Platform Ticket by Sangeetha Vallat: A Heartfelt Memoir from Behind the Railway Counter

The book is dedicated to “the ocean of hands that jostle at ticket windows and the tireless railway community that serves with dedication”.
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Platform Ticket is a charming, honest account of Sangeetha Vallat’s career with the Railways. After 14 years spent behind the ticket counter, she gave up her career for personal reasons, but along the way, gathered a host of memories, anecdotes, and observations that make up this little gem of a book.

Vallat writes of being the only woman among 70 staff at a station in Tamil Nadu and being compared to the then Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa; becoming the voice of announcements in the golden jubilee year of Independence; surviving the Cauvery water violence in Karnataka by changing her identity to “I am a Malayalee” from “I am from Madras”; of resigning from the trade union due to internal jealousy; of the glee of having a private toilet attached to the workspace; of a colleague cooking up the story that an army officer was travelling with defence secrets to get him a coupe to change his prosthetic foot; of Tippy—an autistic passenger—with the special gift of knowing the PIN code of every part of Chennai; of serving at the picturesque Lovedale station and relishing the meat of a hapless sheep that fell prey to an oncoming train; and of meeting a “reticent” Dr Raja Ramanna in the course of his travels. The book is peppered with humorous incidents, such as when she is scandalised by the “fifth leg” of donkeys around Chennai station and annoyed at having to tend to a cargo of piglets.

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Considered a “kid” at the time of her posting, Vallat recalls being brought flowers on Women’s Day by a Travelling Ticket Examiner. She celebrates being acknowledged as a woman over a shared cup of tea with her colleague. Vallat pays it forward years later when she arranges a holiday on Women’s Day to enjoy lunch and a movie with three of her women colleagues. One of them would describe the afternoon as the “high point in her life”. The book has many other heartwarming instances of a shared sisterhood.

An engagingly light style

At one time, the author misses a connecting train and is stranded in a small town, late at night. A regular inter-city passenger spots her and invites her over. Dreading the worst, she discovers instead a warm, welcoming family that cooks her a fresh meal and looks after her like their own, in a one-room tenement.

A striking part of the book is the description of the protocol in dealing with dead bodies found on railway tracks. Beneath the cold red tape that abides is the pain of desperation and the sheer grit needed in gathering scrambled body parts. A railway goods guard says nonchalantly, “Dealing with dead bodies is the same as dealing with the goods.”

The book is evidently more than just writing about vending tickets to travellers. Vallat writes of heroes, friends, infatuations and creeps. She has an engagingly light style of writing, describing events and situations with a happy turn of phrase. Sample this narration about the nikah of a colleague, Farhan, who had an interest in her: “With closed eyes [the bride] signed her name at the specified spot. Then, a tray of sugar was kept on the bride’s lap; she spread her palms on the tray. By then, the qazi left to get the approval and willingness of the groom. A commotion barbled from outside, and my nerves rattled. I prayed Farhan would not diverge. My heart hammered until someone informed us that the groom’s uncle, an older man, had fainted. He was revived and nourished with a chicken fry grabbed form the cook’s tent.”

Platform Ticket humanises the folks behind the counters in the Railways.
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In my book, The Order of the Crest: Tracing the Alumni of Bishop Cotton Boys’ School, Bangalore (2015), I had profiled H.S. “Sam” Hart, Chief Engineer of the Eastern Railways in the 1950s, as a hard-as-nails inquiry officer. It was said of him, “Pray as fervently as you can that the inquiry is not conducted by Mr. Hart!” Vallat’s book expectedly makes reference to the constant inquiries by intimidating vigilance officers, including one against her for unauthorised absence, in which she is cleared completely.

The book is an observant account of watching thousands of faceless “stubby, manicured, burnt, albino” hands pass in and out of the counter to hand over cash and collect tickets. In fact, the book is dedicated to “the ocean of hands that jostle at ticket windows and the tireless railway community that serves with dedication”. This community may soon find itself replaced by A.I., and one wonders who will record these endearing oral histories of the people and their times.

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You know the author has her heart in the right place when her acknowledgements mention “Sandra Miss, my kindergarten teacher”. When she writes of sweepers employed to carry excrement daily from the homes of Railway officials, I would have expected more sympathy. A glossary would have added value, considering the frequent use of abbreviations specific to the Railways.

There have been books hitherto on the Indian Railways, and memorable bits about railway towns in the writings of R.K. Narayan and Ruskin Bond. Platform Ticket humanises the folks behind the counters, and tells stories of love, camaraderie, politics and loss. This can well foster similar writing from those who have served in public sector banks and other such unsung spaces.

Aditya Sondhi is a senior advocate based in Delhi.