Kalka Mail

There’s something about a train that inspires reflection, poignancy, romanticism.

Maybe for some, claustrophobia.

Imran gazed out the open window, watching distant lights through the darkness, feeling the biting December cold whizz across, as the vintage rumble of the train punctuated his thoughts. He drifted in and out of a dream-like state.

“....oldest train still running in the country. When the British needed to move to their summer capital in Shimla, they used these very coaches!” The old man sitting next to him announced triumphantly.

Imran tapped his feet; bit into the side of his mouth. He was itching for a smoke.

“Since the 1880s, maybe, it’s been running? There’s even a novel, and a film too, by Satyajit Ray, you know who he is, right? Set on this train! Kids these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t, he’s an Indian and Bengali legend, you know? It’s called 'Baksho Rahashya', 'Incident on the Kalka Mail' in English. You should read it in the original Bengali, you can read Bengali hopefully?” 

The old man cut off his conversation rather abruptly and turned to Imran.

“Young man, why don’t you close the window? It’s freezing in here!” 

Imran clicked his tongue in annoyance. He pulled down the ancient window with quite a bit of struggle, then he left the compartment and ventured near the train door.

A guy about his age had opened it and hung dangerously close to the edge. He was smoking.

Imran thanked his lucky stars, got a smoke off of him, and both of them puffed away into the foggy cold.

“I’m Imran.”

“Ravi.”

They shook hands.

“What do you do, Ravi?”

“Oh, I’m a journalist, for The Express. You?”

“Oh, I’m in the moving business. Off to Howrah?”

“Hmm.”

“Me too.”

A pause.

“These are pretty strong, man.”

“Yeah, Camel cigarettes bro. Pretty good.” Ravi showed him the box.

Neither of them noticed the man walking up behind them.

“Oy! You can’t smoke here!”

‘Fuck! It’s the Ticket Checker!’ thought Imran. Both of them threw away their cigarettes. 

“You’ll have to pay a fine!” said the TC.

“Come on now, sir, there’s no need for that,” said Ravi.

“You realize what a filthy habit that is? It’s a rule, you need to pay a fine!” the man said.

Ravi scowled at the TC. He seemed ticked off, ready to pick a fight.

“Listen, I am not paying a fine. I don’t care what you say!”

The TC, quite a tall man, squared up to Ravi and towered over him. Ravi stood his ground and glared.

“You. Will. Pay. The. Fine” he said, firmly, poking a finger at his chest. 

Imran hovered awkwardly to the side, not wanting to partake in an altercation. He was prepared to pay the fine, although rather reluctant and indignant himself.

Ravi stared back defiantly, he said, “No.”

The TC put both hands on Ravi’s chest, and in one strong shove, pushed him out of the train.

…..

“What the fuck!” screamed Imran, freeing in shock.

He gaped at the TC, who wouldn’t meet his eye. He simply strode past him into the compartment.

Imran grabbed him by the shoulder. 

“What did you just do?” he bellowed.

“What? What did I do?” the TC said, coolly.

“You’re gonna act like that just didn’t happen? You pushed a man out of the train! You killed him!”

The TC gave him a blank stare.

Imran marched into the compartment and yanked the red chain that stops the train in emergencies.

But the train wouldn’t stop.

The TC had followed him into the compartment.

“What are you doing? You realize it’s a crime to pull the chain for no reason?”

Imran yanked the chain again, as hard as he could. And again. And again. The lights had been put out, and around him, peculiarly, every passenger lay asleep like logs, covered head to toe under the same railway-issued brown rugs.

“Young man, what you are doing is a crime! Do you understand? You will have to pay a fine, you may be jailed!”

“Why isn’t it stopping?” Imran said, desperately.

The TC leered at him.

“This train doesn’t stop, boy.”

Imran frantically called up the railway police.

Please check the number you have dialed. This number does not exist or is currently unserviceable.

In a panic, Imran tried to shake some of the passengers, while the TC casually walked on. A man groaned and turned over in his berth.

A helpless anxiety seemed to fill the air. Imran shuddered, as he tried to shout, only to realize he couldn’t. He could mouth the words, but he wasn’t making a sound.

A chill, separate from the December gale, an icy alien cold, seemed to spread its veins through the compartment. The train seemed to be accelerating, much faster than normal.

