Halt Station India

Halt Station India chronicles the dramatic rise of India's original rail network, the arrival of the first train, and the subsequent emergence of a pioneering electric line-all in the port city of Bombay. Trains that once provoked awe and fear-they were viewed as fire chariots, smoke-spewing demons-have today become a nation's lifeblood. Taking a walk along India's first rail lines, the author stumbles upon fragments of the past-a clock at Victoria Terminus that offers a rare view of a city; a cannon near Masjid Bunder Station that is worshipped as a god; a watchtower overlooking Sion Station, believed to have housed a witch. Each pit-stop comes with stories of desire and war, ambition and death-by Dockyard Road Station, for instance, author Laurence Sterne's beloved, Eliza Draper, followed a sailor into the sea; or close to Parel Station, the wife of India's governor general, Lord Canning found a garden rich in tropical vegetation; this, she replicated at Barrackpore. Drawing from journals, biographies, newspapers and railway archives-and with nostalgic, first-time accounts of those who travelled by India's earliest trains-the book captures the economic and social revolutions spurred by the country's first train line. In this, Halt Station India is not just about the railways-it is the story of the growth of India's business capital and a rare study of a nation.