The Midnight Train

Travelling from Fort Kochi in Kerala to the Shantivanum Ashram was one of the more ‘interesting’ journeys of the time in India. Having taken an additional impromptu tour of Fort Kochi (ask me later about my entanglements with the various auto-rickshaw (tuk tuk) drivers of Fort Kochi), we were dropped off at Ernakulum Town Station. From the outside, there is absolutely nothing that would suggest it was a train station. Nothing. No name. No obvious entrance. Nothing!

The driver of our auto-rickshaw had very helpfully looked up the platform from which we would be leaving (there were only two – rather than the eight or ten we had imagined), as well as which carriage (of which there were at least eighteen). I had booked a Sleeper Carriage, Ladies, to leave Ernakulum Town at 4.05pm. We arrived just over an hour early in order to ensure we found the correct platform (not knowing there were only two!) The platform was pleasantly busy – as well as open, airy and very hot! We were fascinated (and slightly terrified) by the way in which people boarded/alighted the train from track side as well as platform... 

The information board indicated that our train was going to about an hour late. We sat down to wait. An update… about an hour and a half late… and so it continued, until the train eventually arrived – about an hour and three quarters late! Meanwhile, a friend in the US was tracking our (lack of!) progress, and sent over a webpage for the up-to-date status of the train. (Shall I mention now or later that we were due at our mid-point, change-of-train station (Erode Junction) at 10.35pm in order to catch a train leaving Erode Junction at 1:45am?)

We eventually left Ernakulum Town at around 6pm… and the Sleeper Carriage, Ladies turned out to be well, not Ladies only and not ‘Sleeper’ until around 9pm or so. (Not if you were on the bottom or middle berth (of three) at any rate.) As we went on, the train got further and further behind in time.

I had some interesting conversations with people who were sitting nearby (my travelling companion had taken herself up to her top berth in order to sleep!) but, as the train was most definitely not going to be at our destination in time to make the change-over at Erode Junction, I was rather more hesitant about putting my head down. Eventually, I succumbed. I set the timer on my phone 45 minutes, on the off chance we might catch up time, and slept. There were no announcements, no explanations and even the chaps offering water, chai, ‘kaffee, kaffee’, biriyani or samosa gave up at around 10pm. No pillows. No mattresses. No blankets. Windows with no covering – only bars to keep people out… through the darkness of the night the train continued. Me with my 45 minutes bites of sleep having had the general ’we are all going to sleep now so let’s put the middle berths down now’ take place at around 9.30pm.

Through the darkness we went, giving up on making our connection for 1:45am. We eventually pulled in to Erode Junction at 3.15am. Oh my. Only four and a half hours late. Wow. The train still ran though. No cancellation. It’s total journey time from where it began to where the journey ended is normally scheduled to be 19 hours or so, and it runs only once a day. Cancelling that train would be a nightmare for anyone who was seeking to travel on that day or the next.

Erode Junction at 3.15am with a ticket for a train that was long gone, with no Hindi/Tamil vocabulary or anything useful! A wander down to the ticket office – stepping over sleeping bodies strewn over the Hooking Hall as I went – and the ticket chap said I should wait 10 minutes and then his colleague would help me. There were other people people trying to buy tickets in the middle of the night and some interested gazes looking on at this white woman sitting in the Booking Hall. I was taking it all in too… Trains arriving in the middle of the night, people buying tickets in the middle of the night, people sleeping on the Booking Office floor – as well as outside the station on the concourse. There was an eerie quietness, and yet the place was also very busy!

The colleague, who spoke perfect English, came along and acknowledged that the connecting tickets we had were going to be of no use. We needed a ‘local ticket’ (priced at 7 Rupees – about 6 pence) and our train would leave at 4.30am.

We were just so hungry and thirsty. All the food kiosks that were open were selling samosa, curry, dhal… which was, even for us, not for 3am! We ended up with bananas and popcorn! Also, never mind the sugar content, 7Up…

When the train arrived, there were no seats to be had, so we propped ourselves up in the corridor. The doors of the train didn’t close properly, so we spent the next 3 hours watching distant lights pass us by, with the occasional station stop… and then sunrise. Watching the sun begin to glow was a beautiful thing. Here's a video!

As the day began, those who were sleeping on the Sleeper Train began to rouse – and the chaps offering water, chai, ‘kaffee, kaffee’, biriyani or samosa began their calls as they journeyed up and down the train. We eventually arrived at our destination of Tiruchirappalli at 7.15 where we discovered a station café and fell upon the most delicious Dosa.

After re-fuelling with food, as we hadn’t eaten properly since the previous day’s lunch, we headed out to the taxi rank and picked up an auto-rickshaw. Out into the countryside we headed – seeing massive statues of Hindu gods as we travelled. Our rickshaw driver was not too sure of where we were headed – which as a tad concerning – but Google Maps was a help!

Arriving at the Ashram (towards which we had been bound since 2pm the previous day) at around 10am, we drove into a place of peace – in our noisy rickshaw! – as people there looked on.

