Pastoral scenes give way at last to urban dust. The train slows then, comes into Bhopal Junction station. This is where I get off, where on December 4, 1984, a 33-year-old PhD candidate, Satinath Sarangi, arrived late in the afternoon. 

    Disenchanted with his studies at the University of BHopal, he'd been working some 50 kilometres away in a rural area. That morning, a brief news item on All-India Radio alerted listeners to a gas leak somewhere in the city, killing under a hundred people. It didn't sound dangerous, but Sathyu (as Sarangi is known) thought otherwise. He left immediately to volunteer his help for a week.

    With a few rupees in his pocket he alighted from the almost empty train -- an oddity in India where trains usually overflow -- he walked into the station forecourt uprepared for the scene confronting him. He could not make sense of what he saw, he told me when we met in early February. People huddled close together in groups, their eyes swollen, tears streaming down their cheeks. Groaning. "People walked around as if drunk, falling over." 

     Dumfounded, he stared at the sweep before him. Wherever he looked people writhed in pain, or sat stock still groaning and weeping, or walked around not knowing what to do.  "There was this complete and utter helplessness. You could see that. I don't know how many people were there but it seemed more than a thousand."

    Someone had turned a nearby bus shelter into a First Aid post where a crowd had gathered. Still unable to make sense of what he saw, Sathyu found volunteers giving antibiotic eye drops for burning eyes, milk and juice to soothe raw throats, antacids to relieve searing digestive tract pain. People said something had affected them during the night, something like a gas that smelled like burnt chillies but they didn't know what. A lot of them had never heard of Union Carbide. Or that its local plant employed many of the men whose families lived in the slums surrounding the plant. Or that the plant manufactured a pesticide farmers across India spread on their fields to kill the beetles, bugs and insects that ate their seedlings. But they did know that whatever it was, it had turned the leaves black on the trees and that birds, cows, goats, oxen, chickens, dogs, rats, cats  -- and people -- lay dead in the streets and homes of the city.

    Sathyu helped carry the sick to cars and trucks and autorickshaws for transport to hospital. And then, all of a sudden, the odourless colourless gas hit him. For the first time in his life, he fainted.


    

The 6.00 am Shatabbdi Express for Bhopal Junction leaves bang on time. The countryside flies by, predawn images through the window as on a black and white television screen. Birds wake with the rising orange ball of sun, flapping their wings as they land by a pond to drink. 

    Above the scummy water, on a sandy mound, a man sleeps curled up in his blanket inside a makeshift shelter. Four wood posts and a roof of straw. There is almost a romantic air about his home, although in reality there is nothing about it that is remotely so. Marigolds and other flowers bloom on his little plot. He has no facilities. Once, a man in his position could wash at a railway station tap. Not any more. 

    The Minister of Railways has ushered in new rules in an effort to improve hygeine
on India Rail property. Effective immediately: Fines of 500 rupees (about $10) for anyone caught washing, urinating, spitting, cooking at a railway station. What - all at once?

    Another body of water, outside the next station, is clogged with paper, Styrofoam cups, food containers and plastic bags.  A bird sits on a hog's back pecking insects from its hair. A herd of water buffalo, those sacred beasts of India (who would happily eat those papers, cups, food containers and plastic bags, to their detriment) gather outside the front door of a solidly-built structure, through which I spot a family start its day.

     An old woman, perhaps the grandmother, brushes the hair of a young girl dressed in school uniform... but the train has whizzed by already and I am not privy to any more. A disembodied female voice comes over the PA system. She says we are stopping at Mathura Station where tourists should get out to visit important temples. 

    I am glad I've already been to Mathura and Agra, the next station and seen the sights: Krishna's birthplace, the Taj Mahal, the Red Fort. I bought a camel there, a toy. The salesman told me how well-made it was. "No plastic," he said. Later, I found a small hole in the fur and underneath, pink, manmade, plastic.

    Welcome to India!

Indira Ghandi International Airport is bang up to date, large and imposing. No longer the smelly dump filled with street people as it was eight years ago. No problems getting through Immigration. "Report to Chief of Police within a fortnight," the officer says. I'm on a Journalist Visa and certain restrictions apply. Outside, the taxi driver awaits me, holding up a sign with my name scrawled across it. Then we're off along a new highway, past new buildings, the gates of Government House, the statue of Ghandi marching to the salt flats, a squabble of monkeys cavorting under some trees, and at a set of traffic lights the inevitable beggar-woman bangs on the window. She wants money to buy milk to fill the baby bottle she waves in her hand. I say, "Use these," pointing to my breasts. "That's what they're for - milk." The driver nearly falls over laughing. He laughs until we reach the old Pantanjali district where the streets are narrow, filled with men on bicycles, young men on motorbikes and mothers, laden with shopping bags, hang on to small children. 

I chose this area partly because I stayed here in 2008, partly because it's close to the old railway station from where I'll catch the 6:00 AM train tomorrow to Bhopal. But I wasn't prepared for how run-down and filthy Main Bazar Road has become in the intervening years. And Hotel Vivek, which was never what you'd call pucca sahib exactly, has become downright seedy.

 Same staff welcome me. Same old man guards the front door. Same fat co-owner leers at me with his bulbous eyes, insisting he himself bring Mem bottle of water upstairs to room. Small comfort knowing he's after a tip and not my body. Same rooftop cafe: gone to greasy dustballs and dead flowers but at least the food's still reasonable.

