Platform ticket by Sangeetha Vallat. Let me share my thoughts about this beautiful book.
We have always travelled by train and grumbled when the person sitting behind the ticket counter took a few extra minutes to give a ticket or when he or she fumbled with some changes. We were always in a hurry to board the train, but Sangeetha Vallat ‘s book, The Platform Ticket, taught us to see the world on a platform through the eyes of a person working for the railway and spending his or her time on the platform.
The initial struggles of how Sangeetha and some of her friends got into the railway job made an interesting read.
As the book proceeds with various episodes happening on the platform, behind the counter, and outside the counter, the readers’ admiration for all those who made train travel possible increases by leaps and bounds.
When one reads about night duty during eerie nights in some God-forsaken place, double shifts when one of the employees is absent, and so many other happenings in the life of a person sitting behind the ticket counter, we really squirm thinking about the few times we snapped at them. It was not very appreciable on our part.
The bond that the regular commuters have with those employed on the platform made a very heart-touching read when Sangeetha sleeps in the train on her way back home and misses her station and alights at another place only to see that it is pitch dark and very late and then a regular commuter who has travelled in the same train and stays in that station takes her home in his bike. The family makes her feel very comfortable even with their meagre resources. Unknowingly, a bond gets formed between two people from two different worlds, one an employee of the railway and the other a normal commuter who buys a ticket every day and travels on the train.
Sangeetha has beautifully described a colleague’s wedding, and we feel like we are attending a Muslim wedding and eating the food she has vividly described.
Then again, the gory scenes of deaths happening in the railways, of a body with a severed head and how the railway employees go about with the formalities even when it is night and pitch dark, they do not shun away from their duties, send a chill down your spine.
A crush on a married SM!!! That was a very emotional read, Sangeetha, lovely.
The urchins thronging the railway platforms and the beggars all become vital to the book. One of them goes missing and the railway employees feel sorry. The blind beggar couple smooching, oblivious of the fact that the world was watching them, was a beautiful read in this book.
Trains come and go, employees may retire and new ones will come, but after reading Sangeetha Vallat’s book, one can be rest assured that the scene continues to be the same on a railway platform.
Dear friends, please remember next time when you put your hand across the small counter to get a ticket. If the person on the other side takes a few minutes to hand over the ticket and the change, please bear with him or her. After all, railway employees are also human beings like us and not Robots, though they do multiple tasks unlike us.
Kudos to Sangeetha for writing such a beautiful book. It will stay in the hearts of all railway employees, commuters, and everyone who reads it.
If you haven’t grabbed a copy please do so at the earliest.
https://amzn.in/d/0CtWnnZ
Platform Ticket
