It was my first trip on a train. It was like stepping into the belly of an enormous snake that devoured whole people, hundreds of them, thousands of them, except that we entered the snake voluntarily and weren’t exactly devoured, but would leave again at the other end of the journey, exhausted, drained of all energy, limp as a thirsty vine. We were in a carriage that was called Three-Tiered Third Class. Three-Tiered meant that the bunks had three levels. There were only ladies in the carriage and some had babies. During the day there was only the seats, but at night a man came around and lowered the two top bunks and each lady slept on a separate bunk. The woman I was with – she told me to call her Sita Aunty but I never did. The words just could not leave my mouth. I did not call her anything at all, in fact. I just did not speak. Not speaking felt like the safest thing to do, but I knew I was not really safe at all. I did not want to go to Bombay but of course nobody asked me. In my heart I screamed only for Janiki. But Janiki did not come. She did not hear. Janiki was so far away, in a different country, on another continent. Janiki would just be coming home from work in her happy place, just be switching on her computer and wondering why I was not with Naadiya.
That woman – she watched me like a snake watches its prey. Especially when the train stopped – at those times she would grab my wrists and not let me go, in case I ran away. When the train started up again she would relax her grip. When the train stopped sometimes food-wallahs would come on board and bring meals and that was how we ate. There were four other ladies in our compartment. One of them had a baby that cried all the time. There was a mother and a daughter a bit older than me and a much older lady. They all chatted among themselves and sometimes they asked the lady called Sita Aunty questions and she replied to them but told them only lies. She said she was my aunt and she was bringing me to Bombay to get married. All the other ladies laughed and smiled at me then. But I did not smile back. I did not say a word, except when I needed to relieve myself. Then the lady called Sita Aunty would accompany me to the latrine and wait for me outside and then we would return to our compartment. The train tore through the countryside like a bullet, through the night like a comet slashing through the black sky. I slept and woke up and the scenes flitting past the windows changed and then we were in Bombay fighting through the crowds at the station.
The woman bundled us into a taxi and the taxi drove through streets so congested it felt as if we were in a metal box creeping through the streets, inching past other metal boxes full of people who were all happy and knew where they were going, and I was the only one with no inkling as to what was happening. I did not ask again where we were going because I knew the answer would mean nothing to me.
At last we came to a big house and she made me climb some stairs ahead of her. Up and up, up and up. I thought we would climb for ever and end up in the heavens but at last she made me walk down a dark dingy corridor that had not been swept for months or years, and took out a key and opened a door and pushed me through. I found myself in another hallway, darker and dingier. Then she opened another door and made me enter. The room was very small. Against one wall was a charpai, and that was all the furniture. She pointed under the bed and I could see a pail peeping out. The pail was for my excretions. Then she left me alone and I waited.
I waited and waited and then after what seemed like an eternity the door opened and two men entered. They made me stand up and stared at me, talking. They spoke Hindi. I had learned a little Hindi at school but they spoke so quickly I could not understand them. All I could understand was that they approved of me. They did not tell me that. They did not speak to me at all, just watched me, looked me up and down, as if I were a cow for sale in a market.
But I knew. And somehow I knew that their approval was not a good thing, but that their disapproval would be even worse. I do not know how I knew these things. I just did. It was an instinct. And then they left. Now and then the woman I had travelled with to Bombay came in and brought me meals, and water to drink. Once she removed the pail and brought me an empty one to replace it. I was so embarrassed by that. I wanted to tell her I needed another pail, one with water to clean myself. But I could not speak. It was as if a demon had clamped my throat so that no words could emerge, and all the words I wanted to say were just collecting inside me, unable to escape, jammed together in my innards where they turned into a huge quivering mass of fear, and that was all I was, fear. And all through the fear a tiny voice called for Janiki but the fear drowned out that voice. I could not even pray. Amma had taught me to pray throughout all my fears and darkness, that prayer was a lifeline I could cling to, but I was not strong enough to cling and my fear seemed to devour me from within. I was so alone, so alone in this huge strange city, and outside my walls were so many millions of people and not one of them could help me, because I was locked in this tiny room.
There was a window I could not open. And it was hot, so hot. And all I could do was lie on that charpai and hope that sleep would carry me away but I could not even sleep because the fear drove sleep away. Sometimes I tried to remember the good times. I remembered the village streets where I had played with my brothers and with Janiki, laughed and jumped and ran with the other village children, not knowing that one day I would be in hell, far away from all that I knew and loved.
How I longed for the oblivion of sleep! But it did not come and when dawn broke the next day it was a small comfort, because at least it would be light and the light was better than the dark.
But at least on that second day there was some change. Nothing is worse than being shut alone in a room with your fears and your thoughts and your feelings. Nothing is worse than being alone with all the monsters that live within, because those monsters are all you have for entertainment and entertain you they will. If only I had something to read! Anything. Even an old dictionary or some stupid film ads, anything, anything I could latch my mind to so that the monsters that dwell within could not rise up; so I could not see them. This is what I learned in that little room. That my worst companion was myself, and there was no running away, nowhere to go and no control over those monsters. And I longed for something, anything, to anchor myself on so I would not have to face my own wretched self.
And so I was happy when the woman spoke a few curt words and told me to follow her down the endless stairs again. Yes, I said that word, happy. I was happy in my home in Gingee with the people I loved, before Amma and Appa died. But compared to being alone in that room, walking down the stairs with that lady, well I felt almost bliss. And then we were on the pavement and her hand tight around my wrist once again. A car was waiting at the kerb, not a taxi this time. A car with a driver, and she pushed me forward and forced me to enter a car, and the car moved off to I know not where, and even that seemed like joy compared to being in that room. I did not know that one day I would look back on that room and long to be there again, regard that room as joy. And the car moved into that slow-moving beast of metal crawling through the streets of Bombay, became part of that beast. So many people! I could see them on the pavements, crowds of them, moving here and there, and I longed to leap from the car and throw myself on their mercy, but next to me was that woman and I knew that leaping from the car was futile as her grip was firmly closed around my wrist.
The car drove up outside a house and I was ushered through the door and into the arms of the woman who, from then on, was to be my new prison warden. She received me with what anyone would have mistaken for a welcoming smile, and welcoming words, but I knew in my heart that she was welcoming me into something so terrible I could not even imagine it. How could I know such things? I just did. And yet once again I knew something like joy, because unlike the stern silent woman who had brought me to Bombay this new woman greeted me with a big smile and chattered all the time, and better yet, she spoke English. And though her friendliness was feigned, it was better than the sheer desolation of being silent and alone.
But if I had known what was to come – oh, I would have screamed and struggled and fought like a tigercat. But I did not know. I was docile as a kitten, handed from one woman to another. I was docile because I did not know. I could not imagine. I took her smile, and her words, as a sign that better was to come.
‘You are a very fortunate girl!’ she said to me, and my heart leapt because I believed her.
I should not have.
Worse was to come.