Platform stories: an hour at the junction
Between the 8.10 arrival and the 9.05 departure, a railway platform runs an entire city in miniature. We stood still and watched it move.
The 8.10 pulls in four minutes late and the platform inhales: porters converge with a geometry no app could route, chai runs along the windows in a relay older than the station, and three families conduct reunions of operatic scale beside the general coach.
In the lull that follows, the platform reveals its residents. The bookstall owner who knows which express buys thrillers and which buys exam guides. The announcer whose Hindi, English and local-language cadences are three different personalities. The cat that owns bench four.
Small economies flourish in the gaps: a cobbler resoling a shoe against the 9.05 deadline, a phone-charging point renting minutes, the weighing machine printing fortunes nobody believes and everybody reads aloud.
At 9.01 the cycle reverses — porters reappear as if summoned, farewells compress years into window grips, and the platform exhales the 9.05 toward the coast. The cat does not move. It has seen this film before.
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