Angels

          Ok, another taxi ride. Here we go again. Lone American woman in car with lone Indian man. He drives while she, sitting in the back, wonders whether this man will really deliver her to her destination or instead take her to places she fears -- places she has heard about but never known.
          So far, during every taxi ride in India, she has managed to remain in the same chaste position in the back seat: nearly frozen, hands clasped on her lap, her eyes locked on the passing scenery, her head and neck covered with a scarf. She has dared to steal glances at the drivers only when there was no chance they'd be looking at her in the rear view mirror -- when they were passing a truck, for instance, or paying a toll. Just don't lock eyes with him or give him any ideas. Just keep looking out the window.
          Siddharth closes the door of my taxi and wishes me well. He is the kindly manager of the lodge I've been staying at near Bandhavgarh National Park, and I trust that he has hired a good taxi service to take me to the Jabalpur train station, 3 hours away. The train to Jabalpur was booked, otherwise I wouldn't be taking the bumpy, nauseating roads of India again. I have plenty of water (but don't drink too much or else you'll have to piss on the side of the road) and I have plenty of time to kill in the back seat.
          Before the car drives off, though, someone opens the passenger door. It's one of the employees from the lodge. "Do you mind if the taxi takes him to the next town?" Siddharth asks. How can I? The guy's already taken his seat. But he was nice to me at the lodge and sure, I can give him a free ride to see his family.
          The driver is a serious-looking, early-20s guy who doesn't appear married and doesn't smile and doesn't turn on the radio. After I say "good morning" to him he nods his head, indicating he doesn't speak a lick of English. We settle into our respective roles as passenger and driver. I grab the strap above my window to keep from getting too jostled by the potholes. I tell myself there's no reason to distrust this stern-looking driver, that he'll get me to my train on time without any... problems. I'm just getting nervous because I'm a woman traveling alone... I drift off, thinking about...
          After an hour, the car comes to a stop and a bunch of guys are coming up to my window. Oh, come on. I'm tired and just getting over a head cold and I know India is getting under my skin because of this physical exhaustion. But here are a bunch of men at my window and my driver has stopped for some reason in an obscure village and I can't communicate with him and I just wish he'd get on with it.
          The men start banging on my window, about five or six of them. The lodge employee has already gotten out of the car and has joined the commotion at my window. "Ticket! Ticket!" one of the men shouts at me through the closed window. I am not sure why they are saying this so I pull a trick that gotten me out of a confusing situation a week before: I simply shrug and pretend I don't speak English. I throw up my hands and shake my head at them. Still, they keep saying, "Ticket! Ticket!" and use their hands to indicate a piece of paper.
          Ok, they want my train ticket. And look, they're pretending this is some official toll booth and in order to pass I need to show my train ticket. Sorry, guys. Indian Railways won't let me on board without it so there's no way I'm showing it to you and watching you run off with it while I suddenly become stranded in middle-of-nowhere Madhya Pradesh. I keep shrugging at them and throwing up my hands. They look confused as to why I don't know this very common English word "ticket" and a few of them start shaking their heads in disbelief. It goes on like this for a very long minute.
          Finally they start to walk away. I feel victorious, having already been humiliated and ripped off by too many conniving taxi drivers, shop keepers, and others who saw me as nothing but a walking piggy bank. But as the driver starts up the car again, a strange man who had been in this gaggle of "ticket takers" gets in the passenger seat, replacing the employee from the lodge. He turns to me in the back seat and smiles. He doesn't speak English either, so he can't explain to me why he has gotten in the car. Is he trying to get a free ride out of me, too? Or get something else? I sink even deeper into fight-or-flight mode, convinced that this can't be good and very aware that there are two more hours left of this ride.
          The driver and this strange passenger don't say anything to each other and we continue. I start to get concerned about whether I will get to the station on time. And then, as if cued by my worries, we come to a bend in the road and are stopped by a police officer. There has been a bad truck accident along the road and they're not letting any cars through. I can't believe my bad luck. The strange passenger gets out and appears to be getting alternative directions from the policeman, who uses his hand to trace a big circle in the air -- clearly the detour we must take to get to Jabalpur. What was that about hoping not to miss my train?
          The driver backs up and retraces a large part of our route. I try to use the sun to judge whether we are, indeed, heading towards Jabalpur. But I quickly get disoriented as the road dips down into a forested area where dense stands of trees block the sun. There are no villages around anymore -- we are in pure forestland -- and for the first time I am on an Indian road where there are no people meandering along the shoulders. It is only me and these two men. We are alone and now I am frightened.
          For 20 minutes we head up and down the dips in the road. There is no way that Jabalpur -- a major city -- could be anywhere near here, since this is all forest land. And if this detour has taken us far from Jabalpur, how will I make my train? So far, I haven't been nervous about anything during my trip to India, except for my inexplicable fear of missing my trains. I have feared being stranded without a place to stay. Most backpackers in India have no problem showing up in a town without a place to stay, but being a solo female traveler has led me to want guaranteed reservations at hotels that I know are safe and clean. So I really don't want to be stranded in Jabalpur tonight, in the dark, watching my train to Nagpur chug off into the distance.
          Then, again as if on cue, as soon as I begin worrying about the time, the car stops once more. Ahead of us are railroad tracks and a barrier is blocking us from crossing. A train must be imminent. But I hear no train. There is dead silence. There aren't even any people in the vicinity of the tracks. Someone has left the barrier down by mistake and we can't cross!
          Stuck between an abandoned railroad barrier on this end of the road and a truck accident way on the other, in a vast stretch of Indian countryside that is devoid of people, running out of time to catch my train and in the hands of two strange men who strike me as untrustworthy, I begin to breathe erratically and can feel my heart beating rapidly. I wonder if this is what hyperventilation is like. Tears begin to stream down my face and I try to hide them from the men by keeping my sunglasses on, even though the sun has just disappeard on the horizon. I fumble in my bag for some homepathic liquid that's supposed to bring calm, but for me it does nothing.
