Follow the Elephant by Beryl Young Page B

huge train station there was a line for tickets to Varanasi. Ben told Gran he’d be in the internet office at the other side of the station.
    She nodded. “I’ll wait in the line. Watch your wallet.”
    At one end of the terminal whole families camped in small groups along the walls. Women were crouched over cooking pots on Primus stoves; children wrapped in shawls sat cross-legged around the warmth of the flame. Other children, covered with rough blankets, stretched out asleep on the bare concrete floor. A grey-haired grandmother, her eyes closed, sat with her back to the wall, cradling a baby in a sling next to her thin body. Hot steam curling up from the cooking pots carried the smell of curry and spices into the homey space around each family.
    The internet office at the end of the station was a hot, narrow room with three ancient computers along a counter. The man in charge told Ben it would cost fifty rupees for fifteen minutes. It was outrageous, but he paid. First he’d email home.
    Dear Mum and Lauren
    I accidentally lost our money, but we got it back. Now Gran refuses 2 let me take care of it unless I wear her stupid fanny pack. She has 2 have her way about everything and it’s driving me kra-zee. We’re leaving for Varanasi on the train
.
    Ben
    Next the school site. Ben’s heart was beating hard as he keyed it in. It seemed to take a long time, and he blinked in disbelief when he found there was no response. Mrs. Rau had said that former students regularly checked their school sites for messages, but maybe it would take another day or two for a former student to spot the request. What was it Gandhi had said? Patience and persistence. He had to work on that.
    When Ben returned to the ticket stall, Gran had two tickets in her hand: air-conditioned second class tickets in Car C3. They headed out along the platform, past railcars where people would be sitting up on wooden seats all night. At the very end of the train they found Car C3. They climbed the steps into a steamy windowless compartment where wooden bunk beds lined the sides of a narrow passage. Their beds were across from an older man on the lower bunk and a young couple sharing the upper bunk. There was a ladder to their top bunk and heavy blue curtains provided privacy from travellers across the aisle.
    Gran checked out the ladder. “You mind taking the top bunk, Ben?”
    “Whatever you say,” Ben said.
    The man showed them how to lock their backpacks to the chain that ran from the floor to the ceiling to keep them from being stolen, but Gran shook her head. “We nearly lost everything we owned at an awful hotel. I’ll sleep better with my backpack right beside me.”
    The couple on the top bunk across from Ben had settled down for the night; he could hear soft whispers and rustling noises that made him think
they
weren’t finding it too crowded.
    “Don’t we get a sheet or a blanket?” Ben asked.
    The man said, “Don’t worry, you won’t need anything. It will get so hot up there you’ll bake like tandoori chicken.”
    Gran leaned out of her bunk and pointed at the ceiling. “Don’t tell me that’s our air-conditioning?”
    Ben stared at a dilapidated wooden fan with two broken blades. It was moving in a slow jerking circle precariously close to his bunk. He decided not to undress and made a pillow out of his rolled up jacket. He shoved his pack under his feet and tried to settle his body on the hard wood.
    He lay awake wincing at the erratic motion of the ceiling fan. Only when the blades slid with a jolt toward him did he feel the smallest movement of air, and with it, the heavy smell of too many bodies in too small a space.
    The train started with a bump, then rocked and swayed along the track as Ben closed his eyes. No matter how far away you were or what kind of a strange place you were in, you carried your sadness with you. Ben remembered that Dad had promised him a train trip across Canada. “You’ll love it,” he said.