Hindi-Himshe's on the Delhi to Bangalore Express

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After two days of being violently ill in Paharganj, trapped in a stuffy and windowless hotel room, I took a 36 hour train from Delhi to Bangalore. At 6am the train passed through the Delhi slums on the way out. Locals sat on the side of the railway, each with a plastic bottle ready to answer the call of nature. Other men, presumably employed, tapped idly on the track with chisels without really achieving anything.

The chai-wallahs were on top form with the full range of vending possibilities. ‘Samosi Samosa’ was said in a nasal android tone at high volume. ‘Chai Chaiee’, ‘coffi coffeeee’, ‘veg pakora’, ‘veg non-veg’, ‘chicken cutlette’, ‘omlette’, ‘veg biryani – chicken biryani’, ‘ masala chai.’

Heading through the rarely visited Madhya Pradesh in the centre of the country, the landscape initially became a bare moonscape after the slightly more fertile corn fields south of Delhi. Despite its barren nature it had great beauty. There were bathers in the river Chamba as we passed. The river was a huge expanse that due to the season was very shallow and looked more like mud than water. Further south, there was plentiful golden farmland of corn. Palm trees poked up in sparse numbers in a similar fashion to the magnificent trees of Cambodia, which highlight the enormous stretches of flat paddy fields. There were many Banyans and the odd farming family. Most labourers appeared to be women. There was even a tractor here and there. There was a town about half way down the country where it seemed that pigs and warthogs had taken over the role of holy cows. The land was startlingly golden and shone brightly. Putting your head outside the train, however, was like putting your face in a hairdryer on full blast. I was covered in dust.

On the train there were six 22-24 year olds from Bangalore who beckoned me over for a chat. They were very hospitable, almost forcing biscuits on me as if I could never be satisfied. They were laughing all the time and bizarrely started talking about how they would get married in exactly 2,3 or 4 years and would pinpoint exactly the year that they were going to lose their virginity.

Later, at least nine eunuchs and transgender Indians boarded the train in the middle of the countryside. The Hindi-Himshe’s proceeded to clap their hands all over the carriage, extracting money from almost everybody. The hand clap was a curse on anyone who didn’t pay them. They had strong male jaw-lines but were covered in make-up, saris and jewellery. I refused to pay any money to one of them so she rubbed her hand in my face, perhaps as a curse or a gesture of resentment.

Beginning to cause more of a commotion, one of the eunuchs ran into a neighbouring carriage and lifted the skirt of her sari, flashing everyone in the carriage to show her sex or rather lack of sex. A bad atmosphere was brewing in the carriage but the beggars moved on swiftly.

They returned 30 minutes later, but to my horror they started beating up an old lady with a shoe. They slapped her harder and harder about the head, causing a torrent of curious Indians to charge into my carriage to take a look. Some even sat on my legs where I was lying just to have a glimpse. To my amazement everybody started laughing and no one seemed to care about intervening.

I asked the men from Bangalore why no one cared. They explained that the old lady had gone around clapping her hands pretending to be a eunuch herself to get money. This explained why the other Himshe had flashed the compartment to prove her sex. The superstitions about these transgenders were so strong that the locals had no sympathy for the masquerading lady.

The transgenders got off the train in the middle of nowhere not much later with their pockets full of rupees.

Boulder mountains began to appear through the train shutters and by this I knew that we were in South India. We had entered Karnataka and were approaching our destination, Bangalore. I slept outside Bangalore airport and talked to builders about the Indian Premier League before waving goodbye to this peculiar Subcontinent.

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