Scissored Train Ride in India “Attention passengers, kindly refrain from removing the life jackets from plane, thank you!” Jamal looked at me bemused as we were in a slow decline back to Earth A lush jungle expanse in Kerala state appeared as we popped through the cloudy stratosphere. My Saudi travel compatriot nudged me. “Aren’t you going to cry?” He asked. Knowing of my challenges getting to India and never quite making it, and meet some long lost aunties for the first time, he expected some sentimentality. “No Jamal! We should stay in Fort Kochi and get acculturated over a few days is my concern, after all this is India!” “No Eva, I want you to have enough time to meet your aunties and Pune is far.” There appeared to be no convincing Jamal to chill in a perfect little tourist mecca at hand before such an unknown journey, he was dogged We sought a spot for a post-flight cigarette as we alighted from the white washed colonial Kochi airport. I of course had gravitated to a patch of green, albeit a narrow strip, and a low brick wall. A uniformed man stared me down and if that wasn’t bad enough so did a large turd on the nature strip. “That is not dog poo!” I realized despairingly and whispered, which is what I usually do when in shock. “It’s human!” After a brief and sanitary brunch we grabbed a tuk-tuk into Kochi and its train station. With streams of queues and mayhem at the ticketing counters I grabbed a spot in one of the streams while Jamal examined undecipherable information boards “This is not South Korea!” I hollered a heads up over a few dozen heads. Eventually we boarded an antiquated blue baby carriage. It seemed Jamal’s assumption of securing a private cabin had been as way of as Calcutta was from Kochi. We crunched on bench seats with hordes of locals that soon commenced staring at us with subtle bemusement. The younger and slimmer shimmied up above our seats onto luggage racks. I started to laugh raucously as Jamal’s expression turned to shock. It was like a washing machine of limbs, bodies, bags, sweat and Hindi but a much longer cycle than twenty-four minutes. Contenting the cabins twenty-odd-people probing questions, all languished into a midday consensual hypnosis. With one eye on Jamal’s knee cap I noticed his shift, then his abrupt flummox over the feet of a man opposite resting within the small space that was Jamal’s crotch. Suddenly Jamal was in walk off mode and shifted his over weighted knapsack toward the aisle. After slithering through the hordes perching like birds in the aisle we reached an entrance with its open doors but totally blocked by another seemingly impossible mass of skinny young men. “This is horrible Eva, I want to get off.” Jamal resounded dramatically. I bent my neck here and there, trying to glimpse outside. It was pure jungle and we were speeding over 70 mph. His face showed terror and there were mumbles of strange paranoia. I had to keep calm. Suddenly, a slender hand grabbed my ankle. The floor so wedged with cargo and people I couldn’t see down there. What I saw though was a skinny pair of legs suspended in the air like a pair of scissors and within the scissors a female triangle pubic region was exposed bare. I searched the floor again and the woman with her grip on my ankle stared up blankly amid her diabolical position. Jamal had reached panic and was shuffling with his bag as if ready to alight the train, and jump into a wilderness of jungle!. “For God’s sake WAIT Jamal.” I admonished. Jamal often jumping the gun but this was so surreal that I perceived our shadow selves wading in tall Kikuyu grass with the dread of tangerine and black striped cats in proximity. But, thankfully we rattled over a long bridge and a river below of great width. I waited with bated breath, not knowing if Jamal would prevail, until a station finally appeared. The woman on the ground had meanwhile slowly released her grip on my ankle. Eva Shirazi (c)