Tania James - Atlas of Unknowns

“Fifty rupees,” he says.

“But you haven’t even taken the bags on the train yet!” Melvin says.

“Fifty now,” the coolie says, “and twenty-five more to finish the job. Plus what about my cousin here?” The cousin nods energetically, silent as a mime.

“Your cousin did nothing.”

“Hah, he put the suitcase on my head!”

Not wanting to be late, Linno bargains them down to twenty rupees more. For all their negotiations, the coolies are deft and graceful as they veer around without bumping heads or stepping on feet. Linno and Melvin follow the coolie cousins into the train car, where they slide both suitcases onto the overhead rack and, grudgingly pocketing their payment, hurry off the train to aid other needy passengers.

Across from Linno and Melvin is a dignified old man with a tall umbrella over his knees, his wife next to him holding a plastic bottle of water. They are college teachers in Chennai, they say, and have just enjoyed a few days’ vacation in their hometown of Ernakulam. “And you?” the man asks.

“We are going to the consulate for her visa interview,” Melvin says.

“So young to have a visa!” the woman says. Linno smiles, now even more anxious at what might be another possible objection made by her interview officer. She is twenty-one years old, too young to be interested in anything less than moving permanently to the States. She fingers the knot of her sleeve and looks out the window.

Melvin listens to the teacher, who, as it turns out, is also the founder of what he calls a “public health organization.” One beautiful summer’s day, the teacher was walking to work when out of nowhere, like a revelation, excrement landed on his head. “ You-man shit,” he declared. For days, the teacher had walked this same route to work, beneath the bridge of a lofted railway, never knowing that he should be wary of such unannounced shrapnel. For the teacher, the experience was repulsive, yet formative. He started a website (www.railshit.com) and an online petition to pressure the railway industry into rethinking their in-car potty system, which turned out to be no more than a glorified hole in the floors of the cars. “The more I talked to people,” the teacher explains, gesturing with the steel tip of his umbrella, “the more I realized that I am not the only victim. Do you know how much total waste falls from our trains every day?” The man snatches his wife’s water bottle as a visual aid and gives it a shake. “Three hundred thousand liters of waste per day. Per day! How can India be shining if shit is raining from our sky?”

Melvin agrees to visit the website.

“I still don’t like that website name,” the teacher’s wife says. She shoots her husband a look. “Maybe First World has better plumbing, but we don’t need their dirty talk. It’s not polite.”

The husband raises an open palm in the way of a patient saint preaching to his flock. “Usually I am a courteous person. But the day I resort to pleasantries in this matter will be the day I wear someone’s crap as a hat.”

EVENTUALLY, thankfully, the teacher and his wife fall quiet. Linno thrills to the first lurch, the shudder of metal all around her until the world is streaming by in blues and browns and greens, flares of clouds cut by the flight of birds. Passing through a paddy field, Linno sees a flash of red and, squinting, makes out a lone red Communist flag stuck at the intersection of two berms. Farther down: a few women with backs bent at acute angles, their hands pulling through the wet harvest as their mothers and grandmothers have done for years.

Melvin and Linno decide to take turns sleeping so that one of them can watch the suitcases. He is the first to climb up onto the berth while she stares out the window beneath, thinking ahead to the next forty-eight hours, which may be among the slowest of her life. Rappai’s mother warned her about the whimsy of the Chennai consulate, as told to her by a cousin who arrived for a scheduled interview, only to be turned away because the American ambassador was paying a visit that day. When the cousin requested to speak to a manager, the official raised a finger and, with ominous drama, said in English: “Give me any more trouble and you will never set a chappal in the U.S. of A.”

NEVER HAS LINNO spent so much time in lines as she does at the Chennai consulate. At least in line, she has a vague sense of order. Her father, on the other hand, was left standing outside the gate, as only applicants were allowed to enter. And though she would have liked an ally, she has now grown familiar with the back of the person in front of her, who seems oblivious to her fixation on the nape of his neck. His hair ends in a neat, straight line above his collar, though a few strays compromise the integrity of his hairline. Sometimes he blots his neck with a handkerchief, despite the air-conditioning.

Thankfully, they are now inside the building, in the prescreening line. Outside, Linno and Melvin waited along with fifty or sixty others, some of whom seemed to have no appointment at all. A man was strolling up and down the line, muttering in Hindi, beyond the lazy ear of the security guard: “You’ll never get an interview at this rate. My agency can book a slot within three days, no problem. You can even book several dates in case you get rejected today.” He had a lumpen cauliflower of a nose and eyes that never lingered on one focus for long, always darting to the street. These features made him a dubious ally, but still he continued down the block, casually sowing pessimism. “Three thousand rupees for an appointment within two days. See me at the photocopy shop next door.”

Most preferred the sweat that came from standing in the heat to the sweat that came from taking a risk. Sighing, wilting, they turned their faces forward. But there were those toward the end who looked at the consulate building, then at the cauliflower man, at the building, at the man. With a shrug, the second to last in line hurried down the street while everyone stared after him, unsure whether to feel envy or pity.

WHILE IN THE PRESCREENING LINE, Linno overhears the man in front of her telling his neighbor that this is his second time at the consulate. He works for Dell, Inc., in Hyderabad, and is applying for the H-iB visa to take him to the States as a skilled professional. Last time he failed, but this time he will succeed since he took the trouble of visiting the Visa God of Hyderabad.

According to the man, the Visa God was Lord Balaji, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu. Happiness, prosperity, and fertility were Lord Balaji’s previous causes, which attracted only a few visitors a week to the Chilkur Balaji Temple. Several years ago, the temple priest decided that Lord Balaji deserved more attention, so the priest decided to broaden the god’s interests by dubbing Him the Visa God.

In droves, they came. A hundred thousand worshippers per week. The religious and nonreligious. The young and the old. According to the priest’s directions, they walked eleven laps around the temple, and when closing hour came, the worshippers jogged. In Hyderabad, in the midst of the newly sprouted offices of Dell and Microsoft and General Electric, even the deities had to keep pace with the local need.

“This irrational country,” said the other man, shaking his head. “More fodder for foreign people to make fun.”

The man shook his head and argued in a low, fervent voice. “No, we are not the irrational ones. This process is irrational. U.S. receives thousands of visa applications in a single hour. They give out visas like miracles. You may get it, I may not. With so many applicants, how can they use logic? There is no logic. Totally random. And where there is randomness, there is room for religion.”