Jaspreet Singh - Chef

You are colder than death, colder than love.

Kaschemir. Cashmere. Qashmir. Cachemire.

Cushmeer. Casmir. Kerseymere. Koshmar.

I can smell you. Paradise.

Ice.

Paradice.

I can’t see a thing.

Did I dream a glacier?

Am I dead?

What am I doing here? Minutes ago I woke up in this air-conditioned bogie. The windows are double-glazed.

‘What am I doing here?’ I ask the khaki-clad man. ‘Why on earth am I in this carriage? I was traveling second-class. What happened?’

‘Sahib, around 10 o’clock, three or four hours ago, you had stepped into the bathroom of that second-class bogie you were traveling in.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘You passed out in the bathroom, Sahib.’

‘I collapsed?’

I look down. My hands are dirty.

‘Seizure, Sahib. Fortunately there was a doctor in the bogie. On his recommendation, we the railway staff moved you on a stretcher to this air-conditioned bogie.’

‘Shookriya,’ I say. ‘Thank you. I must pay for the extra ticket.’

Some people who work for the Railways are exceptionally kind. I am not talking about the corrupt TT’s and the crook Ministers, but workers like this attendant. He is one of those rare people who do not expect a tip. Just like soldiers in the army.

‘No, Sahib. I will not accept extra money.’

‘But you must. I insist.’

‘Don’t worry, Sahib. You served in the army.’

‘How do you know I served?’

‘The whole train knows you served. News travels fast on trains, Sahib.’

Even on trains there is no privacy, I say to myself.

‘Has the train covered time?’ I ask. ‘If it does not cover, I will miss the bus.’

How and when they moved my body and luggage to this compartment, I have no recall. He is the first man on the train I feel like talking to. The man is wearing a khaki uniform. Says he used to work as a lineman. The Railways made me a lineman. For thirty-one years I worked as a lineman. For thirty-one years I was unhappy. But when I started growing old the Railways transferred me inside the train, Sahib. We were so overworked, he said, sometimes on two hours of sleep we changed the lines, gave signals, and it was a lot of responsibility. So many lives depended on me. I could not imagine making a mistake, Sahib. Making even one would equal mass murder.

The air inside the bogie is refreshingly cold. From very hot I have moved to very cold. I do not say this to him. Instead I ask the attendant for a blanket. When he returns with my blanket I ask: Now that you work inside the train, are you not worried that some other lineman on two hours of sleep might make the same mistake you feared the most?

‘No, Sahib, it will not be my mistake. Working inside the train is much better than the duty of a lineman outside.’

‘So, you are not afraid that you might die?’

‘If I think about death all the time, I will not be able to work, Sahib. Now if you will please allow me.’

He disappears to his cabin (as I found out later) to play cards with the second attendant.

I hear the hum of air-conditioning, and many foreign accents, in this bogie. From my berth I can see two foreign women, dressed in Indian salwar-kameez. The more they try to look like Indians, the more they stand out. The women are quite fair and beautiful. One has blue eyes.

First: Canadian?

Second: No. From Texas.

First: But you carry a Canadian flag on your bag?

Second: The American flag lands me in trouble.

First: My name is Veronica. I am from Mexico City.

Second: Willow from Texas. From across the border!

They shake hands.

One of them says: The only bloody thing in India on time was the train.

Who said it? Willow or Veronica?

My head is pounding. My body is shivering. I beckon the attendant.

‘Please, it is very cold,’ I say to the man.

Not as a complaint, but by way of making a simple request.

‘The temperature is pre-set, Sahib.’

‘Can you do something about the noise at least? I have a bad headache.’

‘AC makes a lot of noise, these coaches are old, Sahib. This one is from the time of the British. The air-conditioning was installed where the iceboxes used to be in these bogies. Those days the compartments were kept cold by using blocks of ice, Sahib. When the train stopped at big junctions, coolies standing on platforms would transfer ice to the boxes, sahib.’

‘Please, my head is pounding.’

Willow and Veronica are both carrying cell phones. They seem to have developed a quick friendship. I don’t know who took more initiative. Willow or Veronica, or maybe both? They laugh a lot. At first I thought they were laughing at the poverty of our country. I was wrong. Laughing was basically a way to forget all the difficulties they were encountering dealing with the civilians in our country. They laughed a lot about toilets and latrines.

Just to hear them has made me feel young again. I am not dying, I say to myself.

Tuh-dee Tuh-dee Tuh-deeee Tuh-deeee

Tuh-dee Tuh-dee Tuh-deeee Tuh-deeee

Catering-wallah comes into our bogie. The women order hard-boiled eggs. He says he has no more eggs left. I have potato cutlets only, he says. They buy the cutlets. Too bad you don’t have eggs, I demand. And the man smiles and produces a perfect hard-boiled egg.

‘You did not sell the girls the eggs?’ I ask.

‘Sahib, I have only one egg, and they are two. I could not choose who gets the egg, so I decided not to give either one of them the egg.’

One girl makes eye contact with me. I translate from Hindi to English. I tell her the catering-wallah’s exact reasoning, and the moment I finish they break into a fit of laughter.

‘Where in India are you from?’ asks one of them.

I am at a loss for words.

‘Not an Indian,’ I say. ‘Brazilian.’

Then silence.

Aren’t they nice, my shoes. They will outlast me. They will continue to live. They will not be cremated. I do not want to be cremated. There is nothing sacred about fire. I have no fondness for burials either. I like the towers of silence. The Parsees leave the bodies of the dead for the vultures. The birds eat while flying, one is neither on this earth, nor in the heavens yet. Sometimes a limb falls on ground from the beak of a flying bird and worms on earth feel graced, a river or a jungle gets nourished.

What will happen the day I die?

Clouds will collide with mountain tops. Thunder. Then nothing.

Once gone, I do not want to return to this earth. No more reincarnations.

Five or six of us had an audience with His Holiness in Dharamshala, Willow tells Veronica. The Dali Lama told us a story. (She meant Dalai Lama, but she pronounced Dali Lama.) A monk who served eighteen years in a Chinese gulag was finally released under the condition that he would not return to Tibet. When the Lama first met him, the monk said that he was in great danger and several times he didn’t think he would make it. The Lama asked him what kind of danger was he in? The monk replied that he was in great danger of losing compassion towards the Chinese.

Good story, says Veronica.

I urge you to please replace China with America and Tibet with Iraq. There is a real danger, Veronica. Danger of losing compassion towards the Americans.

This time the women did not laugh.

When people talk religion and politics, I turn my thoughts to food. The catering-wallah’s egg is over-boiled. It has the odor of sulphur. The pleasures of eating food cooked by others! I can’t eat this egg. I will throw it away. No food is better than bad food. But.

The girl-woman is beautiful.

Willow or Veronica?

Maybe both.

They disappear to the toilet for a while; one returns in an oversize red T-shirt. No. 1 International Terrorist – it is written on the T-shirt. Under the writing is a photo of a face which resembles the American President.