A buzz began to grow in the carriage as the remaining guests gathered for dinner, jabbering over the clink of gins and crunch of pretzels. Many ITV reruns of Murder on the Orient Express had taught me that a train like the Indian Maharaja was a five-star cruise on wheels, the preserve of retirees, rich grannies and dapper little Belgian men with moustaches. But this was a pick ‘n’ mix of passengers: a young Swiss couple in matching outfits; three Japanese ladies with an oversized interpreter; Bob and Jane from Devon, who loved tea and Test Match Special; Dan and Maisie from New York, who dressed like Don and Betty Draper; and a Russian group made up of two pairs of newly weds and one spare mother-in-law, who arrived in football gear and wore bath slippers in the dining car. The consensus among the guests was that they had won the holiday on a television show. Aside from the staff, I was the only Indian on board. As we made our way towards the dining car, an Englishman with carefree hair appeared in the doorway. James was a journalist from The Times. Drew Barrymore had been on board the week before, and he was writing a piece about the resurgence in popularity of luxury trains even though she had apparently left after just two days.
“I’m very impressed,” Bob said, poking his nose into the glass. “It’s very drinkable and apparently isn’t produced far from here. Fancy, Indian vineyards, whatever next?”
Bob and Jane were already seated at a table, examining a bottle of wine, and waved us over.
“Come on, join us fogies,” Bob smiled. “We won’t bite and we’ll try not to bore you to death.”
We slid in as he filled our wine glasses. He peered closely at the bottle and began reading the label. “‘Herbaceous, crisp, and dry, with hints of green pepper and a touch of spice at the finish’. I wish I had the job of writing these blurbs,” he continued. “I’d have so much fun with them: ‘a smooth aroma of vanilla and blackberries with an undertone of wet dog’. Having said that, this really isn’t bad at all.”
My only memory of drinking wine in India was five years ago at a hotel bar in Hyderabad: I had ordered a glass of red wine that tasted marginally better than cough syrup, and when the bill came it had cost more than six Bacardi Breezers put together.
“I’m very impressed,” Bob said, poking his nose into the glass. “It’s very drinkable and apparently isn’t produced far from here. Fancy, Indian vineyards, whatever next?”
From across the aisle an Indian man spoke up. Perhaps he had been hiding in his cabin during orientation, but here was a new addition to the group. Suhel worked in sales for a travel company in Delhi and had reached his target before any of his colleagues. His reward was a trip aboard the train.
“The Sula Vineyards are quite close by.”
“Where is this?” Bob asked.
“A little northeast of Mumbai.”
“How long have they been there?”
“Actually it was started in ’99 by a Mumbaikar. He went to Stanford then worked for two years in Silicon Valley.”
“Techies and CEOs are your finest export, aren’t they?”
Suhel laughed. “Yes, but many graduates are going and coming back now.”
“Is there a huge wine-drinking contingent in India? I should think it would only be in Mumbai and Delhi.”
“I think they sell some two, maybe three million bottles each year.”
“Ridiculous, isn’t it?” Roger had turned around in his seat and was listening over the booth.
“What is?” Suhel asked.
“Your elite are more bothered about promoting wine drinking than sorting out the masses.”
“But the wine industry is a rural industry. It is based in the countryside and provides employment to rural workers. It’s good for us to find resources in India itself.”
“Still, it does seem a bit nuts talking about wine production when half this country doesn’t have water.”
Suhel put down his fork. “And what do you propose. Tell me? Always people want to criticise but nobody gives suggestions. Why should India always mean poverty?”
“And in that case, why didn’t you take the Punjab Mail from Mumbai to Delhi instead of the Indian Maharaja?” I asked Roger, then noticed James’s pen flicking across his notepad and decided to shut up. Rolling his eyes, Roger turned back to his meal as Suhel shrugged at me and grinned, poking his biryani with a fork. All around gloved waiters moved like mime artists, twirling plates above their heads and taking wide steps around each other. A thali arrived with a turret of biryani in the centre and a pappadum that opened like a lotus, revealing diced salad. I dived in feeling sorry for Passepartout, who was stirring a bowl of pineapple yoghurt, unable to cope with anything solid. Once the last plate was wiped and the final drop drained, we swayed back to the suite for an early night before the morning arrival in Aurangabad to visit the caves at Ellora and Ajanta. An orchid, damp with dew, lay on the duvet next to a card inscribed in gold: “God bless the inventor of sleep, the cloak that covers all men’s thought.” It was a quotation from Cervantes, who had obviously never tried to sleep on an Indian train. For the next two hours we snaked crazily along the tracks, my neck jolting into an early onset of spondylosis. Abandoning sleep, I opened up my book to see if King Thebaw was settling into his new home any faster than I was. Passepartout, meanwhile, had turned the colour of mint chutney.
Sleep must have crept up on me, as I awoke to a tinkling of glass and flipped on the light to find the cabin in the midst of a mutiny. Two wine glasses were rolling around on their sides, a bottle of Merlot was hurling itself against the wall, and the cabin door was sliding back and forth in a rage. After pulling a sock around the bottle and wedging it between the wall and a chair leg, I slid the glasses into a drawer, shoved a screw of paper into the doorframe and flipped off the light. The train chose that moment to glide to a halt. A romantic milky light seeped through the gaps in the curtains and I eased them back in search of a glowing moon, only to find a bent halogen street lamp and a man rearranging himself on the platform. Just before 6 am, Benoy tapped at the door and placed a tray of coffee and biscuits on the bed while Passepartout hugged his toilet bowl.
The breakfast car was as lively as a cemetery. Cyril and Marie were poring over the menu and beckoned me over to explain chana puri (chickpeas with fried Indian bread). Intrigued by the bacon, sausages and ham, I opted for all of the above and Zayan, a dreamy-eyed waiter with dimples, flapped a napkin across my lap.
“Eggs, madam?”
“Yes, please.”
“Poachedfriedscrambledboiledbenedictomelettemadam?”
I settled on a scrambled egg flecked with chives and watched as the Bagshot Trio prodded forks at a plate of usal pav (spicy sprouts curry with Indian bread). Just outside their window, four beggar children had lined up and were pressing their faces against it.
“Rather off-putting,” Roger’s wife Cath moaned, heaping a spoonful of sugar into her coffee. Roger eyed the row of small faces.
“Just ignore them, dear.”
“I can’t, they’re staring at me!” she exclaimed, shifting in her seat. “Do you think they can see me?”
On a day-to-day basis, nobody really notices poverty. People go about their business, chins up, eyes fixed forward, hiding behind tinted windows or in air-conditioned homes. Beggars, pavement dwellers and sick children carrying sick babies are just a part of the landscape. On the other side of the train, a row of ladies with jasmine dangling from their plaits waited with wedding-sized garlands and a silver tray of coconut, sandalwood paste and a pot of kumkum. A flame flickered in the centre on a piece of camphor. Four dancers carried a palanquin on their shoulders on which a bare-chested child was sitting in a dhoti, wearing a papier-mâché head of Lord Ganesha and holding an umbrella above him. He looked like a mannequin. As each passenger descended the steps, bellies like Ganesha, they were draped with the flowers and their foreheads swiped with red, a ritual that continued for the next seven days.
Monisha Rajesh’s Around India in 80 Trains is published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing