topics: |  fiction | india | railway

The teeming and varied life of the Indian railway station and its
environs...

Ruskin Bond: The woman on platform 8
    [A woman befriends Arun, the narrator, a child of 12 going to school on
    his own, as he is waiting for a train.  She takes him to the station
    restaurant and feeds him samosas and tea.  Later when another
    schoolfriend shows up with his mother, she acquiesces with the suggestion
    that she is the mother.  Arun, who doesn't like the other, dominating
    mother, goes along with this suggestion. ]
INTRODUCTION: Soot Gets in Your Eyes by Ruskin Bond

STORIES BEFORE INDEPENDENCE:
Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
Rudyard Kipling: The Man Who Would Be King, The bold 'prentice
Anonymous, By CowCatcher and Trolley,	50
Rudyard Kipling: The Bold Prentice
Flora Annie Steel: Snow-Leopard
Anonymous: The By-Gone Days
Anonymous: The Coolie
J.W. Best: The Luck of John Fernandez

STORIES AFTER INDEPENDENCE:
Jim Corbett: Loyalty
Khushwant Singh: Mano Majra Station [from Train to Pakistan]
Ruskin Bond: The woman on platform 8
Manoj Das: The Intimate Demon
Intizar Husain: A Stranded Railroad Car
Satyajit Ray: Barin Bhowmik's Ailment
Bill Aitken: Balbir Arora Goes Metric
R.K. Laxman: Railway Reverie
Victor Banerjee: The Cherry Choo-Choo
Manojit Mitra: 99 UP