THEY HAD TO change trains at Ranaghat that afternoon. Opu had had powdered coal fly into his eyes twice already, but he couldn’t bear to keep his head inside the large windows. There was so much to see! What were those things at every station? ‘Signals’? Why were they going up and down? And look, wherever the train stopped, someone had built a raised platform at just the right height to help people get on and off—just like verandas in front of a house! Were these the ‘platforms’? There were boards stuck on these verandas, with the name of the stations written in English and Bangla: Kurulgachi, Gobindopur, Baanpur. Just before the train left each station, someone would hit an iron disc four times with an iron mallet. Dhong-dhong-dhong-dhong! It was exactly four times, he had counted. And then the signal would go up and down. The signal was controlled by an iron disc with spokes sticking out in all directions. He saw a man in the Kurulgachi station turning it with some effort, and the hand of the signal moving.

Shorbojoya, too, was looking around. This was only the second time she had been on a train. The first time was . . . oh, years back, when he had first returned from Kashi. It was in summer, during the month of Joishtho. She had gone to Aranghata to see the Jugolkishor—a temple dedicated to a flute-playing Krishno, and his consort Radha. She was a new bride then, fresh from setting up her own home in Contentment. Ages . . . it had been ages back. She leaned out of the window like her son, and happily watched the crowds of people getting on and off the train. Look at those women, she thought to herself. Such nice clothes, such jewellery! At Jogonnathpur station, she saw a man peddling good moa—large balls of fluffed rice, jaggery and reduced milk.

‘Opu,’ she said eagerly, ‘shall I take some moa for you? You love it . . . these are good.’

After a while, her son pointed at a bird on the telegraph wires accompanying the tracks in sudden excitement.

‘Look, Ma! Someone’s pet mynah has escaped its cage!’

The sun had begun to set when they changed trains again at Noihati, and thundered across the bridge over the Ganga. Shorbojoya stared mesmerized at the red-gold glow spreading from the horizon. The cool river breeze rushed past the train, bathing the travellers in its crisp freshness. Boats went languidly by on the river below. From her vantage point, Shorbojoya could see beautiful houses and gardens scattered on either side of the river. Never in her life had she seen such marvellous sights. When a steamship came around the distant bend, she clutched her son’s arm in thrill.

‘Opu, look! A real smoke-top ship!’

A few minutes later, she joined her palms and raised them to her forehead in silent prayer. ‘Mother Gonga, forgive us for crossing you, Ma,’ she begged earnestly of the waves below. ‘I’ll offer you a pujo with flowers and marmelos leaves once we see you again in Kashi. Keep my Opu well, and please, Ma, may our hopes for the new place come true. May we find true shelter there.’

Truth be told, this was the happiest she had been in years. The promise of a rewarding future mixed with the unfamiliar thrill of freedom as she leaned out of the train to drink in such sights and sounds as she had never before imagined seeing. While living her previous bamboo-grove-bound stagnant rural life, she had never even conceived of such speed or such rapid changes in scenery, or of goosebumps from joy, not fear. Now that she tasted the fresh air that whipped through the compartment, she felt that her previous life had been spent in building higher and higher walls to stay isolated and contained, cut off from the world outside for fear of change. But today those walls had been shattered! She had stepped over their debris to embrace a mysterious unknown. She felt every moment of that momentous flight—across rivers, through countless villages and towns, straight towards the molten gold of the setting sun. To think that only a year back, lying down in the silence of her Contentment house, she had told herself that travelling to Chakdah or Kaligonj for a dip in the holy river was an impossibly ambitious adventure. Yet look at her now!

As their train was pulling into the Bandel station, a much larger train thundered through the station at the speed of a gale. Opu stared after its speeding form in amazement. When they finally got off their train at Bandel, the noise and buzz of constant activity drowned out pretty much everything else. Engines kept going up and down on different tracks and freight trains thundered through every five minutes without stopping at the platforms. By now it was the lamp-lighting hour, but no one would have mistaken it for the quiet darkness of Contentment evenings. The engines whistled at a deafening pitch, people shouted instructions to each other, and a bright green signal glowed a short distance away to mark the departure of a passenger train. Even the darkness beyond the station was lightened by the glow of flocks of red and green signal-lights for the various tracks.

Later that night, their train to Kashi finally pulled into the station with a series of hideous clangs. Bandel was a much larger station than either Ranaghat or Noihati, and even at that late hour was absolutely swarming with people. When she saw the enormous crowd move as one towards the train, Shorbojoya lost all sense of bearing. Barely managing to follow her husband on numbed, shaking feet, she found herself propelled by the crowd towards the doorway of a compartment, but was unable to find a foothold of her own. Finally, Horihor had to propel his disoriented wife and son from behind till they were inside