Observations on platform no. 4 of Allahabad Railway Station

Written by me on 25th December at around 10.45 p.m.

This has been a trip of trains and railway stations. In the last week, we have visited seven railway stations and boarded three trains and here we are waiting to board the fourth – the stations being:
- Howrah
- New Delhi
- Old Delhi
- Ramnagar
- Moradabad
- Varanasi
- Allahabad

We haven’t visited any of the stations more than once. We shall just be visiting Howrah for the 2nd time tomorrow. (It did not strike me earlier – should have booked tickets in the Sealdah Rajdhani – that would have made it 8 stations)

However, since I am sitting jobless on platform no. 4 of Allahabad Railway Station and the train shall arrive at least after one and a half hours, I am penning down whatever I am seeing around me

1. A goods train, with 60 wagons (yes, I was jobless enough to actually count them), carrying limestones, crawls past us

2. Behind me, a military train is standing. Never seen anything like this before. It is a mixture of a goods train and a passenger train. There are some open wagons with military trucks on them. The train is green in color and has been standing here for a long long time.

3. There has been an error in announcement. Train No. 5631, which is actually arriving on platform no. 7 was earlier announced to be arriving on platform no. 5. As a result, there is an absolute chaos on the platform.

4. A person is peeing into the tracks, standing on the edge of platform no. 5. It is high time, the Indian railway tracks are entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for being the longest loo.

5. The tubelight in front of me is flickering and is very irritating.

6. For the nth time an empty engine is going past us and for some reason, every time it crosses us, it blares its loud horn.

7. A train is entering Platform No. 5 – it is the Poorva Express, coming from Howrah and going to Delhi.

8. A fat mouse is stuttering on the platform

9. I have been writing about our day at Varanasi for the last 15 minutes. Poorva Express is leaving the station. Varun has finished saying “good night” to his girlfriend and is back on the bench with us.

10. The tubelight continues to flicker and I continue to get irritated.

11. The military train is still standing behind us

12. There has been an announcement that our train is 45 minutes late and that it will arrive at 12.28 a.m.

13. Another train comes on platform no.5 – Toofan Express. Coming from New Delhi and going to Howrah.

14. The military train is finally leaving. It must have been there for at least 3 hours.

15. Again the lone engine crosses us and again it blares its horn.

16. There is a crowd near the weighing machine. It seems that all these people want to know their weights at the same time. Till 5 minutes ago, it was absolutely deserted.

17. Bored now, will catch on some sleep.