Delhi to Darjeeling : A Train, India

Rail road tracks. Gravel.

A family sitting by a tree. Wrapped in cloths, colorful.

A trainful of black hair. Brown skin. Mustaches. Nice pants. A cane. A saunter. A lift and dip, carrying a bag on the shoulder. It is pink. A green and white fence. Picketed. A tractor on yellow grass.

"Chai, chai."

Two butterflies. Paper cups on the ground. An egg carton.

Slowly moving now.

Concrete. Trees. Dirt. Clods. Rocks. Shade surrounding cows. Tails shaking off flies. Blue wall. Bricks. Small houses. Tarp windows. Wheat. Grain. Tall fields of yellow grass. Metal boxes. Telephone wires connected. Signs. Posts. Trails through and around the fields. An old bicycle. A pow-wow. Grass huts. Leather seats. A laptop. A window. A motion picture viewer. A life in time lapse. Clothes hung on the wire. Mounds of dung, fuel for fire. A watering hole housing black cows. A spinning wheel. Colors of clothes: yellow, orange, green, blue. Those old bikes: Rusted and wheel-guarded. A train passes by creating a kinetoscope with the space between cars.

"Chai, chai."

Bony oxen tilling. The whip. Dry ground. The houses: blue, green, aqua, pink, shades of purple and yellow dilapidation. Advertisements on the side of living quarters. Stairs and another
station.

"Chai, chai."

Iron. Metal. Steel. This modern age: plastic. Where has all the wood gone? Where is the excitement of a hand holding a hand? Of two on a motor bike? Of that wrap of green plastic caught in tree branches? Of fat water buffalos? Of black water?

What do five children do along the roadside? We pass too fast to see. And if we stopped, there would be no telling how long it would take for them to get on with it.

And that man's jeans on the up and down of peddling. And that tank of gas on the back of the bike. And the tree cradles. Dry saplings' leaves.

Took a shit over the hole, squatting. The hole that leads to the unmoving tracks as I move above them. I shat on that two-dimensional strip of DNA. On that spinal column. On the nerve network of Indian transport. Where someone's sweat dripped with toil. Over which countless passengers have accepted and refused the the call of: "Chai, chai."

A man tied by a rope and handcuffed to a man with a rifle. Handshakes and briefcases. Glasses, baldness, exchange of currency. That paper of many colors. One-faced, however.

Baby crying. A cigarette-browed furrow. A large rumbling motor on a three-wheeled cart. White-tiled drinking fountain. Clothes splashed purple and yellow. Holi. One white front pocket protruding, stuffed with a camera, a pen, and glasses.

The black crow gawk-mouthed on the water pipe. The motorbike black-crowed on the roadside. The tree post buried in the cemetery. The houses hovelled in clusters. Walls, bricks touching skin to skin. Men waiting to cross colorful lines of clothes. Another stop. These empty spaces filled by a single child's protests.

"Chai, chai."

Shoe polisher looking over his shoulder. Rucksacks. Potato sacks. Red and blue checkered uniforms. Dopplered train horn and blue streaks. Another group of close-stacked houses. Red-brown brick. Yellow, white, sandy. Crumbled wall. New wall. Tall, conical smoke-stack. All the large white words incomprehensible on the walls old and new. Blue, pink, blue, blue. Blue is more than "blue." There are many blues. Bundles of threshing. Green water. Green broccoli trees. Stooping saris in a field of dirt. A goat and a man with a burden on his head.

STEEL AUTHORITY OF INDIA LIMITED: SAIL WAREHOUSE, KANPUR

A cow in the train station. Words I do not understand. No use to sit and wonder why. A yellow-shirted child falls. His mom in the pink sari picks him up. He has fat cheeks and a crying face. Smiles and laughter on the youths walking down the ramp. Fashionable jeans. Striped shirt, pink and black. Ritzy shirt, shiny-white. Shiny shoes, black. Nice clothes, worn and dirty. A man kicks a large can. It rolls along, red. The baby in white with the only inspired eyes. A man with a yellow cloth on his head. He sits in a fenced-in median which provides room for covered bikes and boxes. Bananas and apples. GOEL AND GOEL fruit/juice stall.

"Chai, chai."

Old woman squatting, waiting. Young woman squatting, waiting. Burlap sacks stacked and brimming. A cow on the tracks. VINYAK TRAVELS. PEPSICO. FREE HARDWARE AND NETWORKING. Monkey in the window sill. Low flying kite jerks. The boy and his laughing smile. Side-saddled sari woman on the motor bike. Tree trunks painted red and white. Splashing sunlight through the branches, through the window into the moving car. Jostled and jiggled gently. Low thud and rumble. Bundles of branches carried on top of heads. A broken candlestick held together by the wick. And an unbroken candlestick.

CHANDARI. Red barns. Blue and green fence. Another train and the flashes of light between the cars and on this paper. Lightning illuminations of the scrawling pen shadow. The reflection of my own knee displaced into the scenery. A floating phantom.

"Chai, chai."

A foundation in rubble. The red bricks overgrown by shrubs and grass. Cricket. Small child swings and misses. Bathing-wet water buffalos. White birds with long legs. A child pulling a large goat unsuccessfully. Goats, goats, goats, cow.

"Chai, chai."

A group of people in cars, trucks, bikes, shoes, waiting for the red and white striped arm to raise. Strobe lighting once more from a crossing train. Open space. Patches of grass in geometrics. Polygons of grass. Tall, short, green, brown, gold, grey. A pink-flowered bush bursting the sides of the tracks wide open with incomprehensible potentialities and then gone as the landscape escapes my sight.

"Chai, chai."

The only way to comprehend is by ingestion.