India, 2017
I remember standing on the porch of my childhood home and watching gang members marching down the main road intersecting our cul-de-sac. The colors always changed—red bandannas one day and blue or green the next. While I could see it from my porch, they always walked past without glancing in my direction. My cul-de-sac protected me.
~
Koon Homestay lay on a dead-end street stemming from the main road running between Agra Fort and the Taj Mahal. We could hear Agra hustling a hundred yards in the distance, but that commotion didn’t reach us. Our street didn’t go anywhere; it didn’t lead to any stores or tourist destinations. None but those who lived here ventured into this neighborhood, and that made it off-limits to everyone else.
We first noticed this when our rickshaw driver refused to take us to our hotel that morning and instead deposited us at the main intersection. We figured he left us there, so he might enjoy an easier time picking up another rider, but also, he spared himself the intrusion. This street of compacted gravel created a barrier that few tourists, and no rickshaws dared cross.
A family ran Koon Homestay by renting out the spare bedrooms of their mansion. The home rose five stories tall but stood a mere twenty feet wide. The home sat just off the road, letting the exterior walls of the neighboring buildings create a front yard. We saw no other homes with yards anywhere in India, making this a strange and out-of-place luxury. The surrounding walls rose stories tall, casting the yard in perpetual shadow. Grass and topiaries thrived in the courtyard, sheltered from the merciless heat. The grass had crisscrossing stripes clipped into it like a golf course, although its upkeep was done by hand with scissors. Along the perimeter, bushes manicured like tapering corkscrews, twisted their way to the sky. Mirrors and clashing patterns of black and white tiles decorated the front of the house.
Inside too, the home had marble flooring and gaudy wallpaper that gave the immediate illusion of luxury, but none of the finishes matched each other from room to room, or even from area to area. The dining table formed the single exception to this fake luxury—a solid marble slab inlaid with gemstone patterns reminiscent of Shah Jahan’s obsession.
In the center of the room, a fat man in a white linen shirt reclined on a large brown couch, his bare feet resting on the ottoman. Our host had introduced himself the previous day as Arbaaz. He was talking on the phone as we arrived, but he ended the call when he saw us enter.
“You’re back?” Arbaaz said. His voice and his eyes showed compassion. He saw the hardship we’d endured, and he cared.
“Yes … Our train to Varanasi is delayed. May we stay here again for tonight?”
“Of course.” he said. “Your room key is … there.”
Arbaaz pointed to the computer desk, where one of his two sons had instructed us to leave the key when we’d left that morning. Dani grabbed it and headed to her room upstairs, but Arbaaz signaled for me to stay.
“You know,” Arbaaz said, “I work for the railroad. What’s s your train number? I can call and find out when it will be here.”
I pulled out my phone and retrieved the schedule.
“The train is number 14854, the Marudhar Express for Varanasi. It should have left at eight tonight from Agra Fort station, but they made us go to Agra Cantonment and then told us it won’t be here until the morning.”
Arbaaz called a coworker.
“There is construction on the tracks here in Agra,” he said after hanging up. “This is why your train didn’t go to Agra Fort station and will go to Agra Cantonment station instead. But it hasn’t started.”
This last part confused me, so he started again.
“Your train is in Jodhpur. It hasn’t yet begun its journey. Once it leaves there, it has many hours before Agra and won’t be here until fifteen hundred tomorrow.”
“Fifteen hundred?” I said. “They told us ‘eight’ at the station.”
“Yes, they say this to not make people as upset. First, ‘tomorrow,’ then ‘one hour,’ and ‘two hours more,’ then ‘two hours’ again. See? No, your train will come at fifteen hundred. Get some sleep, I can check again in the morning.”
I turned to leave when Arbaaz stopped me again.
“Are you hungry? I can make you and your wife dinner.”
“No, thank you.”
Dani had told me on the walk over that she didn’t want dinner, but I did. I would have loved food, but I didn’t wish to inconvenience our host to dirty his kitchen and work so late at night.
“Well, you can always go next door for a snack.” He pointed through the window to a glowing light coming from a neighboring house.
~
Sometime later that night, I took his advice and went out looking for a snack.
Next door, I found an awning stretched over the side of a house. Bags of chips hung from the eaves beside a ragged hole leading into a room that had once formed a bedroom. This hole once held a window, but its current owners had removed the glass and expanded the opening to serve as a storefront transaction counter. A ten-year-old girl stood on the other side. She had black hair and a green skirt. She smiled and ran away as I approached, not in fear, but to retrieve her older brother. He looked about fourteen. His clothes hung loose over his gawky frame, and I saw the soft beginnings of facial hair creeping along his upper lip.
“Yes?” he began.
“I don’t know any Indian snacks,” I said. “Tell me. What do you like?”
He grabbed a bag of Oreo cookies and another bag of Cheetos chips. He handed them to me and smiled. Teenagers love junk food, but I could find these American items in America. I wanted a novelty.
“No, thank you.” I said as I pushed them back across the counter. Then I pointed to two random bags of chips hanging from the eaves, and an ice cream bar sitting in a freezer. Everything had Hindi writing covering it, so I didn’t know what I bought, but together, they cost under a dollar.
~
After Arbaaz bid me “goodnight,” I too ascended a spiral staircase of marble slab treads on one side of the living room to join Dani.
On the second floor, the staircase transformed from spiral to switchback and exited to the building’s lower roof. The building here had no doors holding back the outside. Nothing but the thermal mass of the faux-marble building and labyrinth of stairs and halls kept the cool in and the heat, rain, and mosquitoes from entering. I walked along the balcony and picked up a third stairwell that took me to our room.
I opened the door to see Dani standing near the bed in the middle of the room.
“There’s someone else’s underwear on the floor. There!”
Arbaaz had two college-aged sons. As she finished her sentence, one of them burst into the room.
“Wait!” he said. “This room is dirty. I will make you a bed in the next room. One moment.”
He shooed us out and slammed the door.
We sat on a balcony chair and waited for him to prepare our new room. Though we sat outside, the craziness, noise, and pollution of Agra couldn’t penetrate the suburban solitude. The night felt warm, peaceful, and quiet. We found it difficult to not fall asleep. In time, I heard running water, and the shuffle of sheets, and the son returned to show us inside.
Our new room sat in a weird corner of the house that didn’t receive Wi-Fi. Bars covered the windows, and the door had a sliding cane bolt with padlock hasps on both sides. These kept monkeys out when unoccupied, but it occurred to me that Arbaaz or his son could also use it to lock us in. Trapped high above the noisy city behind thick walls and barred windows, we would have had no exit, yet I felt calm and safe.
I closed my eyes and slept.