards which my new salesman friend had ordered me, might be hosting the train for Bombay. That, however, would have entailed a significant degree of divine assistance, and after the last two days, it was crystal clear that in the matter of trailing Gulmohamed, the gods had well and truly washed their hands of me. Instead, the train was for Patna and the salesman, having shown his ticket to the guard at the platform entrance, proceeded to head for a second-class compartment at the far end of the train which looked to be about half a mile away.
My legs began to buckle under the weight of the suitcase and I wondered just what it was that the man sold.
Bricks possibly.
I declined to indulge him any further and stopped at the platform entrance.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he asked.
‘This is platform 3,’ I said. ‘Here is your case.’
I deposited the valise, which is to say I dropped it, and turned tail before the fellow could hurl any further invective or request a refund. I stared up at the huge board upon which the departures were displayed. Assuming all went to schedule, the Bombay Mail would leave from platform 1 at eight o’clock.
Automatically I went to consult my wristwatch only to remember that it, like my money, was somewhere back in Budge Budge. A moment later, I saw him: a flash of silver hair and a grey Savile Row suit, he was making his way through the scrum on the concourse, other travellers parting to make a path for him as though he were Moses and they were the Red Sea. As quickly as he’d appeared, he vanished once more from sight, hidden by the crowd, with only his suitcase visible atop the turban of a porter trailing dutifully along in his wake.
I began to push my own way through the crowd to intercept him. It was not easy. I had to stop him before he reached the guard at the platform entrance, and judging by the speed at which his suitcase was moving, he was already halfway there. I, by contrast, was having to fight every step of the way, weaving through a sudden stampede of passengers heading for the all-stops Bandel local on platform 2. Still, I kept going, contriving a path through the melee so as to intercept him just shy of the platform.
I got there mere moments before the approaching suitcase, and then I saw him, properly this time, and stopped in my tracks. On either side of him walked a police officer, one British, the other Indian. My first thought was that maybe they’d arrested him already, but that made little sense. He wasn’t in handcuffs and he was being escorted to his train rather than a cell at Lal Bazar.
Sweat trickled down my back. Gulmohamed was now inches away, heading straight for me. I considered my options and quickly realised that I had none. I could not arrest him, not in light of the men accompanying him.
Gulmohamed brushed past and one of his minders, the Indian, attempted to walk straight through me.
‘Hatao!’ he roared, following with a push that, were it not for the mass of bodies around me, would have sent me sprawling.
I looked on as Gulmohamed waved his ticket at the platform guard and sailed past accompanied by his entourage and his porter, still carrying his suitcase atop his turban. Gulmohamed walked past third and second class, stopping at the entrance to a first-class sleeper compartment and turning to his associates. The coolie lowered his valise and placed it inside the carriage door as Gulmohamed reached into his pocket for a coin and tossed it to him.
My only hope now was if the two officers, having delivered him to the station, would now set off back whence they came, affording me the opportunity to somehow give the platform guard the slip and board the train. Unfortunately neither of the gentlemen seemed in any hurry to leave.
I looked up at the station clock. There were only minutes before the train was scheduled to depart. After what felt an eternity, the two officers finally began to walk back towards the concourse. It was now or never. I scanned the vicinity till I found what I was looking for – a suitcase, not exactly unattended, but the gentleman to whom it belonged was engrossed in the company of a young woman and had his back to it. With my heart pounding, I walked over and picked up the case as naturally as I could, then kept walking. I braced myself, but neither the man nor his companion had noticed.
I muttered my thanks to Maa Kali and, with the suitcase now on my head, made for platform 1. Gulmohamed’s minders had now reached the concourse, but to my horror, instead of continuing towards the exit, they stopped and turned. Perhaps they were under orders to remain until the train physically departed. It seemed I had no alternative. With my life at stake, I had to continue with my plan.
I walked past them, taking care not to pass too close, and hurried towards the ticket inspector, who eyed me with the type of disregard with which one does a para dog.
‘Shaheb aashché,’ I said, pointing vaguely behind me to indicate that my sahib was coming.
‘Jao,’ he said, waving me through.
And with that, I was on the platform. Affording myself a smile of relief, I hastened towards Gulmohamed’s carriage with new-found optimism. At least until a whistle blew. For a moment I thought it was the guard blowing for departure, but it continued, a long, piercing, shriek of a whistle. Then came the shouts.
‘Stop! Thief!’
I turned to see the Englishman whose case I’d appropriated bounding down the platform. The guard was running too, still blowing his damned whistle. Worse, the two officers, alerted to the incident, were also beginning to make towards me. I dropped the case and ran, not an easy task in a turban and a pair of torn sandals. I had thirty yards on the pack but the gap was quickly closing. I looked back. The Englishman had stopped beside his case. The guard too had given up the chase, but the two officers were a different matter. They flew down the platform like hounds after a hare. Someone in a third-class compartment shouted at me. ‘Thief!’
Another whistle sounded, this time from the engine. The train began to move. I kept running, past some second-class carriages, past the buffet car.
The train accelerated, its carriages beginning to match my stride. Soon they’d be overtaking me. The sound of the officers’ boots rang out behind me. There was nothing for it. I waited till I was level with a carriage entrance, reached for the hand rail and leapt. One of my sandals came loose, falling between the train and the platform, and was crushed beneath the wheels of the train.
I paused for breath, my heart pounding against the confines of my chest, and turned to look behind me. The officers were following my lead, jumping onto the train two carriages further down.
There was no time to think. Kicking off the remaining sandal, I pushed on, through the swing door and into the carriage. It turned out to be a second-class sleeper car, with the bunks running along one side and a corridor filled with travellers arranging their luggage on the other. I hurried forward in the knowledge that, should a guard come along it from the opposite direction, I would be trapped.
I pushed my way through, past protesting passengers. Outside the window, the platform slipped away. I made it to the end just as my pursuers entered the carriage behind me. The English officer saw me, shouted something and went for his revolver. I didn’t waste time waiting for him to aim the damn thing, instead I plunged through the door and into the gap between carriages. On either side, the steel of a dozen railway tracks shimmered in the moonlight as the train picked up speed. The next carriage was the first-class buffet car, and I rushed through it, sending crockery smashing to the floor and ignoring the shrieks of several English ladies settling down to supper.
I reached the first of the sleeper cars. There, at the end of the corridor, stood Gulmohamed, smoking a cigarette. Any relief I experienced evaporated almost immediately however, for before I could progress towards him, the guard for the first-class compartments, a man the size of a small bungalow, entered the carriage behind him, took one look at me and decided that today was the day that the gods had decided he might wield his fists in the service of the Eastern Railway Company. He strode forward, readying himself to wring my neck. Gulmohamed got out of his way, ducking into his cabin with the dispatch of a rabbit into a burrow.
There was nowhere to go. I was out of time and, I feared, out of options. I reached for my gun, the one I’d picked up outside Lord Taggart’s residence, grabbed it from my trouser pocket and pointed it at the advancing conductor. He stopped dead and raised his hands, and I urged him to lie down in the corridor, then stepped past him as, behind me, the officers entered the carriage.
‘You there!’ shouted the Englishman. ‘Stop!’
Gulmohamed was only feet away. I was so close. I tried the door of his cabin, but he’d locked it. I thought about shooting the lock and diving into his cabin, but there was no time.
The Englishman raised his revolver and fired, the bullet missing me by inches before puncturing a hole in the carriage wall behind. I ran and dived through the door at the end of the compartment and into the space between the carriages. The train had picked up speed and was now travelling at pace. I heard the door smash open. It was foolhardy, but I had no choice.
I jumped.