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THE LONG, FLAT INTERSTATE PLATFORMS at Victoria Terminus train station stretched out to vanishing points beneath a metal heaven of rolling vaulted ceilings. The cherubs of that architectural sky were pigeons, so far overhead in their flutter from roost to roost that they were only faintly discernible; distant, celestial beings of flight, and white light. The great station-those who used it every day knew it as VT.-was justly famous for the splendour of its intricately detailed facades, towers, and exterior ornaments. But its most sublime beauty, it seemed to me, was found in its cathedral interiors. There, the limitations of function met the ambitions of art, as the timetable and the timeless commanded equal respect.

For a long hour I sat on and amid our pile of luggage at the street end of the northbound interstate platform. It was six o’clock in the evening, and the station was filled with people, luggage, bundles of goods, and an agricultural assortment of live and recently deceased animals.

Prabaker ran into the crowds milling between two stationary trains. It was the fifth time I’d watched him leave. And then, a few minutes later, for the fifth time, I watched him run back.

‘For God’s sake, sit down, Prabu.’

‘Can’t be sitting, Lin.’

‘Well, let’s get on the train, then.’

‘Can’t be getting on also, Lin. It is not now the time for the getting on the train.’

‘So… when will it be the time for the getting on the train?’

‘I think… a little bit almost quite very soon, and not long. Listen! Listen!’

There was an announcement. It might’ve been in English. It was the kind of sound an angry drunk makes, amplified through the unique distortions of many ancient, cone-shaped speakers. As he listened to it, Prabaker’s face moved from apprehension to anguish.

‘Now! Now, Lin! Quickly! We must hurry! You must hurry!’

‘Hang on, hang on. You’ve had me sitting here like a brass Buddha, for an hour. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a big rush, and I have to hurry?’

‘Yes, baba. No time for making Buddha-beg of pardons to the Holy One. You must make a big rush. He’s coming! You must be ready. He’s coming!’

‘Who’s coming?’

Prabaker turned to look along the platform. The announcement, whatever it was, had galvanised the crowds of people, and they rushed at two stationary trains, hurling themselves and their bundles into the doors and windows. From the broiling tangle of bodies, one man emerged and walked towards us. He was a huge man, one of the biggest men I’d ever seen. He was two metres tall, well muscled, and had a long, thick beard that settled on his burly chest. He wore the Bombay train porter’s uniform of cap, shirt, and shorts, in rough red-and-khaki linen.

‘Him!’ Prabaker said, staring at the giant with admiration and dread. ‘You go with this man now, Lin.’

Having long experience with foreigners, the porter took control of the situation. He reached out with both hands. I thought that he wanted to shake hands, so I extended my own in return. He brushed it aside with a look that left me in no doubt as to how repulsive he’d found the gesture. Then, putting his hands under my armpits, he lifted me up and dropped me out of the way to one side of the luggage.

It’s a disconcerting, albeit exhilarating, experience, when you weigh 90 kilos yourself, to be lifted up so effortlessly by another man. I determined, there and then, to co-operate with the porter in so far as it was decently possible.

While the big man lifted my heavy back-pack onto his head and gathered up the rest of the bags, Prabaker put me at his back, and seized a handful of the man’s red linen shirt.

‘Here, Lin, take it a hold on this shirts,’ he instructed me. ‘Hold it, and never let it go, this shirts. Tell me your deep and special promise. You will never let it go this shirts.’

His expression was so unusually grave and earnest that I nodded in agreement, and took hold of the porter’s shirt.

‘No, say it also, Lin! Say the words-I will never let it go this shirts. Quickly!’

‘Oh, for God’s sake. All right-I will never let it go this shirts. Are you satisfied?’

‘Goodbye, Lin,’ Prabaker shouted, running off into the mill and tumble of the crowd.

‘What? What! Where are you going? Prabu! Prabu!’

‘Okay! We go now!’ the porter rumbled and roared in a voice that he’d found in a bear’s cave, and cured in the barrel of a rusted cannon.

He walked off into the crowd, dragging me behind him and kicking outwards by raising his thick knees high with every step. Men scattered before him. When they didn’t scatter, they were knocked aside.