Michele and I were absolutely exhausted but, as Michele said, the journey was something neither of us would have wanted to miss: conversations, experiences, sunrise over the Indian countryside… amazing gifts. 

Travel broadens the mind

There is a saying that runs, ‘Travel broadens the mind’. If you are at all open in mind, and heart and spirit, there is no doubt that this is true. 

What is also true is that travel – and the associated broadening of one’s mind – can be both exhilarating and exhausting!

Thus, it is that over the past few weeks I have felt my mind to be broadened and stretched, my heart to be buoyed and battered, my soul to be exhilarated and exhausted. Recovery is taking time.

For this reason, posts have taken a bit of a back seat. There will be more, but for this moment, I am taking time to reflect on what I have seen. Pray about it. Recover from it too.

Here is a favourite video from when I visited waterfalls in India. A man fishing... Brilliantly, with no reel! 

A penny...?

Every so often across the past few days, I have been asked by the friend travelling with me, ‘A penny..?’ I have known immediately what is meant, even in this short-hand term.

A penny…? = ‘What are you thinking?’

A penny for your thoughts is a familiar question to many. The reasons why it will be asked are manifold:

Are we on the same page?    Are our thoughts aligned?    Are you safe?
Can I trust you?    What might I learn from you?    What thinking can I steal from you?

‘What thinking can I steal from you? Really? What are you saying?’ might be what is going through your head right now! There are so many ways in which we want to belong though, to feel safe, to be doing the right thing, to be seen to be doing the right thing that ‘stealing’ is just as much one of the reasons for asking the question, A penny for your thoughts, as any of the others.

My thoughts have been ranging far and wide whilst here in India – just as they are when I am in the UK. They range far and wide whenever I am travelling, just as they do when I am washing up, driving (even with the radio/music playing), in the shower, out walking… just as, I imagine, they do for you.

* * * * * * * 

For a moment stop.

Stop reading.

Stop looking at this screen.

Close your eyes... 
look away into the distance...
or look at the back of your hand with its wrinkles and creases...

Stop.

* * * * * * * 

And if you can’t stop now, this moment, and you are reading on… when you get to the end, maybe stop then.

* * * * * * *

Your initial thoughts may have been about what I have written. About the reason I’ve written it. About the reason I’ve invited you to stop. Your thoughts will be about anything and everything... just as mine so often are. It’s hard to stop.

Perhaps you ranged away to what you have to do next in your day: phone calls, email, walk, work, drive, exercise, WhatsApp, text, shopping, family demands, concern for friends, worry about money or health or the news. (And if you weren’t thinking about any of those things before, I bet you are now!)

Maybe you will have wondered if there was some great insight you were meant to receive. 

If you looked at your hands, it is possible that you were captivated by the shapes made by the wrinkles across your knuckles, and then you realised that you had never actually stopped and studied them (and that, perhaps, a little more hand cream wouldn’t go amiss!) It is also possible that, when you stopped, when you gave yourself time, you remembered a dream from last night, or fell asleep, or wondered what you were ‘meant to be thinking’…

The fact that you are reading this means that you have already stepped away from your day and given time to wondering what I am thinking as I journey across one small part of the country of India. There is a sense in which, unspoken, you are asking, A penny…?

The thing is, our thoughts are so often fleeting. Thoughts come and go unbidden, and we actually rarely catch them. Unless we give ourselves to thinking about something in a dutiful or conscious or planning or conscientious or academic or meaningful kind of way, thoughts come and thoughts go and we are unlikely to recall what many of them even were.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Giving our minds time to wander and wonder – at life, at relationships, at situations going on for us and around us – is all to the good. That word giving is, perhaps, of more importance than we might realise. Giving our minds time.

When life is busy – with the everyday of phone calls, email, walk, work, drive, exercise, WhatsApp, text, shopping, family demands, concern for friends, worry about money or health or the news – the giving our minds time for random thoughts is easy to lose sight of. The importance of giving our minds time, giving our hearts time, giving our souls time should not be underestimated.

Giving ourselves time – the precious commodity of time – to sit, to be, to let our minds wander and wonder – consciously, and with no agenda, is so important. I am not good at it. I can’t pretend I am. When asked, ‘A penny…?’ over these past days, sometimes there has been nothing in my mind, sometimes there has been too much to catch hold of.

There is no deep and meaningful ending to this post. All there is, is an invitation to you to give yourself time to stop. For a few moments now, for a few moments across your day; give yourself time to stop and enquire of yourself, A penny for your thoughts?

See what comes. See where your mind is wandering. Discover what it is in this moment that is giving you the gift of wonder.

A penny…?

A day of unexpected discoveries!

When I was deciding where to visit in India, I knew Kerala had to be on the list for a number of reasons: three of the people I love the most have visited here and are very fond of it; St Thomas visited here, and I have certain fondness for him from having been on Retreat in 2000 and discovering for myself the power of repeating his words for myself, ‘My Lord and my God’; it is known to be a more markedly Christian area and I wanted to see how Christianity is expressed here in terms of worship, buildings, decoration and music.

