The Varanasi-Kolkata Sleeper

I was dreading the sleeper class from Varanasi to Kolkata. A quick education on the Indian Railway System: There are eight different classes. On overnight trains, four are generally available for passengers that hope to lie horizontal: First Class A/C, Second Class A/C, Third Class A/C, and Sleeper. The first three classes were completely booked by the time I scheduled my brother’s and my itinerary.

My last trip in sleeper was a not so restful, dizzying fog of snores at every octave, discordant interruptions of raspy Hindi and Marwari on the hour, and struggles to retain at least half of the seat I’d paid for. And that five hour trip was a quick jaunt compared to the fifteen hour one my brother, Danny, and I were soon to embark on, through some of the most underserved rural areas of India.

The train station in Varanasi hosted a teeming number of people, anxiously anticipating the arrival of overdue trains. They were sprawled out on the dirty floor – even those who, judging by appearance, would not normally find the corner of a train station a suitable resting place. Our train too was delayed, the platform undetermined, but a friendly security guard directed us to Train 3006’s normal point of arrival. Still a bit confused, I turned to a guy waiting at the platform, “Aapka train teen hazaar chhe?” (Your train is 3006?) He smiled and nodded, pleased to hear Hindi emerge from a foreign mouth, and asked me which train car I was in. “S7? Mai bhi!” he proclaimed, glancing at my ticket. We were in the same car.

About ten minutes into the train ride, my new friend Vikash showed up at my seat, motioning me to come with him. I followed him to the grimy, thunderous section between rail cars and he flung open the train door, exposing clear and increasingly crisp night air. His face lit up to tell me that the Ganges was coming. Devout Hindus honor the river as a goddess, Ganga, and offer to it coins for luck. As the train crossed over the river and the city of Kashi (Varanasi) lit up under us in beautiful shades of honey-colored light, Vikash turned to me and in eloquent English declared: “There is nothing rational about this. It is something of the spirit.” His two-rupee coin clanged against the bridge before dropping into the water as he performed the motions of a mini-puja.

When we slipped back into the people-packed rail car, Vikash’s father was signaling the two of us to join him. He wanted to introduce us to the woman sitting next to him, a new acquaintance. Her heart-shaped face was wrapped with a subtle pink shawl to break the infant chill of the open air sleeper car, and she was sitting cross-legged inside worn pajama pants. Her smile was intelligent, and infectious. This was Nilanjana Deb, a head lecturer of the English Literature department at the prestigious Javadpur University of Calcutta – riding sleeper class with rats running below her carefully tucked feet. For nearly an hour we all sat squeezed into one two-person seat, conversation drifting naturally from Hindi into English and back again; philosophies of literature and politics and religion rooted themselves in stories of sadhus and saints, poets and mystics. I mostly listened, reveling in their rich streams of thought, seamless but broad-reaching. By the time I returned to my seat with research project ideas, book recommendations, email addresses and two new friends, I’d also acquired a new respect for sleeper class, and a love for the people who don’t mind riding with rats.