In honor of July 4th, I'd considered dedicating a post to assessing the state of American democracy in an attempt to process the events of recent weeks. Then my departure from Lucknow provided more exciting and frankly less depressing fodder. Maybe I'll feel compelled to weigh in on American politics eventually, but things back home look pretty bleak at the moment. Let's go with a feel-good story instead.
Leaving Lucknow
It almost didn't happen. Despite agonizing over train schedules and rebooking last minute to avoid the pitfalls of an early morning departure, I almost missed my train. Lucknow made one last-ditch effort to retain me.
Upon arrival, the first major difference I noticed between Lucknow and Delhi is that unless you're in a couple specific areas you can't just walk outside and hail an auto in Lucknow. The train station is one of the few places where it's easy to find transportation at all times. When Allie and I met at Charbagh some ten days prior, we had no trouble hiring a friendly gent piloting an electric rickshaw to get us to our AirBnb in Husainabad. Several minutes earlier, the same gent had apparently given Allie directions towards my train while she was wandering around looking for me. Hazratganj, the central commercial district, also boasts an abundance of all types of rickshaws, but there are neighborhoods in Lucknow where you'll never see an empty rickshaw roaming in search of a fare.
Allie's homestay happens to be located in one such neighborhood. After blowing off my Friday morning ticket and rebooking for Monday afternoon, I shifted to the homestay for the weekend. The property, while a little on the funky side, is in a posh upscale district of the new city nested amongst the homes of politicians and other high-profile civil servants of Uttar Pradesh. Unlike Hauz Khas Road (my stomping ground back in Delhi), where you will encounter no fewer than three to five auto rickshaws per minute during daytime hours, booking through Uber is the only reliable way to get out of Allie's neighborhood. In India, Uber offers hired autos, a variety of cars, and motorcycle pickups. As you might expect, there are fewer drivers on the road in Lucknow at any given time compared with Delhi. But that's not saying much, as Delhi is one of the busiest places on earth.
In any case, one of the reasons I rebooked my return ticket (apart from wanting to spend additional time with Allie on her home turf) was my concern with hiring a ride in Lucknow at 5:30 am. Beyond that, our AirBnB hosts in the old city locked the front gate of their compound overnight. Last week Allie had to ask them to open it for her once or twice while leaving for the language institute around 8 am. These two factors prompted me to reconsider the prudence of catching the 6 am train. Accounting for the relative slowness of Lucknow (i.e. still a busy Indian city, but not Delhi), 3 pm Monday afternoon felt like a safe time to book an Uber out of Allie's neighborhood to Charbagh, a mere three and a half kilometers to our west. Perhaps our recent string of benevolent Uber fortune had made me irrational, but requesting a fifteen-minute ride fifty-five minutes before the Swaran Shatabdi departed for New Delhi felt reasonable.
Technically the story hasn't even begun, but bear with me. Context is important.
So there we are resting on Allie's bed, AC unit cranking away behind us, and I start requesting rides at 2:40 pm to make the 3:35 train. Based on recent experience, turnaround time for Uber in that part of Lucknow averages between five and ten minutes. But following days of reliable pickups, this particular request yielded no immediate results, just spinning bars in the Uber app. This happens from time to time, particularly in Lucknow, and usually you just need to wait out the dry spell or try requesting a different form of transportation.
A few minutes passed and a driver finally accepted the ride. We watched the vehicular avatar begin winding towards us on the map before slowing to a halt and canceling abruptly. Cancelations are frequent in India. Drivers have their reasons, I'm sure, and sometimes it's probably as simple as not wanting want to fight through traffic to pick you up just to turn around and fight through the same traffic to reach your destination. Often drivers won't even budge until you communicate your intended destination. Then if the destination is undesirable, they'll cancel the ride.
With 3 pm fast approaching and no driver en route, the search took on a tinge of urgency. Still plenty of time, but we needed to find someone soon. Now searching for an auto--to see if I could change my luck--I asked Allie to pull out her phone and request a car. This would at least give us multiple hooks in the water. She got a bite, but the driver canceled like clockwork as soon as she told him we needed to get to the railway station.
3 pm and no closer to finding transportation than we had been twenty minutes earlier, the urgency ratcheted up a notch. It was time to brave the heat and hit the street on the unlikely chance that an empty auto might pass by the homestay. No such luck. We continued to search for rides on our dueling iPhones but no one would take the fare. Time was slipping away. As the afternoon sun beat down and my fresh travel clothes began to melt onto my body, we started to walk. Cappuccino Blast, a busy-ish cafe, is around the corner just a couple hundred meters from the homestay. Maybe we would find an empty auto waiting there. At least moving would put us closer to a busier intersection.
