Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

A J A H N S U C I T T O^0 F I R S T M O O N 06Nick returned at tea time frazzled and crestfallen with bundles wrappedin brown paper under his arms. We glumly reviewed the results. It wasfar too much for a pilgrim to carry around India. Eventually Nick, tryingto make something positive out of it, decided to take it as far as wewere going on public transport and send the greater portion back toEngland as presents. Anyway we took our leave of the manager of thePilgrim’s Rest and paid our respects to the Buddha sitting serenely, illuminatedby his half-smile in the Indian dusk. Above us all the batchomped on.After the babble and the light-bangled street market, we were in thehalf-lit gloomy cavern of the New Delhi railway station, where greatone-eyed monsters hiss smoke. Somewhere in the catacombs, ournames with the seat reservations were pinned on a notice board. I wasin tow here; Nick-Who-Knows, bundles and all, strode around andlocated our train, our carriage, our seats. “Here we are, Bhante. Upperor middle berth?” We could swing two platforms folded up against thewall of the carriage down to form beds. But first, I just wanted to gazeat the creatures of steam and iron, now mythic forms in the West, thatstill flourish in India.Our carriage, heading for Lucknow, was quite empty. It containedonly one fellow passenger, a businessman in a suit whose belly seemedto be attempting to escape over the top of his trousers. He had comefrom Lucknow to Delhi by train and was trying to return: Ayodhya wasupsetting all the schedules. Although he had a car, he might not havebeen able to return by roads owing to the Ayodhya riots. If that were thecase, he would have had to leave his car unattended in Delhi—and thereforeliable to looting—so eventually he left his car with an uncle and travelledby train. Unlike foreigners he would have had to book the expressseveral weeks in advance, a fine act of gambling with virtual realities.Business is not easy in India: no wonder his belly was trying to escape.2 0