1700, 6/5/07, somewhere between Chennai and Calcutta

Consciousness aboard an Indian Railways train ride is a remarkably curious state of existence. One can otherwise opt to pass time on this 27.5 (actually 29) hour long ride in a semi-conscious stupor. Eyes closed in attempts to nap, one feels more acutely the soreness of one's behind, the cramp in one's legs and the cloying way in which one's clothes stick to the skin. But as one's thoughts drift to home and one falls into unconsciousness, the heat and discomfort are momentarily forgotten. When one wakes, disembarkation is less a distant prospect.

But the respites of sleep are fleeting. One cannot sleep the whole journey away; one can but punctuate it with brief bouts of fitful sleep. Time does not pass quickly when one is awake. Far from it. The warmth is at best merely lethargy inducing and could have been more daunting if not for the celing fans and open windows which provide some modicum of ventilation. The seats are hard and stickier than those found on a non-airconditioned SBS bus. Thankfully, the ride, though uncomfortable, is passably bearable and endlessly eye opening.

Second-class sleeper compartments are configured in a peculiarly functional fashion. Bunks racked in sets of three are separated by a haircomb shaped aisle. It is crowded and unhygienic but much less so than the overflowing third class non-sleeper compartments. The view, a randomly arranged slideshow of pastoral scenes, parched landscapes, poverty emanating clusters of shacks and dingy train stations under a bleakly grey sky, is unexciting but revealing of the Indian countryside.

Our bunkmates are far more interesting. A motley assortment indeed. There is the reticent bespectacled guy in jeans wearing guy who spoke a few words of English. He ordered egg briyani for lunch but got chicken briyani instead and looked forlorn thereafter. I assume he was vegetarian. There is the turquoise shirted guy who sat with us for a while but cleverly retreated to the more spacious top bunk to read his Submariners' Training Manual. There is a nondescript brown shirted guy who has yet to talk to us but will come to offer us some advice at the end of our journey. There is a very nice yellow shirted guy who gave us a bottle of water when we ran out, bought us some untasty strain of Indian guava that will turn out to be a blessing in disguise and helpfully indicated that the window was also in fact a convenient receptacle for rubbish. He will come to be an appreciated presence in the bunk and we will shake hands with him at the end of our journey.

They were quiet but the rest of the ride was noisy. Against the constant rattle of the rails and the frequent blare of train horns, random Indians converse in what I assume is unintelligible Hindi. Official pantry car vendors patrol the aisles, hawking food and drink with practiced calls. Occasionally a beggar limps/crawls/walks by and prods one intrusively for alms. Some are disturbingly afflicted with leprosy.

Private space is quite a foreign concept. Any and all available space can and will be requisitioned by strangers/vendors for use as footrests/luggage space/temporary food deposits. Indeed, the Indians seem to be a very communal people. An unidentified person was blaring music (Bhangra!) on the flight to Chennai as young punks are annoyingly wont to do on buses.

8.30am, 7/5/09, somewhere nearer Calcutta

It is precisely 24 hours since we boarded the train and I am most pleased that none of us have had to suffer an upset stomach. This is despite consuming two meals of train food (much maligned elsewhere but surprisingly edible), the mysterious guava like organic matter thingy and sharing a meal with a friendly local. For all, we used our bare hands. The unexciting suspected-to-be-guava fruit turned out to be a most fortuitous offering as we were later able to use our prior consumption of it as an excuse to decline a similar fruit from another well-meaning local who had sliced it with a frighteningly rusty knife. Tetanus immunisations notwithstanding, local hygiene habits seem life threatening.

The train has a maximum speed of 110 km/h. Four sets of drivers share the driving duties between Chennai and Calcutta. These are facts shared bu a group of locals we befriended on the train. As the temperatures of the previous day's evening cooled, the locals warmed to us and chatted with us till we slept. The friendliest were Ramu and Lion. Ramu, 37, is a train driver and was on his way to take shift at another station. Lion, 35, from what I gathered, is involved in prawn distribution (but with thick indian accent, this is really anyone's guess). Through the evening, we enquired about each other's countries. It seems that the male proclivity to talk about sex is universal - the locals noticeably became more animated when they brought up the more bawdy subjects of prostitution, polygamy and gender ratios (2 males to 1 female in India; how fortunate that we have dragon girls). Gleefully, they bragged about how many girlfriends they had. (Dowries also came under discussion. The locals complained about the practice and praised Singapore's no-dowry convention. It's more expensive to have daughters than sons - hence the skewed sex ratio it seems). Come dinnertime, Lion generously shared with us a portion of his meal. It was bought at some famous restaurant for a grand 25 rupees (less than 1 SGD) and tasted infinitely more flavourful than our train food (which cost about 2 SGD). As the train traversed the Indian land, they pointed out landmarks such as bridges ("that one is 150 years old", "that one is 3km long, longer than your causeway") and temples ("1000 couples are getting married there tonight - for long life as as couple") It was an awesome evening for us and I hope it was for them too. After I passed them my school namecard at the end of a show and tell session involving currecy swaps and identity card exchanges, Ramu said "Thank you for giving me your visiting card...when foreigners come to our country, we show them respect but... they don't show us respect... Thank you."

It's pretty ironic how the less we pay the more we see. Perhaps they take pity on us. One of them told us that it's a lousy time to be visiting India (it's bloody warm) and a number have advised us to ride in the air-conditioned class instead of roughing it out with them. But I imagine that had we acquired air conditioned class sleeper berths as initially planned, we would not have such a warm (multiple meanings fully intended) experience. Even more so had paid even more and flown directly to Calcutta from Singapore. I write this with pen on paper while lounging around under the celiing fan in a 4m by 3m space with 10 locals, feet propped up and decorum abandoned. This is the way it's done on an Indian train.