Where God Divided by Zero 2

                                            “Black holes are where God divided by zero”
                                                                                         Stephen Wright


“I’m off!” She bubbled, slamming the door next morning. Button Nose had left me a list of chores, mainly to do her laundry and mail her postcards. These were completed without much enthusiasm and with some haste, as I had a date with a horse.
We trotted to the zoo, where I was enthralled by Himalayan black bears, red pandas, leopards, strangely helmeted multicolored fowl, and especially by Franka, the cute little tiger that scared the Tibetan morning momos back out of me. I rode to the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, to compare my exploits with those of better climbers, and on to the Happy Valley tea estate, for a lesson in cultivation. Darjeeling produced twenty million pounds of tea every year, and my guide told me how it was disbursed.
“We send the finest tips to the British.” He explained. “The rest of the leaves we market to the rest of India. And then there are the twigs and stems.”
“What do you do with them?” I asked.
“We send them to the Americans.” He said. I bought ten rupees worth of Golden T.P., and galloped my horse back in time. Button Nose was already at the Welkin.
“How was Kalimpong?” I asked.
“Where?” She queried.
“The town you went to today.” I said.
“Oh yeah.” She said. “I bought some silver earrings.” Except they weren’t. Later we met Doug and Mike at the Chowrasta Restaurant for a curry, and Button Nose’s percolating description of all the new addresses she had collected on her jeep ride. Doug gave me a small bottle of rum on the way out.
“You never know...” He said. “You may just want to set yourself on fire. Self-Immolation. Very Tibetan.”
The reason I had come to Darjeeling wasn’t to ride horses (or Button Nose), but to take the narrow gauge Darjeeling Himalayan Railway ‘toy train’ up to India’s highest railway station in Ghoom, and then down Hill Cart Road, to New Jalpaiguri, on my way to Calcutta.
Button Nose told me she already made a reservation at the Fairlawn Hotel in Calcutta, for two days hence. I told her about how fascinating the toy train was, with its 1889 British ‘B’ class steam locomotive running switchbacks down fifty-three miles and over two kilometers in altitude, along a two-foot wide track.
“I’ll take a taxi and meet you at the bottom.” She said. “Then we can go to Calcutta together.” My brain formed a mental picture of a small bottle of rum, and a match.
After a lukewarm bucket bath and a cuppa next morning, I told Button Nose that I would meet her at the Kwality Restaurant in Siliguri at seven that evening. I gave my Nepali toque to the Welkin desk clerk on the way out, and hiked to the train station to begin my excursion. During a patio breakfast I met two female missionary nuns, one from Singapore, the other Irish. I asked about qualifications. They mentioned celibacy and suffering. I told them I had it covered.
And then, for nine rupees, we stumbled into Lilliput. What used to be bullock carts and palanquins morphed into a whimsical cabin.
The first hour was a carnival of shunting cars and engines. Then, with a noise out of all proportion to the size of its blue locomotive, our little toy cabin gave a jerk, and started. A stocky railway worker sat perched over the forward engine buffers, scattering sand on the rails when the wheels lost their metal grip, with the din of a giant spring running down when the control had been removed.
Locals materialized from nowhere to hang on the outside, the whistle and steam blew incessantly, and coal dust coated my sweater. Sometimes we crossed our own track after completing a conic circuit. Sometimes we zigzagged backwards and forwards.
The fog descended as we ascended the Batasia Loop, at a steady gradient, to Ghoom Monastery. It was freezing, and only a quick chai saved me from terminal shivering. From the highest point on the line, a small push supplied all the energy necessary to carry us to the bottom of West Bengal.
The track simply followed the roadside. Long stretches of the road were surrounded with buildings, and the railway line often rather resembled an urban tramway than an overland track line.
Our engine was equipped with a very loud horn that could even drown out the ear-piercing horns of Indian trucks and buses. It blared without pausing for breath.
The first four hours were idyllic. Clouded views of the lush hills, close-up views of village shops, picking flowers out the window, and stupas, poinsettias and tea plantations in profusion.
The last five hours dragged. Button Nose passed and shouted from a cab. I shouted back that I'd be late. Down, down to a series of impressive switchbacks and loops as the sun dropped on the horizon and the full moon rose in sympathy. At long last we pulled into Siliguri Station, and I traded in my nuns for my anchoress.
“Oh, I’ve already bought my ticket.” She said. “You should get yours right away.” I returned to find that Button Nose had adopted another new friend, a tall lanky Englishman, dressed in purple, holding his head in his hands.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.
“My bag. It's been nicked. It's the end. Finished.” He said. He had lost his travelers cheques, a flashlight, and love letters.
“That’s really bad.” Agreed Button Nose. “Terrible. Awful.” She asked me to help him. I handed over my flashlight, tea, and a hundred rupees. I had love letters, but the line had to be drawn somewhere. I turned to find that Mary and Button Nose were jumping up and down with the glee that came from rediscovering each other.
“Let’s all get on the bus!” Said Button Nose. We got on the bus. She asked me to change seats with her. I gave her the window and, in exchange, I got a metal crossbar night of alternating between splayed and fetal torment. The agony was made even more exquisite by three obnoxious teenage Bengali boys, who flew into hysterical fits of sniggering whenever Button Nose’s sleeping head landed on my shoulder.
A red sun eventually rose to our left. We followed the east bank of the Hooghly River into India’s literary capital, the ‘City of Furious, Creative Energy,’ and the ‘Field of Kali.’ Kali, the black figure of annihilation, meant ‘time’ or ‘death’, as in ‘the time had come.’
On June 19, 1756, the time had come for 123 of 146 British and Anglo-Indian soldiers and civilians, who perished in the Black Hole of Calcutta. In a dungeon cell intended to hold only three men, they died of asphyxiation, heat exhaustion, and crushing. The fires raging in different parts of Fort William didn’t help. They raved, fought, prayed, blasphemed, and many then fell exhausted on the floor, where suffocation put an end to their torments. After the prison was opened, the corpses were thrown into a ditch. Robert Clive liberated the remaining survivors.
I liberated Button Nose off my man-powered rickshaw at the Fairlawn Hotel. The Fairlawn had been built twenty-seven years after the last emissions from the Black Hole reached Clive’s ears. The ruling Nawabs restricted Bengali construction materials to coconut palm and mud, but William Ford built his hotel out of pukka brick. Subsequent owners were seafarers, smuggling opium and textiles into and from China. In 1942, the place became ‘Canada House’, requisitioned by the Canadian Air Force.
Upper Canada Button Nose checked in, and I didn’t. First, in the poorest city in the world, I still couldn’t afford to stay here. Second, I was given the brush-off by the hybrid English-Armenian rani queen, too busy talking about Tony Wheeler’s recent visit. Her mother used to hide coins in empty kerosene cans, but I was untouchable. Finally, there was a push to break from Button Nose, and a pull to seek Calcutta. I headed for the Black Hole.




  “The black hole teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of
    paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a
    blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as
    'sacred,' as immutable, are anything but.”
                                                                                                                           John Wheeler