Hellish Awakening

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Okay, so where did I leave off? Ah yes, I was entering the world as a fresh, rosy-cheeked infant, full of spiritual awakening and enlightenment and love for all beings. So we got discharged from Vipassana at 8am, and me and Colin were supposed to catch our train to Delhi at 3:11pm. After that we were supposed to spend one night in Delhi and then train to Rishikesh.

So. We get to the train station at 2:45--perfect timing. We're standing on platform No. 9, the correct platform, smugly waiting to board our train and sit down in our second-class seats and relax. At exactly 3:10--what punctuality!--the train rolls up. Me and Colin board, find our seats (which are the best seats ever--we have our own 2-person compartment next to a window, and we don't have to share our space with any strangers), chain our backpacks to the overhead bunk, stow our bags perfectly underneath the seats. sit down, and sigh with contentment. We are sitting there for about 3 minutes, when suddenly an Indian man approaches us and tells us that one of our seats is HIS seat. Haha, no. What lunacy. These are our wonderful seats. We coolly hand him our ticket as proof, and he surveys it before replying that this is NOT our train--this is another train to Delhi with another name. CRAP!! We frantically jump out of our seats, unchain our backpacks, un-stow our bags, and jump off the train . Sure enough, it is not the correct train. We stand on the platform for another hour, waiting. Our train doesn't come. It's becoming darker and foggier on the platform. Finally we hear an announcement on the intercom--"Train No. ___ has been delayed and is expected to arrive at 4:16pm." Okay, fine. It is now 4:11pm. Four sixteen comes and goes. Five o'clock comes and goes. Six o'clock. We are pretty much the only people on the platform. Multiple trains have come and gone, and none of them were ours. There have been no more announcements on the intercom about our train. Finally a cocky newspaper salesman saunters up to us, asks us where we're going and what time. We tell him, and he shrugs. "That train went. Gone."

WAIT. WHAT? OUR TRAIN IS GONE?

No. That's not possible. We have been standing here, vigilantly, watchfully waiting. We have listened to every annoying, crackling announcement that's been made on the intercom for the past three hours. There's no way. But a group of "policemen" gather around us, look at our ticket, and confirm that the train is gone. NO WAY NO WAY NO WAY. NOT POSSIBLE. Colin stays with our bags while I run back to the actual station to find information. All I find is a swarm of Indian men crowding around a window with a small circle cut out of it, behind which is an angry worker with a microphone that sounds like a bullhorn--like the Wizard of Oz, he booms and thunders at them in Hindi--"No! Get away from the window! You go to that window! I can't help you!!" I take one look at the swarm of aggressive men and the Wizard of Oz and run back to Colin, on the verge of tears. When I reach him, he tells me that there are more trains leaving for Delhi tonight, one right now and one at 8:30. So like hysterical idiots, we bolt over to platform ___, hoping to catch the train that's leaving right now, even though we don't have tickets. There is no train there. We go back into the station and see a guy from our Vipassana course. He's going to Delhi at 7:30 and offers to share his seat with us, if we can't get tickets. It is now 7:10. He gives us all his information--phone number, seat number, car number--and then disappears to go find his platform. Suddenly, in a panic, me and Colin decide that we MUST get on the train with our friend, and run back out to the platforms to find him. But we realize that, of all the detailed info he gave us, he somehow neglected to mention the train number and platform number. We run from platform to platform, but no friend.

Deflated, we trudge back into the station and get into the refund/booking line. We finally reach the front and get only a 50% refund for our lost ticket--but when I ask to book another ticket, the man shakes his head and shoos me away, despite the fact that this is the BOOKING WINDOW. He says we must go to the 'backside' and book there. On the verge of hysteria, and hoping to catch the 8:30 train even though time is rapidly slipping away, we run to the "backside," where we wait in line and reach the window only to be told by a gruff man with choppy English that our tickets must be purchased from the "backside." Okay. And this is the exact moment where I completely snapped. All my inner harmony, my love for all beings, my balanced mind, my calmness, my Vipassana enlightenment, dissolved into a boiling storm of rage. I spun away from the ticket guy, facing the people waiting in line behind me, and a low, growling sound of pure rage escaped from the back of my throat. Like a zombie, seeing red, blinded by rage and frustration, I elbowed my way through the herd of people, shoving them out of my way. Colin was waiting for me behind the line, and I just exploded.

