The Train by Sarah Bourne

Author:Sarah Bourne [Bourne, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloodhound Books - crime, thriller and mystery
Published: 2021-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

6

Sandeep

Sandeep rubbed his eyes and replaced his glasses, then bowed his head in silent prayer. What a terrible thing, to take one’s own life. It was a sin. God would not let that man into Heaven. He would be damned for all eternity, his soul burning in the fires of Hell, destined never to be reborn. Sandeep stopped, realising that yet again, he had strayed into his Hindu roots. His new religion did not believe in rebirth. He thought it a shame – the only problem with Christianity, in fact. The idea that his soul, imperfect and prone to minor sins as it was, would be cast into purgatory until the end of the world, whereafter it would be reunited with his body until the end of days, was little comfort. He prayed for salvation for the man who had killed himself. He hoped that when he died he would go straight to Heaven and walk in the presence of the Lord.

He raised his head and opened his eyes. They had stopped in the middle of a field. He didn’t spend any time in the countryside these days and the greenery reminded him of his parents’ village in Maharashtra after the rains, when the parched land guzzled down the deluge and became almost obscenely fecund overnight. As a child, before he and his parents had left India, Sandeep had seen it for himself and understood that God was in this place. In those days God was Shiva, the one to whom his mother prayed, to whom the shrine in their home was dedicated. After the rains they thanked Indra, too, for his continued bounty.

He felt a mixture of sadness and anger when he thought of his parents. They would not even try to understand his new religion, much less accompany him to church. His mother had cried for weeks when he told her he was going to be baptised. His father had threatened to beat him but he wouldn’t be shaken from the right path. And anyway, he was thirty years old, a full head taller than his father and twice as broad. These days they didn’t talk about religion at all but he felt his mother’s yearning when he was home, waiting for him to come back to her and her false gods.

He sighed and turned his thoughts away from all that. He had a long day ahead – one of his boss’s clients was way behind in his tax returns and the inland revenue – revenue and customs, he corrected himself – was after him. Barry had passed the problem on to him, so he was going to be knee-deep in receipts and paperwork all day. And he was having dinner with his parents which also meant staying the night at their house and enduring more of his mother’s disappointment over breakfast. He slumped further into his seat.

A phone trilled and a young woman sitting over the aisle in an army surplus coat many sizes too big for her looked at it and typed furiously on the screen.

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