“Twenty rupees to Koon Homestay?”
“Yes. Twenty rupees. Your hotel, not far.”
I caught the driver’s attention again.
“No shopping? Straight to the hotel?”
“Yes, yes. Please, sir.”
We climbed in.
Once we started moving, I noticed two men sitting in the front. The driver had a younger man operating the rickshaw while an older man sat beside him, giving instructions. The engine rattled beneath us, and their conversation drifted back in fragments.
“Rickshaw, rickshaw, bicycle, taxi, car. Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, train station. Always shopping first!”
The older man continued coaching the younger driver. Then I heard him mention “Krishna.”
We stopped outside a dimly lit hotel. There was no sign above the entrance.
“This is your hotel,” the older man said.
He climbed out and walked inside.
Dani and I followed him into the lobby. A stack of business cards sat on the counter. I picked one up.
KRISHNA HOTEL
“This isn’t our hotel. We asked you to take us to Koon Homestay.”
“Koon dirty and expensive,” he said. “You don’t want to go there. This hotel good. Reasonable. Fair price. Twelve hundred rupees.”
I threw the business card onto the counter.
“Take us to Koon.”
He continued talking about the other hotel. I turned around, walked outside, and climbed back into the rickshaw. Dani followed.
“Okay, okay, okay,” the older driver said.
The engine started again.
A few minutes later, we stopped outside another hotel. This one stood along a street lined with expensive properties. Koon Homestay lay down a narrow gravel lane, and our driver refused to take us any farther.
We got out and walked.
~
The noise of Agra continued along the main road behind us. Rickshaws rattled past, horns sounded, and vendors called to passing traffic. The lane narrowed between buildings. A few doors opened onto the street, but there were no shops or waiting vehicles.
Koon Homestay stood at the end.
The family lived in a five-story house barely twenty feet wide. Its outer walls enclosed a small courtyard, leaving most of the yard in shadow. Stripes crossed the grass in alternating directions, clipped short with scissors. Along the walls, bushes twisted upward in tightly trimmed corkscrews.
Mirrors covered parts of the facade. Black and white tiles formed competing patterns around the entrance.
We stepped inside.
Marble flooring continued through the living room, where sections of wallpaper and tile met without matching.
A fat man in a white linen shirt reclined on a large brown couch, his bare feet resting on the ottoman.
Arbaaz looked up from his phone.
“You’re back?”
“Yes … Our train to Varanasi is delayed. May we stay here again for tonight?”
“Of course. 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, 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’s construction on the tracks here in Agra. 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.”
“What do you mean hasn’t started?”
He tried 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? 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.”
Dani answered first.
“No. But, thank you.”
Arbaaz paused.
“Well, you can always go next door for a snack.”
He pointed through the window to a glowing light coming from a neighboring house.
I 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!”
She pointed.
Arbaaz had two college-aged sons. As she finished her sentence, one of them burst into the room.
“Wait! 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.
The night felt warm, peaceful, and quiet.
~
Sometime later that night, I took Aarbaz’s 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. Now, the empty window frame remained, along with a curtain, which had been pulled to the side. The window sill was laden with snacks.
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 to retrieve her older brother.
His clothes hung loose over his gawky frame, and I saw the soft beginnings of a mustache creeping along his upper lip.
“Yes?”
“I don’t know any Indian snacks. Tell me. What do you like?”
He grabbed a bag of Oreo cookies and another bag of Cheetos. He handed them to me and smiled.
I pushed them back across the counter.
“No, thank you.”
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.
Together, they cost under a dollar.
~
I walked back through the heat with a bag of things I couldn’t identify.
Upstairs, Dani was already asleep, so I ate my snacks in the dark. One was salty—the other was sweet in a way I didn’t expect.
In my hands, the ice cream had already started to melt.
I closed my eyes and found it difficult to not fall asleep.