Tuesday 11th November 2008

A kerfuffle breaks out on board the Rajdhani Express to Delhi. At a time when many passengers are attempting to drop off to sleep, three men are shouting in Hindi.

“You are like a machine, sir,” one man shouts to the ticket inspector. And again: “you are like a machine.” It appears that two of the men have purchased senior citizen tickets, at a 50% discount, but cannot seem to produce any I.D. Despite the presence of the ubiquitous Indian moustache and manly paunch, they still don’t quite look old enough. The argument snowballs as high pitched female voices join the fray.

Taking on Indian bureaucracy is more dangerous than competing with it’s cricket team, and you’re twice as sure to lose. When something is written on a piece of paper in India, especially when it’s in someone’s job description, it’s hammered with a golden chisel. India probably has the largest list of rules in the world. And it’s not always clear who is allowed to break them and when.

For example, when do you call a place after its British name, and when must you use the politically correct post-independence moniker? Kasturba Gandhi Marg instead of Curzon Road, but Victoria Terminus Station instead of the mouthful that is Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus? Many Indians have laughed at our polite use of ‘Mumbai,’ instead of the far more common ‘Bombay.’ Try telling someone you are hoping to visit post-colonial ‘Puducherry’ rather than the original ‘Pondicherry’ and most people will just frown and look confused. The same ambiguity that applies to place names also applies to rickshaw driver etiquette, tipping, and the behaviour of traffic policemen. Rule-breaking is the secret language of India, but must have some logical system behind it. I think back to ‘Indian Mind’ and accept that as a foreigner it will always elude me.

Yesterday, we queued at the foreign traveller’s ticket desk at Churchgate Station in central Bombay. All major ticket offices in India have a separate office for tourists. In a strange fit of benevolence, Indian Railways decided to reserve foreigners a certain quota of tickets on each train. Today, however, most of the people in line look suspiciously Indian. No one bats an eyelid, and not even the portly lady behind the glass counter.

We were here to change our rail tickets for the same train the next day. When we reached the front counter, we were handed a form, faded from relentless photocopying. It was almost unreadable. After we’d filled it out, we joined the line once again.

In the meantime, a middle aged gentleman had poised himself to jump to the front of the line with the classic sideways manoeuvre. His sense of entitlement was baffling, though it wasn’t the first time we’d seen it done. The assembled ‘tourists’ would not, this time, let him get away with it, and he was neither surprised nor apologetic as he was hissed and shooed to the back of the queue.

Reaching the portly lady once again, she told us that we were too late: an hour earlier and she could have done something for us, but now…it was impossible. Didn’t we know it was impossible? Glancing at the wall clock behind her head, we were baffled by the seemingly arbitrary cut-off point. She sighed, and explained that for a higher sum, she could help us. And did we have our passports? Sadly, one of us did, and the other did not. We hadn’t needed them to book in the first place, but once again we came upon a rule that seemed nothing if not random. But we had driving licenses, and surely she could see we were foreign? If one of us was, it made sense that the other was too. We looked meaningfully around at the sea of Indian faces behind us.

“I can see you are foreign, madam,” she said. “You are white. I know you are white, you know you are white.” She sighed. “I wish I could help you.” And then she came out with a line we had heard many times before in India, the line that slid the last brick into the impenetrable wall: “It’s in my job.”

The official who draws up job descriptions, I think to myself, is a bit like the army chief in Monty Python, I think to myself, except with a bushier moustache. He sits in his office, and twiddles his thumbs. He pretends in his pomposity to know it all, and when he is forced to divulge a rule, he resorts to making it up, There’s a Railway rule book it is possible to buy from stations, and it’s several centimetres thick.

So, we give up the interview we were hoping to stay in Bombay for, and instead join the Rajdhani Express. Here, we find that the berth reservations have been entirely rejigged, and we have no idea where we are supposed to sleep. The ticket inspector standing outside with a sign points out our new numbers, and writes them on our tickets. We are half a carriage away from each other. When the train leaves, Elsa shifts bunks, choosing from the two opposite me. An old man points and shouts in Hindi.

“He says that seat belongs to someone,” translates a businessman in the berth below. Does it belong to him, I ask? “No. It belongs to someone. Someone who will get on the train later.” But isn’t this an express train? I thought it didn’t make any stops. He shrugs. “It belongs to somebody.” And so, as the man and his translator begin to fall asleep, we make a bed in tribute to the absent passenger, and Elsa considers it a rule to crawl in. For, as with faries, if you believe in a rule hard enough, it’s certain to exist.