The Train by Sarah Bourne (fiction books to read txt) 📕

one’s own life. It was a sin. God would not let that man into Heaven. He would be damned for all eternity, his soul burning in the fires of Hell, destined never to be reborn. Sandeep stopped, realising that yet again, he had strayed into his Hindu roots. His new religion did not believe in rebirth. He thought it a shame – the only problem with Christianity, in fact. The idea that his soul, imperfect and prone to minor sins as it was, would be cast into purgatory until the end of the world, whereafter it would be reunited with his body until the end of days, was little comfort. He prayed for salvation for the man who had killed himself. He hoped that when he died he would go straight to Heaven and walk in the presence of the Lord.

He raised his head and opened his eyes. They had stopped in the middle of a field. He didn’t spend any time in the countryside these days and the greenery reminded him of his parents’ village in Maharashtra after the rains, when the parched land guzzled down the deluge and became almost obscenely fecund overnight. As a child, before he and his parents had left India, Sandeep had seen it for himself and understood that God was in this place. In those days God was Shiva, the one to whom his mother prayed, to whom the shrine in their home was dedicated. After the rains they thanked Indra, too, for his continued bounty.

He felt a mixture of sadness and anger when he thought of his parents. They would not even try to understand his new religion, much less accompany him to church. His mother had cried for weeks when he told her he was going to be baptised. His father had threatened to beat him but he wouldn’t be shaken from the right path. And anyway, he was thirty years old, a full head taller than his father and twice as broad. These days they didn’t talk about religion at all but he felt his mother’s yearning when he was home, waiting for him to come back to her and her false gods.

He sighed and turned his thoughts away from all that. He had a long day ahead – one of his boss’s clients was way behind in his tax returns and the inland revenue – revenue and customs, he corrected himself – was after him. Barry had passed the problem on to him, so he was going to be knee-deep in receipts and paperwork all day. And he was having dinner with his parents which also meant staying the night at their house and enduring more of his mother’s disappointment over breakfast. He slumped further into his seat.

A phone trilled and a young woman sitting over the aisle in an army surplus coat many sizes too big for her looked at it and typed furiously on the screen. When she looked over their eyes met and Sandeep looked away, embarrassed.

‘Wonder how long we’ll be here,’ she said, and Sandeep realised she was talking to him.

He shrugged. ‘It is difficult to say with these things.’

‘Has it happened to you before then?’

‘Oh, no, I just meant I don’t know how long it takes for the police and–’ He realised he had no idea who else was involved in situations such as this.

‘Were you praying before?’ asked the woman, eyebrows raised.

‘Yes, I was praying for the soul of the poor man who saw no alternative but to kill himself.’

‘It might have been an accident. He might’ve fallen.’

‘From where?’ asked Sandeep, looking out the window. ‘There is no bridge near here and he cannot have fallen from the sky, I think.’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ said the woman, and turned back to her phone, leaving Sandeep wondering what things she was referring to. Perhaps the miracle of the loaves and fishes, still one of his favourite stories from the Bible – and little David taking on Goliath was another good one. He had thought they were metaphors written to teach people something, but Dave, the leader of their study group, explained that the Bible was the Word of God, and literal. There was evidence these people had lived in just the way it was written and that miracles were what set Jesus apart. Whether they were real or not, there was a mystery and magic in them that Sandeep was drawn to. When he was little he’d always loved his grandmother telling him stories from the Mahabharata, the great battle between the Pandavas and the Kauravas. He particularly liked sitting on Aji’s lap, imagining the elephants lined up in their battle dress, the chariots, the soldiers with their spears and the archers with bows and arrows at the ready. And he loved the bit where Krishna revealed himself in his true, divine form to Arjuna, who had thought he was just a charioteer. What a surprise it must have been to Arjuna, and yet, he, Sandeep, had known it all along! It always made him feel clever to have outwitted Arjuna, just as Krishna had. He smiled, and thought perhaps it was time to make a trip back to India to see his Aji. She was too old to come to see him and had always been unwilling to leave her village. Maybe he would read to her now, since her eyesight was failing, and together they could remember the victory of the Pandavas. He decided to look into flights.

The whoosh of the connecting doors made him look up. The guard came through the carriage, clearly trying to avoid speaking to anyone and this time Sandeep left him alone. The last time he’d asked what had happened and learned of the death and although he wanted to know when they might be on their way again, it seemed callous to ask. Death kept to its own time frame and had to be honoured. He wondered if the body would be buried in a proper