Trackside: A Collection of Railway Stories

For twenty seven years, Yadaiah has been walking the tracks looking – quite literally – at the nuts and bolts of the Indian Railways. His steady companions are all gifts of that behemoth: feet cracked by ballast, a nose permanently marked by its acquaintance with a railway sledgehammer; a tattered plastic sheet for a raincoat.

Santosh and Raj Kishore look for more immediate bounty in Jharkhand: samosas, kachori and some chai. Twenty miles across the coal-belt, in Sijua, Rupa isn’t as lucky. She will have to sell sacks of pilfered coal in neighboring West Bengal to feed her infant and herself; to avoid eating mud for dinner.

In Madras, a twelve- year old Laphroaig occupies pride of place on Peter Johnson’s table, surrounded by finger food fresh from the kitchen. The topic of conversation: death on the tracks.

Through its characters and their stories, Trackside looks at the romance of the Indian Railways – and just as much, calls out its absence in stark, irredeemable situations. It indulges the explorer in us all; that part of the soul that yearns to escape the confines of the steady and mundane, and instead encounter the stories and the people that make the railways both magical and thought-provoking.