"These people are retarded!! I hate this country. God! They can't do anything!!!" Etc etc etc. I don't remember the last time I was so exhausted, so full of rage and anger and frustration; I was actually shaking, and began to sob. Colin tried to calm me down and took me back to the original "backside," where an Indian man who was waiting in line noticed my hysteria and tried to help us. So the window guy explained to the helper guy that we could NOT purchase tickets at this window because this window was only for first and second class tickets, and those were sold out, so we had to purchase a general ticket from the "backside." Having pity on our situation, the helper guy ran back to the second "backside" with us, cut in front of a line of people, and demanded to buy two tickets for the 8:30 train. It was already like 8:10. The window man told him that the train was leaving and we couldn't purchase the tickets, but the helper insisted, got the tickets, shoved them into our hands, and ran to the platform with us. Gone. The train was gone. Empty platform. We looked at the tickets, and realized that the train had been scheduled for 8:03 rather than 8:30. A second ticket, purchased and wasted. Having exhausted all my rage, anger, frustration, sadness, and panic, and unable to react with any other emotion, I laid my bag down on the ground, sat on top of it, and stared into space. Colin did the same. Luckily, our helper guy somehow decided that these two hysterical freaks were two people that he wanted to befriend, and he found out that there was another train leaving at 10:35 (A train that had been scheduled to leave at 4:35, but thankfully for us had been delayed a good six hours). So eventually we got an actual refund for our dud of a ticket, got a new general ticket (FYI "general ticket" means that you sit at the back of the train, on unreserved benches crammed with as many people as can fit with their bags, etc. Not ideal) for the 10:35, and went to platform 1 where the train was supposed to arrive. 10:30 came and an announcement was made that the train was delayed until 11:35. By now it was extremely cold on the platform, and the atmosphere was dreary and gray. 11:35 came and the train was delayed until 12:35. We lost all hope of ever boarding a Delhi-bound train; and even if we did, sometime in the middle of the night, we still only had bench seats and would have to try to bribe the ticket collector for a "penalty ticket" in a better class, which may or may not work depending on the availability of seats and the mood of the guy collecting tickets. One o'clock came and went. The train was delayed until 2am. 2:30. Finally, at two forty-five, by some miracle from heaven, our train rolled up. Exhausted but elated, we chased a French guy we had met on the platform, followed him to his seat, and found empty sleeper bed/seat spots nearby. In the warmth of the train, and with the visual reality of two empty seats, I began to calm down and hope for some good developments. I realized I was actually shaking from cold and exhaustion. After 30 minutes of sitting there the ticket guy came and, thank God, issued us penalty tickets. We slept like babies on our narrow train bunks, and the next morning everything was wonderful. Wonderful. Every Indian person in our car was just wonderful--there was a housewife in a beautiful sari who offered us home-made chapatis, pickle, and potato, plus sweets. Her husband bought us tea. The guy next to us was a Christian guy from the south who said he worked as a physical therapist with leprosy patients. At sunset the sari woman offered us a ripe guava, and I remember feeling pure bliss and contentment as I munched on the crisp, refreshing fruit, gazing out the window at the orange-tinged sky of a perfect Indian sunset. And just the day before, I had been standing in a swarming train station, dizzy with rage, staring at all the Indian people and thinking, "I hate all these people. I hate every single Indian person. All of them. I hate the entire burping, spitting, defecating, urinating, blankly staring, haggling, head-shaking population of this godforsaken country." Now I suddenly realized that, at a deeper level, I love India and its people. I love the simplicity. I love the reality. What a human place. What generous people. They live their lives in public, on top of each other, breathing down each others' necks, sharing food portions that can't satisfy even one person. It's chaos, it's madness, but it's human. When things go wrong, you really feel the raw sting of this reality, but when things go right, the pleasure and satisfaction is so much deeper and more simple than anything I ever experience at home. By the time we got to Delhi I was in a much better mood and decided that I was once again willing to, at the very least, not despise India for all of eternity. And the best part was that we still had a full evening to get a hotel in Delhi and rest up before our next train ride! Yay. So we got a hotel, showered (a very significant moment for me, since hygiene was definitely not my forte during the Vipassana) and slept great. This morning we woke up at 5:25 to catch our 6:50 train--a perfect amount of time, since the station was a 2-min. walk from our hotel--and everything was great. We packed our bags, got dressed, brushed our teeth, double-checked the ticket and...what the hell? Our train left yesterday morning at 6:50? No. December 15? But I could have sworn it was Dec. 16th. We spent about 15-20 minutes staring at the ticket in disbelief before accepting that it must be true. We missed our train. Our train left. The dumbest thing is that we wouldn't have made the train even if we had been on the correct train to Delhi; it would have left like 5 hours before we arrived. Somehow, when we originally booked the tickets, we booked them so that they overlapped in an impossible way. So, the moral of the story is that me and Colin are basically retarded and it's amazing that we are still alive and still have money and India hasn't devoured us completely.

Well I guess the last two days have given us a serious opportunity to apply our understanding of "impermanence"--the Buddhist idea that everything changes and you must not become emotionally attached to any idea or thing. You never know when you're going to miss your train and then get another train going the same way and then meet a really cool Indian woman who shares food with you and then reach your destination and realize you have a useless train ticket that you already paid for. you just never know when that's going to happen. But if you're me, or Colin, you can just kind of assume that it's gonna happen often.

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