I take trains often, and like most people, I always get busy when trying to get my train. The people sleeping by the tracks, the vendors, and the children weaving through the station simply become the background of everyday travel. We might see them, but we don’t notice them.
Manoranjan Byapari’s latest novel, Nowhere People, forces us to change this. Set around the Jadavpur railway station in Kolkata, the novel brings to life the story of those who live their entire lives on the platform – nameless, faceless men and women who work for the city, yet are never truly part of it. Platform number two becomes their home, their shelter, and their only space in a world that tries to erase them. Byapari’s prose pulls you into their lives and into the strange in-between that defines the railway station, a place that is neither here nor there, neither fully of the city nor outside it.
A world of its own
The station is a world of its own. The more polished, “civilised” platform one, bustling with wealthier commuters and a more global sensibility, is a stark contrast to platform two, the home of local labourers, migrants, and the “nowhere people”. The divide is not just physical; it…
Source: ‘Nowhere People’: Manoranjan Byapari’s novel ‘sees’ the nameless poor on India’s railway stations
