Chapter 1: Himgiri Express
Himgiri Express stood proudly as its daily wont on Platform no 8 of Howrah station - there was only one station in those days before the authorities had put to fruition the burlesque idea of increasing the congestion of the already incredibly congested and polluted environs of India’s largest railway station by constructing additional platforms in a new complex for the South-Eastern Railway on the southern side of the existing area - ready to leave on its daily sojourn from the mouths of the Ganges to somewhere very near its source. I was filled with a nameless fear tinged with some anticipation of what the future beckoned. I was, after all, leaving the cosiness of the city I loved like a sweetheart, the innumerable friends and relatives and most importantly the comfortable feeling that only comes with spending a lifetime in a place; for a city that I had never set eyes upon, the environs of the university I was going to about as familiar to me as fresh clean water to a particularly la...