A quick once-over with Baby Wipes in lieu of a bucket shower in the none-too-pristine bathroom, despite its new sink and toilet, and into bed. Then it starts: horns honk; tongues wag - in every conceivable language you can imagine; dogs bark; traffic snarls; trucks rumble. A parade, probably a funeral, accompanies me into fitful sleep. Mixes with jet-lag, images of delly belly, shadows, wakefullness, a dreamscape. Seventy-two trombones play off-key, big drums enthusiastically beaten, march through the bedroom from the narrow street a hundred feet below. Recede. Return. Recede again. Until fitful sleep claims the exhausted traveler at last.

It's a clear and sunny morning and, from my seat on the starboard side of the plane, I have a perfect view of mountains, rivers and valleys north of the Himalayas. Some river beds appear dry or as ribbons of mud until a huge dam appears leading into the deep wide waterway of a hydro-electric project. Roads twist and turn atop mountain ridges, linking villages. Further on, villages lie at greater distances to one another; discrete communities where the earth is reddish brown, sandy and scorched over miles like a war zone.

Three lakes appear on this living map from my airplane window and another hydro-electric project in the north east. Long rectangular fields in a swath of green surround the lakes: agricultural production on a large organized scale. We pass over myriad toy barns given over, I suspect, to some sort of light industry. Then leave all that behind as we come to another mountain range dotted with trees, and uninhabited river valleys. Smoke rises from within the trees, a burning bush, its flames shooting high into the air, changing direction with the wind. More wider valleys appear; pockets of civilization stretching into the far distance. Even the tops of mountains are inhabited here. Villages, huddled in the lee of hillsides, grow into towns, widen into cities. Disappear again into another isolated region connected by a single road zigzagging across slopes thick with forest.

Eyes growing heavy, I lean against the window. Take in a modern bridge that crosses a river coiling like a well-fed snake across verdant fields; a fat brown python shedding its skin to merge with a blue waterway so straight it must be a canal. A cityscape looms with infrastructure of resevoirs, highways, flyovers, districts and townships. This is China, vast and changing.

I nod off, waking only with the announcement that we will be arriving shortly in New Delhi, India.

After my magnificent seventieth birthday celebration I flew off to India as planned. Then, as John Lennon once observed, life got in the way. The games began.

Predictably, the 13-hour layover in Guangzhou (formerly Canton) seemed never-ending. If there's anything about that entomological design of an airport you'd like to know, please ask. One hour prior to departure, hopes dashed that we might soon leave the giant caterpillar. A woman let out a gut-wrenching scream. Her sister caught the hysteria, followed by a tiny girl - daughter to one of the women - who ran to the safety of her father's arms. Snatching her up, he slunk into an unlit corner.

The screaching, at fever-pitch within a few seconds, sounded as if the women had self-immolated right there in Departure Lounge A2. Two airline officials quietly explained in Chinese, further provoking the women's ire. "Speak our language," one of them yelled, waving her hands in the air to make a point. Silver bangles jumped up and down her arms. "Stop hiding behind language we don't understand. It's discrimination." The other woman shouted her agreement. 

Passengers stood up. Pressed forward to the desk. Craned their necks. A rustle like dry grass caught in the breeze, carrying the ash of a carelessly tossed cigarette butt, kindling one blade, then another, sputtered into flame. Spread fast as panic will among the crowd. Whispers rose into a crescendo of  what d'you mean? Cancelled? Cancelled till when? Tomorrow morning, 9:30?
  
I walked to the elevator, rode to the second floor, told the woman at the information desk I needed a wheelchair, "Right now." Indicated where I would sit until things got sorted out downstairs: extensions on visas, permission to stay at all; food, accommodation, transportation, food. I didn't budge from the safety of my chariot until we climbed aboard a bus that took us to our air-conditioned hotel with tea-making facilities, hot showers, and small bags of whatever passed for dinner hung on the outside door handle.  
 

March 2 (in India) already and only 8 days before it's time to pack and take the taxi to Chennai Airport for home. It's been a funny sort of a trip with two bouts of pneumonia that have left me breathless - and not with wonder. I have been writing my "postcards" - just haven't found a good way to delete and paste them here. Looks like I'll have to copy them as if by hand. That I shall do, starting today I hope.

One thing I've spent much time doing is visiting Indian Immigration. In Canada it was insisted upon that I acquire the J visa i.e. Journalist Visa. "Too many of you people come in on Tourist Visa and then practice journalism. We can't be having that I am telling you." After pulling strings with the Vice-Consul (Visas) I got mine in a couple of days. However, there was a stipulation that I register here within two weeks of arrival. What a rigmarole.

First I could not find the correct place to register, having been told by the Immigration Officer at Delhi that I could do it with any Chief of Police anywhere in India. Wrong, Mr. Immigration Official. When I did find the right place, India Immigration here in Pondicherry, I was told I did not have permission to be in this place. Pondicherry is not in Tamil Nadu State, it's a Union Territory separate unto itself. After speaking on the phone and twiddling every elastic band, staple and paper-clip in his stationary tray, the Head Honcho (you could tell, he was the only chap with a glass-topped desk) said he would give me his permission. Then I had to fill in certain forms. When I returned those next day another official, a woman this time, said they were "not ac - cept - able" as if she were the headmistress and I a naughty pupil. On Day Three I got the forms right but had to return the following Monday. Over the next couple of days she must have investigated that everywhere I said on the form I'd stayed was true. I know that because she called here at the guesthouse where I'm Writer-in-Residence. The following Monday I appeared at the appointed time only to be told to give them my passport and return in the afternoon. And eureka! I finally got my piece of paper, which I must hand to the immigration people when I leave the country.

My parting shot to the receptionist as I left the Pondi branch of India Immigration was,
"I hope not to see you again." Thank goodness he had a sense of humour: he cracked up laughing.