Nineteenth-century travellers leaving Calcutta, now Kolkata, first had to obtain tickets at Howrah station across the river. Railway historian Aparajita Mukhopadhyay brings together Bengali travelogues from 1861 and 1862, railway reports and contemporary newspapers to show the struggle that began when booking windows opened. Records describe stronger and wealthier passengers forcing their way forward and bribed passengers being taken around the queue.
This was not a story of a neat single file. It was nevertheless a physical wait for access to a limited ticket window, with the order sometimes broken by money or force. The railway compressed distance, but at the entrance to a journey it also made social inequality visible.