Trackside: A Collection of Railway Stories

by Bharath Moro

The red and cream locomotive screams into the platform with its assortment of coaches bobbing wildly.

Description of a train passing through a station.

So despite being major railway places, Agra, Jodhpur, Bikaner and Goa were discarded in favour of Koraput, Jharsuguda, Vijayawada and Bodinayakannur.

Travel, and particularly by the Indian Railways, is probably the only way to humanise oneself.

There is a unified sense of frustration when the signal stays red. And when it turns green, there is a deep, fulfilling sense of going.

Experience of signals

Kilometres are not just physical, they are temporal too.

Unlike the disjointed feeling one gets after a long flight, the railways allows for a gradual takeover. The landscape keeps changing, the houses seem different after a while, the food on the platform becomes less palatable (or the reverse) and the tea tastes better (or worse). And, by the time you arrive, you haven’t so much arrived as you have assimilated the destination.

The changes in a road/rail journey to a flight.

The quaint old structures that used to house the station master’s office and booking counters have been demolished and replaced by banal, CPWD type boxy buildings, painted in a hideous urine yellow hue.

The latticed support beams wrap around the structure and I shake my head in anger and frustration.

And not just any bar, but shadiest bar that the town has to offer. Because that is where the true flavour of the city can be seen - that’s where the nomads, vagabonds, the scoundrels and all other interesting people gather. All you need to have is a little bit of time and a cast iron stomach.