‘They no my friend.’
The man looked at me as if I was certifiably insane, partly because I had slipped into a pidgin English even worse than his, but mainly, I suppose, because I showed no interest in talking to the girls.
‘They no good girls,’ I said, hoping to explain myself.
‘They beautiful girls,’ he replied with a huge, goggle-eyed leer.
‘Believe me, they are pains in the arse beyond belief.’
‘Hello, what?’
‘Bad girls. Bad girls.’
‘Bad girls fun.’
‘No. Not these ones. No bloody fun whatsoever.’
He wobbled his head in sympathy, obviously still thinking that I was insane.
‘What is your good name?’ he said.
‘Dave.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘England.’
‘Ahh. England very good. Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘What is your job?’
‘Student.’
‘Ah, very good.’
At this point, we ran out of steam. There was a long silence. I realized I ought to have asked the same questions back, but I somehow didn’t have the energy. The silence was broken when the man sitting opposite me, who looked so ill I didn’t want to touch him, leaned forward and tried to shake my hand.
‘Hello,’ I said, with a little wave.
‘Good day, sir,’ he replied, shaking my leg. ‘What is your good name?’
‘Dave.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘England.’
‘Ahh. England very good. What is your job?’ ‘Student.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No.’
‘Ah, very good.’
I was really meeting the locals now. Talk about cross-cultural interchange – this was fascinating.
A few hours later, when Liz, Fee and Caz left the train, I pretended not to notice. They tried to do it slowly and unobtrusively, but I saw that the second they hit the platform, they sprinted off through the station, then out of sight.
Now I really was alone.
The lard-hair man clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, nodded upwards, flicked the fingers of his right hand outwards and said, ‘Beautiful girls.’
Somehow, I understood what he meant. In the international language of greasy sex-starved men, those gestures said, ‘Unlucky, mate – they were out of our league anyway.’
I clicked my tongue, nodded upwards and shrugged.
He laughed and patted me on the knee.
It was slightly depressing to realize that I spoke Greasy Sex-Starved Man so fluently.
The train terminated in Udaipur, and I was one of the last people to leave the compartment. Stepping out on to the dark platform, I saw that the station was almost deserted. Almost deserted by Indian standards, that is – which means that there are so few people around, you can occasionally discern the odd inch of floor visible beneath the swirling heaps of humanity.
From the station forecourt, I took a look at the cabs and rickshaws. Despite the hour of the day, the city looked busy. Because of my final conversation with Liz, I felt as if I ought to visit slightly more than just the railway station.
A driver came up to me and tried to drag me to his rickshaw, but I reacted so angrily he retreated. This made me realize, fleetingly, that Jeremy had been right about how you learn to be so brutal with people that they leave you alone. And you don’t even notice yourself changing – it just suddenly dawns on you that you’re getting hassled much less.
This thought provided me with a few tenths of a second of happiness, before I began to feel depressed again. I knew it was important not to let myself get into a downward spiral, so I decided to allow myself a little indulgence. I wasn’t going to bother with Udaipur. I was going to take a ‘Retiring Room’ in the station (there are hotel-type rooms in most big Indian stations), and would get a train the next morning, further south to Ahmedabad.
I turned back inside and joined the queue at a ticket kiosk.
All the second-class seats were taken for the train to Ahmedabad, so as part of my emotional-welfare campaign I decided to splash out on a first-class ticket. This cost four entire days’ worth of budget, but at least it made me feel better.
This time the sensation of well-being lasted several whole seconds, before depression rushed in again.
My Retiring Room, I discovered, was clean and well-ordered, which somehow depressed me just as much as if it had been dirty. The precision of the room and the emptiness of the bed next to me, the pattern on the floor, the hole in the mesh over the window, the shape of my rucksack – suddenly everything I looked at seemed to contribute to making me feel worse.
I decided to try and cheer myself up by writing a postcard home. I found a crumpled picture of Manali at the bottom of my pack and sat myself at a rickety writing-table in the corner of the room.
I perched the card on top of my backpack, put the light out and went to bed. The sheets seemed relatively clean, but I was in the kind of mood where it’s impossible to forget how many people have slept in the same bed, and the variety of acts that have been enjoyed on the same absorbent mattress. I began to feel itchy and needed something to take my mind off things.
Having switched the light back on, I opened my book and managed to take some comfort from the fact that the main character was obviously having a worse time than me (puking his guts out in the Mexican desert and running around naked thinking he was a dog). I couldn’t concentrate for more than one sentence at a time, though, and ended up just listening to the trains outside my window.
I switched off the light and tried to fall asleep, but was distracted by visions of Liz which kept on popping into my head. I couldn’t stop myself from seeing her sitting around with Fee and Caz, having a laugh, meditating,
