Elsewhere and Otherwise: Yet Another Train Story

More and more, my varied impressions of India have come to be centered around trains. At first, trains were just a means of transportation - hot, dirty, packed, noisy transportation that made me want to stay as far away from railroads as possible. But over time I have come to see that trains are the "arteries" of India in more than just the literal, practical sense; the culture of train travel and the people I have met along the way have taught me more about this country than almost any other experience I've had here. It is on trains that I have learned to adapt to life here, trains that have thrown India's double life in my face, over and over until I grudgingly accepted it; trains that have shown me the kindness of strangers and the occasional, unexpected coldness of friends. Most of all, I have come to see that - as quoted by one friend - India is both "incredibly gorgeous and absolutely horrible" at the same time, and trains have helped me to accept that, even embrace it.

I took the train into Mumbai on Saturday to hang out with Mike... and, as with every rickety ride along the tracks, I learned a great deal. I met a woman - we'll call her Khalifa - a sweet, well-dressed, middle-aged Muslim woman with perfect English and a shiny new camera phone. She was traveling home after visiting her parents and when I first met her, she was nervously chattering on her phone. Her husband was supposed to meet her at the station in Bombay, but because the train was almost an hour late he called to say he was going home and she should just take a cab. She had three huge bags to carry by herself, down from the train and all across the platform. But how could she argue with her husband? She smiled quietly. Khalifa has two daughters, one finishing high school and the other in college. She proudly showed me their photographs and told me that her older daughter was working part-time in a bank. This was an enormous achievement; she wistfully remembered that, years ago, when she finished college, she had also wanted to work in a bank, but her father forbid it - she wasn't allowed to work near men. So instead she got a job as a part-time nursery school teacher while waiting for her parents to arrange her marriage.

She hasn't worked since then; her husband is a successful stock trader and doesn't allow it; he says that having her work outside the house would detract from her household duties and make him look bad in the community. Women are supposed to stay at home, quietly, the unseen and unspoken caretakers that blend into the background in thick layers of long black fabric. She's bored a lot of the time, and lonely because her daughters aren't around... she makes beaded purses by hand and would like to sell them, but is forbidden. She offered me a small bag of sweets; they're cooked at home by village women who sell them on the trains. She had a brilliant idea a few years ago, to help these women set up a company exporting the candies - they're incredibly popular in the Middle East and selling them there could easily double or triple the womens' incomes. But her husband refused. Has she thought about getting a divorce? She has, she says. But how can she divorce him now? She has been married for so many years. I know, I tell her. I can see it in the gentle lines crowding her face, but I do not tell her that.

Life in India is both strange and familiar... I have learned things about people that I never expected. Of course, there's oppression in this patriarchal society... but I never would have expected such deep-seeded suffering from a well-dressed, well-to-do, relatively modern woman. More significant was the resignation that emanated from her... i could feel it, sitting next to her, looking into her eyes and seeing a soft, quiet sorrow. She was kind, educated, and full of fantastic ideas and great business sense. But she is a woman, a Muslim woman in India, and sharing her dreams with a stranger on a train is as far as she'll ever take them. Things are changing, slowly, and yet very much remains the same. The India I have traveled through over miles of train tracks is revealing in its juxtaposed modernity and baffling antiquity... learning to understand that paradox has made my train journeys one of the most valuable things about living in India.

Village women preparing to board a train... they will have just a few minutes to push past the crowds and load their bags into the crowded compartments, traveling for hours to sell their goods on the streets in Mumbai.