Standing there on the corner near Cappuccino Blast with all my luggage (pakhawaj in soft bag, roller-board carry-on, and backpack) we looked every direction for some sign of life. Nothing. Autos simply don't cruise that neighborhood. Then all of a sudden, a cycle rickshaw turned the corner--a glimmer of hope! I tried to hire him, but after glimpsing the luggage and assessing the distance to the station he shook his head and rode onward without breaking stride.
Just as we were about to give up and accept that fate had intervened to keep me in Lucknow for at least another night, a nearby gentleman, witnessing our predicament, approached. He informed us that if we walked a block to the next corner we could probably hire a cycle rickshaw that could take me to an auto rickshaw that could take me to the station. What the hell, it was worth a shot, improbable as it sounded. I checked my phone. 3:15. Time to move.
We approached the first rickshaw wala we saw and explained the situation in as few words as possible. Seeing all the gear, he dropped the canopy--which transformed into a luggage rack--in order to accommodate the heavy load. After hefting up the luggage, I hopped aboard (my first time riding a cycle rickshaw in India), waved back to Allie, and we were off. Our pace was not exactly blazing, but he did his best given the extra weight and abusive sunlight. We gained momentum on the straightaways, but as I tracked our progress on the phone it became clear wouldn't reach the station by 3:35 at our present velocity.
Stilly roughly two kilometers out, I told the rickshaw wala we should hire an auto for the remainder of the journey. Struggling up a slight incline through traffic, he didn't protest. He soon pulled up alongside what turned out to be a shared auto bound for Charbagh. There was exactly enough room next to the older gentleman in the back to fit me and my oversized luggage. I payed the heroic rickshaw wala 100 rupees, thanked him, and zoomed off in the full auto. 3:25 pm. If we hit the traffic signals right there was still a chance.
The auto pulled up to Charbagh at 3:31 pm. Not bad. The only problem now was that the station is massive and I had no idea where to go. Charbagh is actually a complex of multiple railway stations under one roof--I had arrived at Lucknow Railway Station (LKO) but was scheduled to depart from Lucknow Junction (LJN). Walking the length of the station and looking for my entrance, I skimmed one of the large departure monitors facing the street and didn't see my train number anywhere. I kept walking.
Then who should appear out of nowhere but the very same electric rickshaw wala that had driven us from the station to our AirBnb ten days prior. When I told him I was looking for the train to Delhi he identified it by name, looked down at his watch, and with a sense of urgency told me to hop aboard. I obeyed. No time for second thoughts.
What happened next is still a little hazy, given the mixture of heat exhaustion and heightened adrenaline that tainted the moment. We drove quickly past the end of the station and onto a service road between two sets of nonparallel tracks. At one point the driver appeared to pay off a couple guys who were standing in the road before proceeding directly to my train. Once we arrived alongside the Shatabdi, I hurriedly payed the driver (too much, but who cares) and turned to see the door in front of me closed. Panicking, I implored the conductor standing there to open it. He obliged. I asked which coach I'd boarded. C4, he said. Which way to C15? Forward, he said. C15 was the first (in this case the last) coach in the line.
Convinced that the train would pull out of the station at any moment, I proceeded to walk the entire length of the remaining eleven coaches without once setting foot back on the platform. Nothing would get me off that train. Saturated in sweat, carrying entirely too much luggage, and almost certainly the only white guy on the train, I must have been quite a sight as I clumsily navigated the succession of full compartments.
By the time I reached C11, I barely had enough strength in my arms to open the heavy doors between coaches. Dehydration hit quick. Almost there. Just keep going. The final departure announcements came over the PA just as I reached my coach. Dripping sweat and scrambling to stash my bags overhead, I urged the father and adult son in my row to let me past to the window seat. I'd made it. Through an improbable concerted effort--a web of moving parts and contingencies--somehow I'd made it.
As the Shatabdi picked up speed, I looked back at the station where my Lucknow journey had begun and miraculously ended. Ten days spent with Allie in between. Ten days filled with mangos, kebabs, biryani, sightseeing, sweat, rain, and new friendships. Ten days from then I'd be passing through the same station yet again on my way east to Varanasi, stopping for ten minutes to let Allie board the Rajdhani. I hope Lucknow will forgive me if I don't disembark to stretch my legs, out of fear she might have a few more tricks up her sleeves.
No comments:
Post a Comment