CALCUTTA, INDIA
Calcutta’s Sealdah Station is equipped to handle three million passengers a day.

Trains are a pretty big deal in India.

To beat the rush and get to Siliguri before dark we showed up at Sealdah around 5:30am. It was already packed with travelers, soldiers, feral dogs and chaiwallahs camped out in little islands spread across the station’s huge arena. We chugged masala tea and tried to decypher impossible Indian crossword puzzles as Sealdah came to life around us.

Maybe “came to life” is the wrong expression – it’s more like the place turned into a riot. We made our way down the platform while hundreds of people beat the hell out of each other trying to get an unreserved seat. A lady in an orange sari shouted, “Oh my goodness, help!” as someone smacked her blind mother in the face with a burlap sack. I climbed over a pile of teacup bags with everything I own on my back and stumbled towards the sleeper car.

“Oh hello, where are you going?” asked a dapper young Indian man. We must have looked a little out of place.
“Uh, S2.”
“Yes yes, right this way.”

N was an engineering student in Calcutta. I never quite figured out why he was hanging out at the train station at 6am, but he sat down in the seat across from us and asked the standard questions: What’s your name? Where are you from? What did you study? My companion left to find a bathroom and he started asking about IT work in California.

“I don’t know much about that, but sure, it’s possible. What kind of IT work are you interested in?”

“Surely you know… brazzers.com?”

(it’s a porn site)