The notes I took in my filofax thing are really very bad. They weren't written with this kind of thing in mind. Why I wrote them at all when they are so woefully inadequate is questionable. For instance, the whole of the next day, Wednesday 7 November 1990, is blank except for a note towards the bottom of the page, sometime after 6.00pm, which says "Out to Jodhpur". This doesn't jog my memory about the day very much. I must have done something but what it was is now consigned to the deeper recesses of my mind perhaps never to re-emerge or perhaps only to resurface when most of what I do from minute to minute is hard to hold in my memory.
The train was a sleeper. Most of the journeys I took were overnighter's. I must have said that it saves on a hotel room and you achieve something, namely onward progress,even as you sleep. To a certain extent taking overnight trains is unavoidable. They don't set off on journeys such as Delhi to Jodhpur in the morning. It would mean traveling through the heat of the day which would be uncomfortably hot for most passengers and a waste of a day's light.
Did I mention the unique signs that you find on the platforms of Indian railway stations? It is honestly something that has stuck with me ever since. They have the most sensible station information sign you might ever encounter. The sign says "This train will not leave before..." and a time is inserted. It was certainly comforting to know that there was never a need to worry about the train leaving before the appointed time of departure. What the signs don't say is exactly when the train will leave. On this occasion because of derailment somewhere up the line the train was 5 hours late in departing! Never mind I had probably fortified myself with a souvenir from Kashmir and the blue bench seats in the very spacious First Class compartments were comfortable enough. There were reading lights and if I wasn't writing a letter or postcards I was probably reading. One of the things that I might have done earlier in the day was visit a book shop in Connaught Circus. I've reviewed (and edited slightly) the foregoing posts and can't see a mention of buying books but I certainly did get a handful of paperbacks. I seem to recall that they weren't very cheap. They were a collection of Oscar Wilde's stories, A Passage to India by E M Forster and a book of Kafka short stories. Perhaps they sound a bit worthy or dated. Perhaps I should have been reading Midnight's Children. I am sure I tried once and found it too stodgy to digest.
