the Neurosis of Coming Home

The initial move toward the incoming engine, the mass quiet as the crowd waits for the doors to open. Younger men streak to the barred windows. They throw blankets, handkerchiefs, anything they can, into those spaces, even before the over-crowded car has had time to open its doors and let out its sardined passengers. And then the doors open (finally someone finds the latch) and the madness really begins. A race on the platform as passengers-to-be squirm toward the open doors, but there’s no room even for the others to exit the train in the first place. So body meets body as the platform pushes into the open doorway, the train car, full, exerting itself outward.

There is hardly room in this narrow Indian train car door for two adult bodies, certainly none for two girls with their packs, backpacking through India, and so I watch as my friend Mary hoists herself onto the stoop of the car, supported by the crowd and clashing with an old man who just wants to get off the goddamn train. I watch as her pack gets utterly stuck on the door, lodged firmly between it and the old man who pushes with all his might to get out, veins popping out against his thin flesh.

But he is experienced, this man, has been through many of these Indian train wars before, and steels his teeth against the pack. I watch as Mary is pulled back by the man and her own luggage, as she turns with a look of complete helplessness, still pulling for her spot on that train but also now for mere balance. And finally, like some cruel joke, the man pops out and into the squirming crowd, is lost as he becomes anonymous. Mary lurches into the train, moves into the empty space and now I know it’s my turn.

So I go, hoisted more by the impatient crowd than by my own will, and struggle against the next experienced exiter, feeling only the pack pulling, the man elbowing, the steel against my side and front, nowhere to go but then I’m through and somehow it’s just like Mary except I couldn’t see it, couldn’t see my own desperate trapped look and so it’s not so bad.

The train is full so fast, the seats taken by those hands sticking selfishly through the windows, and so I stand for maybe an hour with my pack still on until finally I can put it down between one old lady’s feet. And there I sit, enveloped by sweat (my own) and strangers, waiting for the next battle to begin. There is a baby wailing, its mother spooning sips of water into its mouth, an empty catheter protruding from its tiny wrist. I wonder what it’s for. The tiny unhappy thing. I am glad that some young man saved her a seat by sticking his hand through the window.