FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Vice Blog

TRAVEL SHMAVEL - LITTLE STORIES ABOUT STUFF NOT IN THE US

Lately we are traveling more, so we're going to make it a practice here to tell light little stories that would otherwise die in our heads. The first one is about India…

I was in India midsummer, taking a train from Kolkata to Raipur. Due to a mistake, I'd booked a night train sleeper car without air conditioning. There are three berths in these cars, and I rode with a group of ten or 11 Bengali men who were traveling together to take an exam, in order to become train conductors.

Advertisement

The train set out close to midnight, and only moments after it left the station, the men switched from trousers into these scarf-towels—skirts, not unlike kitchen towels, that are pretty widely worn by men in summer.

We didn't speak much in the evening, just a hello, and we made our beds and went to sleep. Then at around 4 AM, I had a brief encounter with one man. I woke up and he was jerking off. But I was asleep, and so it was all like a dream. He pulled his shorts up and then crawled down into the berth below. I rolled back to the wall and returned to sleep.

When we woke up in the morning, the train started making more stops, and with every train stop, more men came on board. Sleeper class is non-reserved during the day. The train made many stops, and they really packed it in—about ten or 11 people on every berth—and the halls were packed with people sitting and standing. Everyone was miserable.

The masturbator had a book of facts and information, and he began to quiz me:

"What is biggest river in New York?"

I don't know. Hudson?

"Who is the home secretary of the US?"

I don't know.

And then his brother, without a book, joined in: "Madame, do you know what is the most popular fruit in the US? Madame, do you know what is garam?"

And then the masturbator: "Madame, what is biggest news organization in the world? What is second? Madame, do you know what is a banana?"

And then the brother: "Madame, what in your country is the symbol of marriage?"

Advertisement

It went on like this.

"Madame, do you know who is Bush?"

Yes, I know who is Bush.

"Madame, do not get annoyed to me."

But the thing was that I didn't know when the train was to arrive in Raipur. The conductor told me 8 AM, and the men, well studied for their exams, said 1 PM. But by 2 PM, they said we hadn't reached Raipur. I had no idea. We were stopping every half hour or so, and everything looked the same: Like nothing. And then close to 4:30, at a stop like any other, they told me to get out. I was in Raipur.

A tout on a rickshaw took me to what I later learned was the worst hotel in town, the Hotel Kanishka. I spent a night in a suite, where rats the size of houses played all night, and little buttons beside my bed opened and closed the curtains, operated the AC and fans, and flipped the television's 51 cable stations.

VICE STAFF