In Kali's Country: Tales from Sunny India

by Emily Churchill Thompson Sheets

Since the fare is so small and since the Hindu religion, as also the Mohammedan, teaches the efficacy of pilgrimages, the people now make their pilgrimages, as far as possible and wherever possible, by train. Their religions have thus so accustomed the natives to the trains that they seem to be always travelling. The richer ones may go first or second class. But the majority of them go third and, since the first person in gets the best seat in these third-class cars while others crowd in as long as there is an inch to spare, there is a mad scramble for first, second, third, fourth, and fifth place at the third-class carriage doors.

So it was as the Calcutta train pulled into M——. Men with bundles and women with babies, more bundles, water jars, and bags of food swarmed into the third-class coaches. In a remarkably short time, however, the people who had wanted to get off were gone with their bundles, trailing women, and dangling children, and the lot going towards Calcutta had stowed away inside the carriages, on top of each other or anywhere that they could, their bundles, their clinging women, and their crying children; and still there were several minutes before time for the train to pull out. Then the through passengers, since, as the newcomers were settled, their own seats were secure, could get out upon the platform. A bearded Mohammedan with flowing robes and turbaned head, spreading a mat on the platform beside the car and slipping out of his shoes, knelt three times and said his prayers towards Mecca, unmindful of the crowd around him. At the hydrant a good Hindu carefully washed out his mouth preparatory to partaking of his noonday meal; while men of all castes walked up and down beside the cars, resting their cramped limbs. From the car windows many a braceleted arm reached out a brass water jar to be filled by the Mohammedan water-carrier. And at other windows Hindu women waited for the Hindu water-carrier to fill their jars so that they might have water for the journey.

The sweetmeat venders were unusually busy, for it was just about noon and Indian sweets are to native Indians really a staple article of diet instead of a confection as in other countries. They are made of wholesome food stuffs; sometimes they are shaped like pretzels; sometimes, rolled into balls; sometimes, chopped into flakes. But all kinds are well liked and the boy, passing along the trainside with the flat basket of sweets upon his head, just in range of the carriage windows, was kept busy dealing out his wares until he had a light load left and a hand full of coppers. The baskets of the pretty green pan were also many packages lighter when the gong on the platform sounded.

At the sound of the gong the through passengers scrambled back into their places; all but the Mohammedan faithful, who, having deliberately slipped his feet back into his shoes, carefully folded up his prayer mat, and with no loss of dignity climbed slowly into his compartment.

The guard raised his hand.

The train started.

But in the ladies' compartment of the third class the confusion continued after the start, for three naked babies were climbing over their mothers and crying; an old woman was rummaging over her treasures which had been tied up in a white cloth and raising a wild lamentation because she had lost an anna; and two young beauties in gay saris, with jangling bracelets, clanking anklets, and flashing necklaces, were chewing pan very vigorously and chattering in shrill voices, displaying as they did so mouths most beautifully reddened with the pan juice and teeth most artistically blackened by the same delicacy.

But after a short time the babies, either satisfied with their natural diet or at least appeased with cold chapatis or bits of sweets handed out by tired mothers, became quiet. The old woman, exhausted by her unavailing search and grief, was reduced to a quiet mumbling and a hopeless picking at her bundle. And the two young women became less noisy in a close comparing of jewels. There was enough of calm, therefore, so that the travellers could get a glimpse of each other and see what sort of company each was in.

It was a motley crowd and one that broke many of the laws of caste. It showed plainly how much the railroad is doing to rid India of that curse. In one corner sat a Brahmin woman, distinguishable by the refined features of her class rather than the caste mark upon her forehead, but too poor for the greater privacy of a second compartment. Next to her, a proximity which would have broken her caste at one time, sat a Chumar woman. Next was a lady with the white head-cloth and one-coloured sari of the Parsi. And beside the Parsi was a tiny high caste girl, most bejewelled and bedecked, wearing the necklace which showed that although she was but eight or nine years old she was married. Evidently the child-wife was taking the journey with her mother-in-law, for the woman next beyond her, apparently of the same caste, would occasionally jerk the little girl into her seat and scold her roundly when she ventured to lean over to look out of the window.