What moves Simon (or not)?

After a twenty-four hour journey, our friend Simon arrives in New Delhi. He spends the next day acquainting himself with India and picking up a few bits and bobs for his three week holiday. At 1 a.m, Simon boards a train to Patna,  delayed by two hours and scheduled to arrive at 3p.m.

Sabrina and I travel to Patna via bus early the same morning, arriving a few hours before Simon’s scheduled train with seemingly plenty of time to find a decent guesthouse in this friendly city, though polluted with car and auto-rickshaw horns! Ears ringing, we are turned away by fifteen different hotels, with managers informing us that they are ‘full’ or simply do not have a big enough tourist demand to bother with the necessary government paperwork. A slightly pricier option next to the train station finally takes us in. Hindsight, this location proves to be a blessing as we wait for Simon’s ever delayed train.

By 7 p.m (Simon has now been on the train for 18 hours), the estimated delay times for Simon’s train become shorter, so Sabrina and I stick it out and wait at the large, crowded station.

By 8 p.m. a steady stream of people are engaging Sabrina and I in conversation. Our 30 people strong audience includes one young man who has never met foreigners before and as a result has endless questions about our countries. Of course, he and his friends are sharp! They are not asking simple school boy questions about the weather and food, but rather put Sabrina and I to the test with questions like, ‘what do people think of Hitler in Germany?’, ‘why is your country rich and my country poor? and ‘what is the structure (chain of command) of the police force in the US.’

While we enjoy interactions at Patna train station, Simon finds himself being toyed with. Move a kilometer, stop 20 minutes, and no idea what is going on or how much longer this arduous trial will last. Simon tells me later, “I went through every possible emotion…I was angry, wanted to cry and then I would look over at other people and just laugh with them as they trialed every ring-tone on their phones over and over!”

At 10:15 p.m, a young man named Khan, who we had briefly met a few hours earlier, asks me if my name is Simon while giving me his phone. Confused, I explain that my friend’s name is Simon, put the mobile phone to my ear and offer a confused ‘hello’. Over a crackled connection, I hear Simon say “…Ryan?”

Simon, Khan's bother, Khan, Ryan

Happy to connect, we ensure each other that all is well, though still perplexed and later humored to realize that Simon was sitting next to Khan’s brother on the train. The marvel of this coincidence would go amiss for Simon, who sits on the train expecting a rather small Patna train station. Not quite! At 11 p.m, Simon’s train finally pulls into Patna train station. Khan and his cohort of friends share their Massala flavored potato chips and Mango juice with us as we walk to train car number seven just as Simon walks off.

Lying in bed an hour later, we are all laughing about the crazy day. Believing that the day is over, I reach up off my floor mattress to turn off the light. Lying back down, I get a wind of nausea, turn the light back on and rush to throw-up some bad food that I must have eaten that day. While I’m in the bathroom, Simon finds the nerve to comment on this episode as the day’s perfect ending. We all continue to laugh…somehow, even me!

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