Book name- PLATFORM TICKET: THE UNTOLD STORIES OF PEOPLE WHO MAKE TRAIN TRAVEL POSSIBLE
Author- Sangeetha Vallat
Published by- Ebury
Price- Rs 399
At some point or the other, all of us have stood in a queue at the railway booking office, waiting for a hand to snatch up the proffered change and push out the relevant ticket. Sangeetha Vallat’s book delves into the lesser-known lives of these hands — often distorted behind a heavily scratched or stained plexiglass — working tirelessly for the second-largest employer in the country: the Indian Railways. Having had a long and eventful tenure at the railways herself, Vallat recounts her journey across her various postings and the ride that life took her on that was both tumultuous and transformative.
Vallat talks about the circumstances leading to her joining the Indian Railways with fierce pride and indulgence, especially her training in the Vocational Course in Railway Commercial, a course which was offered by the Indian Railways between 1991 and 2005 and studied alongside the higher secondary coursework. She looks back on the seniors she learnt from, the colleagues she befriended, and the people she met during her postings. Her reminiscences paint a lively picture of a bygone time and its now anachronistic rituals — handwritten seating charts, manual daily registers, and quadruplicate carbon copies — which have now all been replaced by computers. Vallat and her colleagues bore first-hand witness to these changes. But what hasn’t changed, as she shows in Platform Ticket, is the spirit, tenacity, and commitment of the railways’ personnel.
The book beautifully captures Vallat’s experiences as a female employee in the railways, be it the kindness she received from her mentors, the help offered to her by the passengers, her relationships with different colleagues as well as the inconveniences and dangers that plague those who break the glass ceiling in a patriarchal world. Hearteningly, Vallat humanises those whom we often write off as just cogs in the vast machinery that is the railways, such as the booking clerks, the sweepers, the beggars, the guards, and the tea-stall owners. The perspective is fresh and the anecdotes are fun, making Platform Ticket a memoir that comes straight from the heart.