I realised, at last, that the voice was my own porter's. The word he was repeating with such distress was unrecognisable to me because I wasn't used to being addressed by it: Sir.

"Sir! Sir! Sir! Sir!" he shouted.

I let go of his shirt and looked around to find Prabaker stretched to his full length along an entire bench seat. He'd fought his way ahead of us into the carriage to reserve a seat, and he was guarding it with his body. His feet were wrapped around the aisle armrest. His hands clasped the armrest at the window end. Half a dozen men had crammed themselves into that part of the carriage, and each tried with unstinting vigour and violence to remove him from the seat. They pulled his hair, punched his body, kicked him, and slapped at his face. He was helpless under the onslaught; but, when his eyes met mine, a triumphant smile shone through his grimaces of pain.

Incensed, I shoved the men out of the way, grabbing them by shirt collars, and hurling them aside with the strength that swarms into the arms of righteous anger. Prabaker swung his feet to the floor, and I sat down beside him. A brawl started at once for the remaining space on the seat. The porter dumped the luggage at our feet. His face and hair and shirt were wet with sweat. He gave Prabaker a nod, communicating his respect. It was fully equal, his glaring eyes left no doubt, to the derision he felt for me.

Then he shoved his way through the crowd, roaring insults all the way to the door.

"How much did you pay that guy?"

"Forty rupees, Lin."

Forty rupees. The man had battled his way into the carriage, with all of our luggage, for two American dollars.

"Forty rupees!"

"Yes, Lin," Prabaker sighed. "It is very expensive. But such good knees are very expensive. He has famous knees, that fellow. A lot of guides were making competition for his two knees. But I convinced him to help us, because I told him you were-I'm not sure how to say it in English-I told him you were not completely right on your head."

"Mentally retarded. You told him I was mentally retarded?"

"No, no," he frowned, considering the options. "I think that stupid is more of the correctly word."

"Let me get this straight-you told him I was stupid, and that's why he agreed to help us."

"Yes," he grinned. "But not just a little of stupid. I told him you were very, very, very, very, very-"

"All right. I get it."

"So the price was twenty rupees for each knees. And now we have it this good seat."

"Are you all right?" I asked, angry that he'd allowed himself to be hurt for my sake. "Yes, baba. A few bruises I will have on all my bodies, but nothing is broken."

"Well, what the hell did you think you were doing? I gave you money for the tickets. We couldVe sat down in first or second class, like civilised people. What are we doing back here?"

He looked at me, reproach and disappointment brimming in his large, soft-brown eyes. He pulled a small bundle of notes from his pockets, and handed it to me.

"This is the change from the tickets money. Anybody can buy first-class tickets, Lin. If you want to buy tickets in first class, you can be doing that all on yourself only. You don't need it a Bombay guide, to buy tickets in comfortable, empty carriages. But you need a very excellent Bombay guide, like me, like Prabaker Kishan Kharre, to get into this carriage at VT.

Station, and get a good seats, isn't it? This is my job."

"Of course it is," I softened, still angry with him because I still felt guilty. "But please, for the rest of this trip, don't get yourself beaten up, just so that I can have a goddamn seat, okay?"

He reflected for a moment with a frown of concentration, and then brightened again, his familiar smile refulgent in the dimly lit carriage.

"If it is absolutely must be a beating," he said, firmly and amiably negotiating the terms of his employment, "I will shout even more loudly, and you can rescue my bruises in the nicks of time. Are we a deal?"

"We are," I sighed, and the train suddenly lurched forward and began to grind its way out of the terminus.

In the instant that the train started on its journey, the gouging, biting, and brawling ceased completely and were replaced by a studied and genteel courtesy that persisted throughout the entire journey.

A man opposite me shifted his feet, accidentally brushing his foot against mine. It was a gentle touch, barely noticeable, but the man immediately reached out to touch my knee and then his own chest with the fingertips of his right hand, in the Indian gesture of apology for an unintended offence. In the carriage and the corridor beyond, the other passengers were similarly respectful, sharing, and solicitous with one another.

At first, on that first journey out of the city into India, I found such sudden politeness infuriating after the violent scramble to board the train. It seemed hypocritical for them to show such deferential concern over a nudge with a foot when, minutes before, they'd all but pushed one another out of the windows.

Now, long years and many journeys after that first ride on a crowded rural train, I know that the scrambled fighting and courteous deference were both expressions of the one philosophy: the doctrine of necessity. The amount of force and violence necessary to board the train, for example, was no less and no more than the amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that the cramped journey was as pleasant as possible afterwards. What is necessary! That was the unspoken but implied and unavoidable question everywhere in India. When I understood that, a great many of the characteristically perplexing aspects of public life became comprehensible: from the acceptance of sprawling slums by city authorities, to the freedom that cows had to roam at random in the midst of traffic; from the toleration of beggars on the streets, to the concatenate complexity of the bureaucracies; and from the gorgeous, unashamed escapism of Bollywood movies, to the accommodation of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Tibet, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and Bangladesh, in a country that was already too crowded with sorrows and needs of its own.

The real hypocrisy, I came to realise, was in the eyes and minds and criticisms of those who came from lands of plenty, where no- one had to fight for a seat on a train. Even on that first train ride, I knew in my heart that Didier had been right when he'd compared India and its billion souls to France. I had an intuition, echoing his thought, that if there were a billion Frenchmen or Australians or Americans living in such a small space, the fighting to board the train would be much more, and the courtesy afterwards much less.

And in truth, the politeness and consideration shown by the peasant farmers, travelling salesmen, itinerant workers, and returning sons and fathers and husbands did make for an agreeable journey, despite the cramped conditions and relentlessly increasing heat. Every available centimetre of seating space was occupied, even to the sturdy metal luggage racks over our heads.

The men in the corridor took turns to sit or squat on a section of floor that had been set aside and cleaned for the purpose.

Every man felt the press of at least two other bodies against his own. Yet there wasn't a single display of grouchiness or bad temper.

However, when I surrendered my seat, for four hours of the journey, to an elderly man with a shock of white hair and spectacles as thick as the lenses on an army scout's binoculars, Prabaker was provoked to an indignant exasperation.

"So hard I fought with nice peoples for your seat, Lin. Now you give it up, like a spit of paan juices, and stand up in the passage, and on your legs, also."

"Come on, Prabu. He's an old guy. I can't let him stand while I sit."

"That is easy-only you don't look at that old fellow, Lin. If he is standing, don't look at him standing. That is his business only, that standing, and nothing for your seat."