Well, today has lived up to all my expectations – and then some more.

Before I left the UK, I did a bit of planning and knew there some places I wanted to visit (I saw two of them yesterday) and then made my way to two of the others today: St Rockey’s Church and St Anthony’s Shrine.

St Rockey has different spellings to his name, depending on which country you are. I first encountered him (and his one bare leg!) when in Italy in 2022. I kept seeing this saint who had one leg bared of its ‘tights’, with him pointing towards some sort of lesion/sore. I pointed him out to the friend I was visiting and we eventually managed to track him down on a well-known search engine near you by typing in some form of: saint bare leg pointing.

St Rocco as he is known in Italy, St Rockey here in Kerala, saw the trials of those so ill with the Plague and chose to help them. Whilst offering succour to those so unwell, he also succumbed to the illness and the lesion on his leg reveals his own illness. St Rockey’s Church was definitely on my list for travels here in Kodungallur when it ‘appeared’ on Maps a few months ago.

I decided to brave a local bus. I say ‘brave’ because a) the destinations of buses are written in Hindi so you have trust the conductor will understand your accent when you ask if they are travelling where you want to go and b) they travel along at terrifying speeds!

I succeeded in catching an appropriate bus and held on tight! As I was travelling along, I was checking the map to see where we were and up popped Basilica of Mary. It was a few stops before where I wanted so I just had to get off to check it out. As you do. You’ll see it has a great name: Our Lady of the Snow. Given my surname, I thought it was sign. Up the track I went, and I began to hear music playing. ‘Great! There is a service I can join,’ I thought, little realising until a few minutes in that it was actually a funeral. I decided my presence was not required so made a quiet exit stage left and planned to come back later.

I set off for St Rockey’s – about a 15 minute walk down the road (in 29C heat!) where I happened upon a First Communion Service. For one moment I thought it was a young woman joining a religious community as she was wearing a white dress and veil. Then I saw the giving of the candle and her face as someone much younger and realised. So I set off for a walk – and some water. I can back about 15 minutes later and decided to join the service (sitting right at the back of the additional wing of the building). As the service concluded, pictures were taken and I decided – after a suitable break – to enter into the church to see St Rockey for myself. I am sure my Italian friend, Laura (who I met when we were both beginning to learn Arabic at CityLit in London) will be delighted when I send her the pics. I certainly am – to have found him here in India!

Back then up the road to The Basilica of Our Lady of the Snow. What a lovely place in a beautiful setting by the river. I arrive just ahead of a wedding! A young woman came over to talk to me. She said hello and I asked her if she had come to be brave and practise her English speaking to me. ‘Yes’, she said! We had a lovely conversation – with her telling me she definitely needed to practice because she wants to be Cabin Crew for Emirates. What a great job ambition – even if, as we both agreed, it is hard job.

Our Lady of the Snow was a happy ‘stumble upon’ experience today, as was Pallipuram Fort. There isn’t much to see at the latter, but it does hold great historic significance. I think the chap at the entrance was rather amazed to see someone, whilst the lady sweeping the leaves off the sand at the back seemed positively delighted! It is right beside the river – in what would have been a strategic position for its purpose.

The next place I knew I wanted to see on my travels in Kerala was St Antony’s Shrine. 'It’s there on the map. It’s kind of in the locality (I had no idea of the distances between places!) It’ll be fine.' (A mere 2 miles in the heat of the day!) I came across a kind of ‘Slipper Chapel’ en route. I was very glad of the cool and shade it provided as I journeyed along the road… and I took a small detour to visit a Hindu Temple.

St Antony’s Shrine. I mean. Wow. I was not expecting anything so huge or so complex. It really is a whole complex – including a convention centre. Wow! I am so glad to have taken the beaten track (literally in parts) to visit. It was so beautiful and lovely to be in such a calming environment. With extensive facilities, it is obviously a really important place of pilgrimage locally and a lot of care goes into its upkeep. There were people there of all ages – some forty or so – in the different buildings and chapels. Some young people were ‘taking the waters’ from St Antony’s Well – as did I (although I didn’t drink it!) and a bird! The older folk were in prayer in the various chapels. A guard was concerned for my welfare and asked, through the broken interpretation and hand gestures of a member of staff, if I needed food. I am just so glad I found this place today. (Check out the pics and see the slide formed of angel’s wings. I kid you not!)

And then there was the bus ride back – from about half a mile down the road. It was certainly nothing like London Transport, let me tell you. The (aged in his 20s) Bus Conductor (with machine to churn out tickets) had his phone blue-toothed to six speakers and was treating us to his favourite tunes. (I even made a video!) Fantastic!

And here's a lovely trio of butterflies I saw along the way. I've seen butterflies every day. As a symbol of the resurrection, they are filling these days with such gift. I even have a video of them too.