“Tomorrow?”
My mother stopped what she was doing and looked at me as if I had said something impossible.
“The train is tomorrow, and you’re telling me now?”
I nodded, trying to look more confident than I felt.
I had managed to book Tatkal tickets from Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction to Bhubaneswar less than a day before our departure. We didn’t have a return ticket, and we certainly didn’t have a hotel. My brother sent me the contact number of a stay in Puri, and I called immediately. The manager spoke only in Odia. I don’t speak the language, and he didn’t switch to Hindi either. Somehow, between repeated sentences, long pauses and a lot of guessing, we managed to understand each other well enough to book a room. When I ended the call, I looked at my mother and said, “At least we’ll have somewhere to sleep.”