Finally, of all the passengers Imran had shaken, the old man who had sat next to him woke up. 

He woke up with a jolt, and before Imran explained anything, he said, “Come, let’s find the guard. He’ll be at the end of the train.”

Outside, the world disappeared into a blur of darkness. The train was reaching blinding speeds. A stench of metal grating metal and singed steel wafted about, slithering through the smells of December cold. 

The old man grabbed Imran’s hand and they rushed through the compartments. The wind was deafening around them, and the entirely dark train occasionally lit up in flashes from friction sparks.

The train seemed to be getting narrower and narrower. Imran was finding it difficult to breathe. A vacuum-like silence, birthed by the absence of things, reverberated in every compartment. There were no people, no bunk beds, just metal clanging against metal.

As they ran, everything that covered the connecting spaces between compartments started blowing away. They were forced to halt at a certain point, as the next compartment drifted away from and an abyss of infinite depth opened wide.

"We have to jump!" said the old man.

Before Imran could reply or even think of hesitating, the old man leaped and pulled Imran’s arm with him.

For a second, he felt weightless. Just drifting, gliding; empty mind, the noise so deafening he couldn't hear anymore. 

Then they landed, with an excruciating crash. Imran clutched his leg in pain, falling to his knees.

"There's no time!" The old man shrieked, almost gleefully. 

He pulled Imran with him and they jumped, and they crashed. And they jumped, and they crashed, again and again.

Until they reached the end of the train.

There was no guard there though. It was a quiet, musty, still compartment, like a store room in a massive mansion. It seemed to exist in a universe in and of itself, isolated from the train, from earth, from reality.

There, in the door at the end of the train, lit faintly by moonlight, he hung, his body swinging. 

Ravi.

Imran edged towards him. He looked back and the train seemed infinite, through all the doors, he could see nothing and no one. All the compartments behind them seemed to be connected by frail thread, held together delicately. He looked to Ravi again. He had no idea what he would do, but he felt the need to move. 

The train jerked and threw Imran to the floor. He got up, and the train jerked again. It began to shake violently, and starting with the last compartment, the entire train lifted off the tracks.

With the train up in the air, the wind blew with vengeance. Imran clutched a rod as the train floated. The old man behind him stood plastered to the spot, upright with impudence. The cold began to feel piercing.

Imran clutched the rod and watched, as the old man’s skin began to stretch and sag with the wind until it began to tear and bleed into the air. His eyes popped out and his clothes were incinerated. His body, naked as when it was born, began to rip into halves. Ravi’s body, bound with rope, snapped from its peg, and hit the compartment behind them with a thud, and then the next one, and the next one, dropping into infinity.

Imran caught a bit of intestine on his face as the old man’s organs flew everywhere. He had now ceased to be a man and was only parts of a man, limbs and liver and lung bunched together until they blew apart with a splash.

A screeching cacophony of all the sounds of the train he had heard throughout the day began to build around Imran. The hawkers selling their goods, the monotonous voices of announcements, and the whistle of the train, announcing itself. They amalgamated into a high-pitched, piercing puncturing pricking squeal. Imran scrunched up his eyes and his face, unable to bear it. 

But just before he did, through the midst of blood and guts and veins, he caught a glimpse of a beautiful, radiant moon.

“...... I think since the 1880s? The oldest running train in the country! Satyajit Ray made a movie on it; he wrote a book first, really. You know him, of course? Bengali legend!...”

Imran awoke with a jolt.

“Brrrr! It’s so cold! Young man, why don’t you close that window?” the old man said.

The person opposite him said, “It’s okay, uncle, we are almost at Howrah anyway! Let’s get our bags. Shall I help you with yours?”

The sun streamed in through the window as the train pulled into Howrah. Imran looked around in a stunned daze.

As people around him moved, he realized he was clutching something. He looked at his hands, and he saw an unlit Camel cigarette.

In a trance, he collected his bags and got down.

Huddled outside the compartment, at the station, were the ticket checker, a bunch of railway police personnel, and a woman with two children, wearing very tense expressions.

As Imran walked by, he overheard their conversation.

“Ravi Nandakishore, male, age 33, reported missing since the early hours of today morning….”