Go, Karna!

I was ushered rather roughly off the train by the ticket inspector.
The seat-jumping, shirt-changing ruse had worked for 4 hours or so, but now he was onto me.
My ticket was valid for this train but not for this carriage. I had to move down the platform and reboard, as the "regular-class" carriage was not accessible through the train. This in itself was setting off alarm bells in my head.
I got off and walked alongside the train until i saw a carriage with a grille over the windows and fingers poking out. "Regular-class" was evidently not to a world away from the famous 1940s, Polish "Auschwitz-class".
Through the tiny window i could see the gaunt and traumatised faces of the damned. Like veal to the slaughter, they clawed at the prospect of fresh air and light and there was a discernible and deeply distrurbing moaning sound eminating from every porthole.
Even if i had had the inclination, it would have been impossible for me to get into this carriage. When the inspector opened the door (i didn't notice if it was locked or not), the passengers literally spilled out, gasping and blinking in the light of the not-very-bright station.
I would never fit in. It was like Tokyo at rush hour without the appeal of Japanese schoolgirls. The seats and aisle were not just full, but overflowing with bodies and body-parts. People were sitting on people who were sitting on people who had managed to find luggage to sit on. Unidentifiable arms and legs splayed everywhere.
I gestured to the inspector that there was no way, Newtonian physics aside, that i was getting in there and emphasised this with the universal and internationally recognised sign of the sardine.
He shrugged, as if to say "Fair enough," and pointed at a doorway that led to one of the sections of the train that joins two carriages.
There were no seats, and when the train started off, the noise was intolerable, but a couple of Australians had somehow made themselves look relatively comfortable by piling their bags in a corner and lying against them. I asked if i could join them and threw my bag in the pile, squatting nearby.
They seemed cool. One was attempting to read and the other was playing a guitar, inaudible over the noise of the engine. They were both heavily bearded, ZZTop style, and one had a large rastafarian-style hat covering what i was later to discover was a clump of 7year-old dreadlocks. It was still not a comfortable arrangement by any stretch of the imagination, but it seemed that they had made the best of a bad situation.
I necked a second valium.
After chatting for a while, playing the guitar and reading a little, i decided to try and get a little sleep, so leaned back on my luggage and pulled my baseball cap down over my eyes.
The rest of the journey passed like a series of uncomfortable jump-cuts shot through a letterbox.

There was shouting.
Someone kicked me.
The smell of Biryani.
Urine. Not mine, i hoped.
A phone ringing.
I shifted position.
The Australians were talking about Rajistan, i'm not sure whether to me or not.
My back hurt.
Another valium.
Time slowed, or stopped, or maybe that was just the train.
I looked at my watch: Another 8 hours?
I hung out of the door, staring into the darkness as it whizzed by, and listened to David Bowie on my Ipod until it ran out of batteries.
I sat back down and someone kicked me again.
Wind. Noise.
We stopped and I got off to stretch my legs. A shout from one of the Australians alerted me to the fact that the train had started off again and I had to run along the platform to catch it up and get back on.
I drank tea and coffee and ate fruit.
Darkness.
Another kick.

I opened my eyes and was amazed to discover thati was no longer on the train, but in a rickshaw.
I looked at my watch, 4:30am.
Why was i not still on the train? I wasn't supposed to arrive at my destination, Margao, for another few hours. Where was I?
Maybe that third valium had been a bad idea...
I looked around. The Australians were sitting on either side of me.
One was asleep, and the other was talking excitedly about some remote, holy beach that nobody really knew about. He kept leaning forward, tapping the driver on the shoulder and chanting "Go, karna! Go, karna!"
The driver nodded and accelerated, repeating back to him hypnotically, "Go, karna!" and laughing manically.
I turned to the Australian and asked him what karna meant. He looked at me, confused, and said he had no idea.
The rickshaw continued through the night, navigating round invisble potholes and sleeping cows, as, although unseen to me, they were undoubtedly both everywhere.
We passed nothing - no lights, no buildings, no trees, nothing but blackness and dimly-lit ground.
Why was I not on the train?
What had possessed me to get off and join these two on whatever mission they were on?
I should be entering Goa by now.
Instead, it seemed, I was on my way to find a remote, but very holy beach, with two antipodeans who badly needed a shower and a shave.
You gotta love these drug-induced spontaneous decisions.
"But it seemed like such a good idea at the time..."

We drove for almost an hour. This beach was evidently very very remote.
The conscious Australian continued his "Go, karna!" chanting, rhythmically beating his rucksack, while the sleeping Australian remained largely sleeping, other than to occasionally wake and say "Yeah, dude. Go, karna!" before falling back into unconsciousness.
I had no confidence in either of them finding anything holier than their underwear, but they'd been on the road for a lot longer than me and had an air of confidence and abandon that, although it probably shouldn't have done, somehow comforted me.

Maybe i should just relax and go with the flow, relinquish control and let destiny play its hand.
It did.

If destiny were indeed playing cards, and i knew anything about poker, it was as we turned a corner and sped through a dirty, deserted village that destiny pushed its chips into the middle of the table and said:
"I'll match your uncomfortable train ride, your psychotic rickshaw-driver and your stinking companions, and raise you the stench of manure, some eerie disembodied chanting and the sound of waves crashing on a deserted beach."
As I said, i know nothing about poker, so i don't even know if that is a valid bet. I certainly know that had i not been dosed up to the eyeballs on diazepam and suffering from severe sleep-withdrawl, i might have at least spent a few more seconds considering my options.
And yet here i was.
Suddenly the rickshaw was gone, the Australians were now both awake, and we stood, squinting into the darkness in the assumed direction of the sea.

The strange chanting, that appeared to be coming from an isolated megaphone on a telegraph pole nearby, paused for a moment.
We all stood there, looking into the nothingness in silence.
Then, one of the Australians whispered as spiritually and seriously as you can with that accent:
"Here we are, guys. We made it. The holy beach. Gokarna."