Life on the Platform

Express trains regularly run between Agra and Delhi. Despite their frequency, the trains are notorious for running late. Alexander and I had the minor misfortune of waiting two hours for our third class coach to arrive.

Our delay gave us time to examine the station milieu. Plump rats scurried across the tracks nibbling at an abundance of trash. A man with an oversized moustache sold carrot-glucose sweets from a cart. Three teenagers poured hot chai from large silver canteens. “Chai!! Chai Garam!” they called out into the heavy night air.

Despite the excess of distractions, my attention was drawn to the dozens of begging children darting about the platform. They tugged on arms, motioning to their empty tummies and mouths. The girls wore tattered, ill-fitting dresses with broken zippers and missing buttons. Their hair was either cropped close to their head or tied back in long, matted ponytails. I watched as one girl, clad in a ragged, orange shirt, coughed up large amounts of phlegm and spit into the tracks below.

Each time a train arrived at the platform, the children greeted it with excitement. After the passengers boarded, they clung to the sides of cars, waiting for their ride to begin. As the train picked up speed, the kids jumped between the coach doorways and crowded platform. The coughing girl joined her peers, giggling as she ran alongside the train in search of a vacant spot. But the car was moving too fast. Her leg slipped into the dark crevice between platform ledge and train. Onlookers screamed as two young men sprinted to the rescue, violently whacking her back towards safety and away from the lethal chasm. It was all too much for me to bear and I closed my eyes until our train arrived.