The Journal Lost In India

Lost Journal Story (Written at the request of the 1964-65 Fulbright Teaching Assistants after I related it at our 1995 reunion in Central Park, New York) Soon after I arrived in Nagpur, India in June, 1964 as a Fulbright teaching assistant fresh out of college, I began keeping a journal in a thick copybook that I'd bought at local a bazaar. Like my seven other American companions, I was in culture and climate shock. During the rains that fell daily on us for three interminable months of 100 degree, 100% humidity heat, this journal became my tenuous link to a land that seemed bent on subjecting all eight of us to levels of discomfort we'd never dreamt of. Nagpur was psychic bootcamp and we were a sorry bunch of recruits, sitting stripped down to our underpants in the airiest part of our bungalow after a sweltering day of teaching, sipping anything cool and reading Time magazine or writing letters home in a futile attempt to avoid the world around us. To most rules there is an exception and the exception to our avoidance of Nagpur was the engagement of our heat-impervious colleague, Phil Oldenburg. After his classes, Phil would set out in blue jeans and long-sleeved flannel shirts to explore some new sector of Nagpur on his indestructible 40-pound Indian bicycle. At suppertime he’d join us, refreshed from his journey and announcing new discoveries he’d made. On his bedroom wall he’d pinned a large map of Nagpur that he was coloring in, sector by sector, as his daily excursions progressed. Long before we left Nagpur, he had canvassed the entire city of 600,000. Only later when someone would say they needed to repair their sandals or buy some fancy silks would we discover the utility of Phil’s forays. From him we learned that all kinds of things – musical, athletic, civic, religious, commercial - were happening in Nagpur if only you knew where to find them. The Great Oldenburg, we were calling him by the end of the year. Well, in September the rains finally ended, nights and days grew cooler, the mosquitos abated, and at long last Mother India beckoned us all. In October I found myself with John Deans of the Aligarh Fulbright group on the overnight train from Nagpur to Madras. And then, next night, on the overnight from Madras to Bangalore. It was high wedding season and the train was crammed with passengers like a rush-hour subway in New York. We'd been lucky to find seats, mine being the size of a dinner plate. About an hour out of Madras, I realized I was heading for nine hours of sitting bolt upright. Not pleasant. I got the itch to add something to my journal. So I rose from my seat, pushed through the standing passengers to my suitcase, lifted it off the rack, held it in up one hand while opening it with the other, and then pulled out my journal. Then, placing the journal on top of the suitcase, I closed the case. Just then the train slowed and swerved sharply. The journal slid off the suitcase and out an open window into darkness of an unlit Indian night. The slowing train then passed by a long, feebly-lit sign with a long name written in an alphabet I'd never seen. Karnatic, it turned out to be, its rounded letters as different from the squarish letters of Hindi as Hindi is different from English. As the train passed through a murky station and picked up speed, I asked those around me if anyone knew where we were and from an old man I got the name of the station: Kotidiniawandam, or the like; it took a half dozen repetitions for me to get it right. I suggested to Deans that we embark on an adventure, that of retrieving my lost journal. Deans said, Sewall, you have lost your mind. (This is the same John Deans who has made his fortune by bringing American frozen ice cream to North Vietnam.) Deans and I agreed to meet in Bangalore, "if you make it," as he said with a rakish grin. The train rolled on for an hour and a half. When finally it stopped, I stepped down, found the stationmaster and told him I had to retrace my steps to find a lost business document. The menacing look he gave me suggested that no train would ever return to K-dam. And his words said so much. But I’d heard the old Maine story about there being no way from here to there before, and decided to wait the situation out. I put my head down on the waiting room table and fell asleep. Hours later, the stationmaster’s replacement woke me up. He was a big bearded man with a reassuring baritone voice like that of Burl Ives. Almost apologetically, he said the best he

could do was to put me on the caboose of a milk train that would not reach K-dam until after sunrise. We both knew that people use train tracks as paths and that my business document would go to the first person to pass it by. When I accepted his offer, he said he would send a guard with me. At length the milk train rolled in. I boarded the caboose with my guard in tow, dropped my bags, and stood with five other men on the little porch-like section at its rear as the train pulled out of Kdam with a lurch and a clang of milk cans. For the next hour or I talked with the conductor, a Hindu and former landowner in what is now Pakistan. At partition in 1948, he'd moved to India, leaving behind his land and his livestock. For years he had ridden this train as a graveyard shift conductor. In time, the five of us pulled out our blankets and sleeping bags and laid them down for some sleep. The world is different when you're on your back looking up at the sky above you. Overhead the stars were close and bright. The train rolled along with a soothing, creaking slowness, the milk barrels clanging and clattering with each swing and sway. Suddenly it struck me that I had no idea where I was. I was lost! Yet I had a feeling, entirely new to me, of belonging to the world. The starts seemed to tell me so: you are where I should be, in the middle of nowhere. My search, I realized, was for not for my journal but for something that I had just found, in part at least, where I least expected it. Finding the journal itself was now not so important. I dozed off and slept until the early morning twilight. Soon the train pulled into K-dam and I was on the platform with my bodyguard, who made a beeline to what I was looking for. Before I could put my bags down he was 50 yards ahead of me waving my journal in the air. Soon there was a little celebration on that platform with eight or ten of us drinking hot milky sugary tea expertly poured by a tchai-walla in long, steaming, gravity-defying arcs from pot to cup. Tucked securely under my arm was my journal, soggy from the overnight dew and none the worse for wear. By evening Deans and I were at supper in Bangalore. With his soft knowing laugh, he continued to maintain that I was crazy. But from then on, India began to grow on me and I in it. Things would happen, and you would learn from them. My next encounter was with a rabid dog, but that's another story.