Side Lower, Berth 63

Side Lower, Berth 63

The chart for the 12810 Howrah Mail had been printed at Howrah Junction three hours before departure, glued to the yellowing notice board near Platform 8 with water-based starch that dried into tight, white buckles.

My name was listed under S-4, Berth 63: RAC 14. In the arithmetic of Indian Railways, Reservation Against Cancellation meant half a seat by day and half a mattress by night, shared with a stranger whom the allocation algorithm deemed compatible by virtue of age or gender, though rarely by temperament.

The stranger was Subhash Ghosh, a retired clerk from the Ordnance Factory in Dum Dum. He sat opposite me on the narrow blue vinyl berth, his knees nearly touching mine. Subhash had a brown leather suitcase tucked between his ankles, held together by two turns of yellow nylon rope tied in a neat bowline. He did not trust the latch. Every forty minutes, when the train slowed for a signal or an unlit crossing near Kharagpur, his thumb traced the frayed knot to ensure the synthetic fiber hadn't slipped.

"In sleeper class, offering water from an unsealed bottle is an intrusion; offering a dry biscuit, however, is standard etiquette."

"You are going all the way to Mumbai?" he asked. His voice was raspy from forty years of cheap bidis, though he hadn’t smoked since we crossed the Hooghly.

"Itarsi," I said. "I switch to the Jabalpur Express there."

"Itarsi comes at three in the morning," Subhash said, checking a steel HMT watch with a cracked acrylic glass. "They give you five minutes. If the signal is clear, three minutes. Keep your boots on after Nagpur."

He reached into a cloth bag and pulled out a tin of Boroline and a washed-out two-liter Frooti bottle filled with municipal tap water. He didn't offer me water—he knew better. In B-sleeper coaches, offering water from an unsealed bottle was an intrusion; offering a dry biscuit, however, was standard etiquette. He snapped a Britannia Marie biscuit in half along its perforations and handed me the larger piece without looking at my face.

I took it. The biscuit had already absorbed the faint, metallic dampness of the compartment's ceiling fan.

At 11:30 PM, the Travelling Ticket Examiner, Mr. S. K. Awasthi, walked down the aisle. He was a broad man in a navy blazer that showed white salt stains under the armpits. In his right hand, he carried an Epson handheld terminal, its small LCD screen flickering in the dim blue nightlight of the coach.

"Berth 63," Awasthi said, stopping at our bay. He didn't look at us; his eyes were fixed on the battery indicator on his device. "Who is RAC 14?"

"Me," I said.

"RAC 15?"

"Ghosh," Subhash said, tapping his thumb against his breast pocket.

Awasthi tapped the rubber keypad twice. "One full seat vacated at Tatanagar. S-4, Berth 12. Upper berth. Who wants to move?"

In sleeper class, an upper berth is a kingdom of solitude—no one steps on your legs, no one asks you to fold the middle berth down at dawn. But it requires climbing three narrow iron rungs in a swaying coach while holding onto cold chain links.

Subhash looked at his knees. They were swollen at the joints, stretching the thin fabric of his terrycloth trousers. He couldn't climb three rungs without wincing. Yet he hesitated, his pride resisting the admission of broken joints in front of a ticket examiner half his age.

"Take it," Subhash said to me, looking out the window into the blackness of the Jharkhand border. "Young people can sleep anywhere."

"My left knee is bad," I said, lying without hesitation as I touched my shin. "I fell off a kick-start scooter in Shalimar last month. I can't climb rungs tonight."

Awasthi snorted, pressed a key on the terminal, and handed Subhash a small, thermal paper slip printed with faint grey ink. "Berth 12 is yours, Ghosh babu. Shift your luggage."

Subhash didn't thank me. He tucked the thermal paper under his watch strap, stood up slowly, and unknotted his brown suitcase. When he pulled the heavy bag out from under the frame, a small brass trunk key slipped from his shirt pocket and fell into the narrow gap between the vinyl mattress and the steel wall panel.

I knelt on the dusty floorboards, smelled the hot iron dust rising from the brake pads below the floorboard, and fished the key out with my index finger.

"Keep it locked," I said, handing it back.

He took the key, looked at it for two seconds, then pulled his wool blanket over his shoulders as he settled into the full length of Berth 63.

"The chai at Jharsuguda is water," he murmured into his rolled-up towel pillow, turning his back to the aisle light. "Wait until Bilaspur."

Outside, the bogie wheels hit a set of cross-track switches with a heavy, double-beat clack, and the Howrah Mail surged forward into the dark forest ahead.

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