Between the Lines: Trains and Tracks

Published every Friday, Between the Lines is a weekly column by Namrata. This week, she writes on movement, memory, and the illusion of arrival in South Asian Writing.

The railway enters South Asian literature not as scenery but as a force. It cuts through fields, through homes, through histories. It announces itself long before it appears, first as vibration, then as sound, then as an interruption that cannot be ignored. To write about trains in the subcontinent is not only about travel. It is to write about how lives are set in motion, how they are derailed, and how often they are moved without consent.

The track is fixed. The train moves. Between the two lies the illusion of choice.

From the very beginning, the railway arrived carrying the weight of the empire. Built to extract, to control distance, to move goods and soldiers efficiently, it reorganised time itself. Villages learned to measure their days by timetables. Cities swelled around stations. The rhythm of life bent itself around arrivals and departures. In literature, this reordering never appears neutral. The railway becomes a line that divides before it connects.