Page 55 - English Class 06

‘Times are changing, memsahib, Do you know that there is now a taxi — a motor car-

competing with the tongas of Dehra? You are lucky to be leaving. If you stay, you will see me
starve to death!’

‘We will also starve to death if we don’t catch that train,’ said Grandmother.

‘Do not worry about the train, it never leaves on time, and no one expects it to. If it left
at nine o’clock, everyone would miss it.’
Bansi was right. We arrived at the station at five minutes past nine, and rushed on to the

platform, only to find that the train had not yet arrived.

The platform was crowded with people waiting to catch the same train or to meet
people arriving on it. Ayah was there already, standing guard over a pile of luggage. We sat
down on our boxes and became part of the platform life at an Indian railway station.

Moving among piles of bedding and luggage were sweating, cursing coolies; vendors of
magazines, sweetmeats, tea and betel-leaf preparations; also stray dogs, stray people and
sometimes a stray station master. The cries of the vendors mixed with the general noise of

the station and the shunting of a steam engine in the yards, ‘Tea, hot tea!’
Sweets, papads, hot stuff, cold drinks, tooth powder, pictures of film stars, bananas,
balloons, wooden toys, clay images of the gods. The platform had become a bazaar!

Ayah was giving me all sorts of warnings.

‘Remember, Baba, don’t lean out of the window when the train is moving. There was
that American boy who lost his head last year! And don’t eat rubbish at every station
between here and Bombay. And see that no strangers enter the compartment. Mr Wilkins

was robbed and murdered last year!’
shunting : moving a train or a carriage
The station bell clanged and in the from one track to another
distance there appeared a big, puffing steam clanged : rang loudly
engine, painted green and gold and black. As surged : moved quickly and forcefully forward
squeezing : getting not much space
the train came alongside the platform, doors
opened, window shutters fell, faces appeared in the openings and even before the train had

come to a stop, people were trying to get in or out.

For a few moments there was utter confusion. The crowd surged backward and forward.
No one could get out. No one could get in. A hundred people were leaving the train; two
hundred were getting into it. No one wanted to give way.

A man climbing out of a window solved the problem. Others followed his example and
the pressure at the doors eased and people started squeezing into their compartments.

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