The Mewar Express

Delhi, February 16 2011.

The Mewar Express

It rained Tuesday in Delhi; surprising that cold, annoying rain carried by gusts of blustery winds, after two weeks of perfect weather.  In no time, I was soaked through.  In fact, the day hadn’t started so well as a sudden dizzy spell sent me crashing on my back on the marble bathroom floor with a great scary noise.  I lay there cursing – I couldn’t move anyway – with visions of crushed vertebrae and of myself shipped home in a body cast or at best, in a wheelchair.  Should I call the doctor?  Naw, that would only make things worse.  I’ll crawl back to bed, wait there and see what happens.  Little by little, the pain subsided and, after a while, I could unfold myself, get dressed and venture into the rain, semi-limping and hungry too, since less than five minutes after I’d checked out of my room, I went back to get the bananas I had taken for the road and found out that they had been eaten, the peel remaining behind.  A monkey I thought, but the window being closed it was most likely that that monkey used keys and wielded a feather duster.
Somehow, Delhi’s chaos doesn’t look all that bad in the sunshine, as it seems to blend everything, distracting your eye with vibrant colours that erase the squalor.  Isn’t that an old principle of advertising to catch your eye with colour and make you forget the rest, including what you are really buying?  It works.  In the rain, you notice every heap of detritus, every leprous facade, every facet of misery in its dull, brownish hues.
Going to the Mughal Gardens was a bad idea, because that’s where it really started to pour and the travel agent’s office (yes the one in the Commercial Complex where, by the way the convenience store doesn’t sell chips and sodas but only turbans, I wonder how I could have been so confused as to take one for the other) was a welcome refuge from the great wetness.  Amit had offered to take me to Chandni Chowk but it seemed less than attractive in this weather and we settled for a cozy restaurant instead and some shopping for the night voyage to Udaipur: water, food, a padlock, painkiller and balm for my back and even a bottle of rum that Amit bought for me just in case, you never know…Amit has been really sweet, putting a car at my disposal all day Tuesday, taking me to the station, all the way into the compartment, lamenting having to work or he would have come with me to Gujarat and reluctantly leaving the train.  It’s ok, I’m ready to travel like a big girl now and yes, I will keep an eye on my luggage, rub the balm on my back (although i’m a bit perplexed at the package recommendation of “using before or after dry fomentation), take only half a painkiller, be careful about food and make sure not to fall in bathrooms anymore.  I promised.
The Mewar Express was great,  I was a bit apprehensive to share the compartment with an old Sikh, but he didn’t snore – not that I’d known since I had made sure to bring ear plugs and sleeping mask.  I must have slept for ten hours, that lateral rocking and clickety-clack of the rails worked like a lullaby.  I slept through the chai-chai chanting of the tea vendors and of others peddling various delicacies that I judged safer to avoid.
I also learned everything I always wanted to know about how Sikhs braid their hair and then drape their turban.  It was an odd kind of intimacy.
Udaipur is beautiful and sunny and relatively quiet, except for the motorcyclists who seem to take a perverse pleasure of brushing against you at hair-rising speed.