          The men get out of the car to look for someone who can lift the barrier. They go off and leave me alone, and in that space of time the sun finally shuts the door on the day. I am still unsure of their motives. But when they come back, they come back with someone else, and the barrier lifts at last. The car starts up again, gets going, and then -- God, who would have thought -- just around the bend is a sign for Jabalpur. I might make the train after all.
          But I feel no relief yet because I have not yet escaped from these guys. Only until they are out of my sight will I feel safe. At the train station entrance, I rapidly shove the taxi fare into the hand of the driver without looking at him, because inevitably -- as with all the other drivers -- if you linger they will try to convince you to give them more than the agreed-upon price. But if you get the transaction over with and don't make eye contact, you can get away more easily. So I scram, as fast as one can scram with a big old suitcase in the parking lot of a foreign train station.
          I reach the main hall of the station, completely relieved to be rid of the men and glad that I have a bit of time left to find my platform. But the electronic board that lists the incoming trains -- the kind of board that has helped me in every Indian train station so far -- doesn't list my train and doesn't seem to be working, either. I try and decide what to do.
          I swing around to seek out a ticket kisok, and there behind me are the taxi driver and the strange passenger, standing 10 feet away from me and whispering to each other. Goddamnit, why have they followed me into the train station? I feel safer here than in the taxi because of the throngs of people congregated in the hall, but still, what do they want? They aren't even looking at me, for some reason -- as if they're trying to pretend to blend in. How stupid do they think I am?
          I decide to take the situation head on and fish out my Hindi-English dictionary. I haven't used it until now. Finding the phrase for " Where is the train?" I walk up to them and proudly state my question but they look at me blankly. "No," they say, indicating I have not made any sense. I try again, twice, then get disgusted and walk away. Now I really have to find out where my platform is -- the electronic board is simply not working. But there is no ticket kiosk or station manager evident anywhere. I am stuck, frozen.
           I have an idea to go back to the two guys and show them my ticket.
          As soon as I do, the strange passenger takes it, examines it, and hands it back to me. The two of them dash off purposefully toward the other side of the main hall. After a minute or so they return, and motion for me to follow them. It's not like I have any other option. I have less than 10 minutes until my train's scheduled arrival. We push our way through the dazed crowds of families and young couples and beggars and old people, crowds that are so ubiquitous at Indian railway stations, and when we come to the stairs that cross over the tracks, they offer to help me with my bag. I let them. And as we head down the stairs on the other side, I see a train approaching.
          No, no, they shake their heads. This one is not yours. I glance at the numbers on the side of the car next to me and see that they're right.
          They're right. And look where they've lead me -- to my train. I sit down on a bench and begin experiencing an opening in my chest, where my heart is. I feel a lightness inside, as if someone were blowing air into me. I look over at the two men who, even here, are standing ten feet away from me. I manage to eke out a smile, and the strange passenger smiles back.
          I look back down at the ground and feel tears clouding my eyes again. I realize that these two men are my angels, that they have been on my side all along. "Ticket! Ticket!" I think back and realize that the gaggle of men at the taxi window were asking to see my ticket so they could give me advice on how to find my train. The lodge employee who had bummed a ride halfway with me had probably told them I was headed to Jabalpur and that I was alone and needed help. And when I didn't show them my ticket, one of them -- the strange passenger -- got into my taxi instead, and maybe made the trip into Jabalpur because he was familiar with the station and knew he could help. That's why they followed me into the station and stood behind me -- to make sure I got to my destination. 
          Who knows. The fact is, they were on my side all along, and I had convinced myself they were not. Even though I had no evidence that they were nefarious, and had no bad intuition about them, I never considered that maybe there was nothing to be afraid of, that maybe I could trust them. Obviously, I would have taken action if I felt truly threatened, but I never felt that way. Why was I so scared?
          Sitting in the Jabalpur train station, slumped over my bag, my mind heard this question, and peered out from behind the curtain.
          It was my mind that had worked so hard to make me so untrusting in the taxi. Exhausted, hungry, conditioned by knee-jerk fear (women, because of our history, are born with it) and discouraged by two previous weeks of unsettling Indian taxi rides, I was thinking too much about what could be happening in that taxi, but I was wrong. I was assuming so many things, and all of them were bad, and all of them were wrong. Why did I never assume the best?
          I see another train pulling into the station and it is mine. The two guys motion to me again to follow them. They know from looking at my ticket which car I'm supposed to be in. The train stops and they break into a run -- clearly my car is at the other end of the platform and we'd better hurry because the train will take off soon. I wheel my suitcase deftly through the narrow openings between people and stop when I see the two men standing in front of one of the cars. The strange passenger pushes his way through the people boarding so he can help me lift my heavy bag up the steps of the car.
          Once I'm aboard, I reach into my wallet and see I only have a few 10-rupee notes. It's not enough, but I take a couple out, reach over the compartment steps and hand them to the strange passenger as the train begins to move. I can't see his face because I am concentrating on getting the money into his hand without falling down the steps. I then retreat back into the car and realize I must find my berth.
          When I do, I collapse onto the plastic blue seat covering, let my head fall back onto my bag and stare up at the rickety metal fans cooling the train compartment. "They were my angels," I think to myself over and over. "They were my angels, and I doubted them." I try to capture my breath and feel the sweat of my back soaking into my shirt. I feel stunned by my own distrust. I feel humbled by the gift that was given to me. I feel a desperate sense of sadness that I will never be able to find my angels again, so that I can thank them.
          I feel the grace of infinite possibilities.