Trains and taxis

As many of you know, we recently began foster care of a little girl named Sikha. We aren’t quite sure how old she is, but we are guessing just a bit older than Eva, though Eva out masses her, out muscles her, out pudges her, and is taller than her. The two are getting along fairly well and to a degree playing together. The nice thing is that Sikha came trained and is setting a good example for Eva. The first night we had Sikha, we laid her down in bed, she put her thumb in her mouth, closed her eyes and went to sleep. This contrasts to Eva who screams, cries, drinks milk, flops back and forth, recites her vocabulary, asks whether Mama is running, and then falls asleep. We have asked whether the orphanage has room for one more, maybe just for a few months, but there are no vacancies.

While Sikha needs to learn to speak English, Eva needs to learn to speak. She has gotten pretty good at mimicking us.

“Eva, put this in the drawer.”

“Drawer?”

“Yes, the one over there.”

“There?”

“Yes, butter muffin, the drawer with your clothes.”

“Clothes”

“Do it before I paddle your butt.”

“Butt?”

While Sikha probably looks more like me, she is her mother’s daughter. Just like her mother she likes pretty dresses, dancing, and spray bottles. I suppose later in life I will get accustomed to celebrating how different both of my daughters are from me. Or maybe everyone will joke that Im adopted.

I have to travel a lot for work. The train is, in my opinion, the best way to travel around India. True, they are smelly, and true, they are crowded, and yes they can get hot in the summer and cold in the winter. But Ive in the past generally enjoyed riding the trains. So when a friend asked me to help him install a few systems in Bihar offering to buy my train ticket there and back, I was pretty excited.

Now there were a few things I didn't consider before I accepted. First, it was May, the hottest month in India, and I was going to Bihar, one of the driest, hottest, poorest places on the planet. Also, I didn't realize but the train to Bihar that we were going on was scheduled to take 20 hours. And trains in India are rarely on schedule.

On the way out to Bihar, we boarded the train without tickets. My friend convinced me things would be fine. “This is India, everything can be negotiated!” We got on the train at 1AM for a 20 hour train ride to find that we weren’t the only ones who thought we could negotiate a seat. In every 3 seats were 5 people. Beneath them on the floors were 2 people. The aisles were also chock full of people sitting on each other, most of them asleep somehow. These were the lucky people. My friend and I had missed the chance to get any space in the aisle and only had standing room near the door. On a 20 hour train ride. At 1am.

Not long after, I knew I wasn't going to make it. I told my friend we needed to try a different car. After passing through a few cars, we got to a car that had some aisle space. My friend looked at me and said, “See, what did I tell you! We can sleep here.” The floor was mostly dry, only mostly because this particular aisle space was close to the bathroom. My spot was 4 feet long and right underneath a set of bunk beds. So laying down, I was looking up at 3 people, one sleeping a bit higher than the other, all above me. And I kept thinking “What if one of them falls out of their bed and lands on me?” I figured it was about a million to one odds so I closed my eyes and not long after I fell asleep.

I didn’t sleep well and the night seemed very long. After what seemed like a million seconds, a lady fell out of her bed and landed on me. I looked up startled, but it didn't seem to phase her much. She was still asleep. So I let out a loud “UGGHHHHH!” and shook around a bit until she woke up. My friend told me the next day that had it been me falling on a random lady in the middle of the night, the passengers would have thrown me from the moving train.

My lesser fear that night was of being kicked by people walking to the bathroom. Though less painful, I had thought that to be a more real possibility. And it was, but not by the margin you might think. It turns out that you are only six times as likely to get kicked by someone while sleeping in the aisle than you are to get fallen on. And more surprising is that you are only just as likely to get yelled at for sleeping in the aisle than to get fallen upon.

The installations went fairly well. I found it odd that in one village there were hand pumps that provided clean water, but every morning instead of using these hand pumps, the residents sent their children to collect water from the dried riverbed. Overnight, mud puddles would form in the riverbed from an underground water source and the children would spend their mornings scooping up this water from these shallow puddles using small cups. I asked why people did this and was told that they preferred the taste of the water from the puddles. I had photos to prove all of this on my phone, but more on that later.

On the last day of the installation, I installed what I thought would be a pretty good mobile phone charger – my own design of course. I set it up, plugged in my first junk phone. Nothing happened. “Well, this phone is junk. Try again”. I plugged in the second junk phone. Nothing happened. “Piece of junk,” I said. “Lets try this one.” Same thing. At this point, a smarter person would think something is wrong with the phone charger. Most people would know better than to plug in their expensive smart phone into the system. Most people. I left the room pissed off. A few minutes later, another man walked out of the same room yelling that his phone wouldn't stop ringing. I hid.

That afternoon, I headed back to the train station to catch my train home. The rickshaw I happened to catch was about as large as a wheel barrow but I was still the 11^th person to board. And I wasn't the last either. I just wanted to ride to end but the driver kept stopping to see if he could put in more people. Finally, with 13 people in the rickshaw, he realized he didn't have room for a single other person. But anxious to get a few more rupees, he did agree to carry a goat into town. The goat sat right behind me and sounded more unhappy that I was.

At the train station, on the PA system, a friendly lady was warning us against crime. “Don’t buy food from people you don't know. It is merely a plot to steal your belongings.” I was bothered by this for a few reasons. First, I wanted to know how the scheme worked; how would I lose my belongings by buying food? Second, what were the chances of me meeting someone I knew at the train station in Bihar? And further, what would the chances be that they would be trying to sell me food? I had to eat, I really didn't see much of an alternative.

I looked around for food options. “Arun’s Snakes and Drinks”. That didn't sound appetizing. I went to a guy selling samosas, looked him up and down, held tight onto my bag, and asked for 2 samosas. He could obviously tell that I had heard the announcement and wasn’t some jimmy he could fool into trading my belongings for a few samosas. But he did overcharge me.

The 21 hour train ride back took 32 hours. And without a functioning phone, I couldn't even call Jen to complain.

Back in Delhi, Jen and I went out for coffee. We went to the fanciest coffee place we knew of, ordered coffees, then looked at the baked goods. There were quite a number of options including “muffin”, “sandwich”, “Mr Fudgie the Brownie”, and “cookie”. Later that day I had to take our daughter in for some medical tests. Being India I was sure I would have no problem finding a great medical facility to take her to. I called one place and was put on hold. The message in the background told me that “Dr. Lal’s Lab measures diagnostics not in numbers but in smiles”. This wasn't the place for me so I called another place.

Some of the equipment we use of our business has to be imported from China. And importing requires dealing with customs. The last time I went, I had to wait around for a few hours. I got the chance to see a lot of other importers and watched how they dealt with customs fees. One man had imported fire hydrants. He told the customs official that they were worth $1.20 each. The customs official balked, slammed his hand against the table, and said he was sure they were worth more, maybe even $3 each. That is how customs duties are figured out. A random guy who was lucky enough to have the money required to buy the job sits behind a table and guesses the value of things and then assigns a customs fee to it. This usually results in a bargain for the importer. As a result, most importers usually ask that their equipment not be sent with a legitimate invoice.

A few weeks later, I was back on the road again to do another installation. The driver I used for this trip had a business card that listed as his title “ PROblem solVER”. We collected our equipment and drove a few hours to the village we were to install in. There was a shortage of hotels in the area because of wedding season so the driver and I ended up sharing a room in a seedy hotel. The room was filthy and located right next to the back gate to the hotel which led to an even dirtier alley.

After a full day of work the next day, the driver was complaining about his back. To ease the pain he got drunk and then ordered a small bottle of whiskey to take back with him for later. After dinner, we retreated to the hotel and went to sleep. A few hours later, the back gate was opened and a number of young ladies were allowed into the hotel and entered the rooms surrounding ours. The hotel became quite lively at this point which woke up the driver who then began complaining about his back again.

“Nikhil, I need you to sit on my back,” he said. It was clear he had already drunk the remaining alcohol. So in the middle of this pitch black hotel room, with lots of activity around us, I got up and to satisfy the needs of a highly intoxicated taxi driver. He began letting out exclamations of pleasure as I sat on different parts of his back. “Oh yes, right there! Right there!” he yelled at one point. “You are so good to me!” another time. The whole thing felt really dirty.

Afterwards, still drunk and not being a fluent English speaker, he said, and I quote, “I am your daddy. I am like your daddy, but I cannot be your daddy. I tell your daddy I like him.”

The next morning I tried to forget about the whole incident, but the driver was still very thankful. “You are a champion!” he said. I felt like I needed a bath, but the bathroom was so disgusting I would have ended up dirtier than when I started.

We headed back out to the village to complete the installation. The driver was installing solar panels while I went with a representative of a local NGO who doesn't speak very good English to lay distribution lines.

“Ok, we need to run this wire from here to that house over there.”

“There?”

“Yes, that house with the green paint.”

“Paint?”

“Ok, look. Take this wire, walk with it until you get to that house. Stop before you get to the red one.”

“Red one?”

“No, not the red one. All of them but.”

“Butt?”

I was fortunate enough to finish all of the critical work just before I had to leave. The driver took me back to the train station, and the train uneventfully back to Delhi where I am now hiding out in our cushy apartment. Unfortunately, it is only a matter of days before I am back on the train. One day I will get someone else to do this work for me, but then I wont have any more stories to tell. A worthwhile trade off, for sure.