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Railonama Anupama Sharma 9789380619798 Books

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Railonama Anupama Sharma 9789380619798 Books

I loved this book. The stories--mainly reminiscences--are very brief, so you get many many different tastes and views. I've never been to India, but I have several friends and acquaintances from India, other friends who've lived there for significant amounts of time, and others who've traveled there, and I've been interested in India since childhood, so I was eager to ride the Indian Railways in an armchair way. But Railonama is not only for people like me--I think it will be equally enjoyable for people who *have* had lots of experience with India's trains.

Some of the stories were very explicit about the moral or message they wanted you to take from the story. You might think this would be tiresome, but I didn't find it so at all: it made the stories seem all the more immediate and unselfconscious: people were telling their stories the way they thought they should be told, in their own voices, not flattened down to some bland rule for how an essay or short story should be told. And many of them were brilliant.

Let me share some of my favorites: early on, I liked the story of the little boy offering sweets to the girl in the next compartment ("The Boy with the Chocolate Eclairs"), and I loved "Journey Full of Lessons," in which the narrator sets a good example of not littering and then sees how that lesson took hold. Amusingly, much later on in the collection came a story in which a woman is cheered on to littering ("The Discus Thrower")--congratulations to editor Anupama Sharma for getting both those stories! Two other favorites were "Blue Hawaii Chappals," in which a boy loses a new slipper hurrying to get back on the train--I just adored how this story ended--and "A Very Special Passenger," in which the author remembers being four-and-a-half years old and seeing Mahatma Gandhi pass through his town by train. The train didn't even stop, just slowed down, but everyone turned out to see the great man. This short reminiscence had lots of digressions--about the author's father, about the household servants--and this made me feel as if I were actually sitting with the grandfather of a friend of mine, actually hearing the tale from his own mouth, and that made it all the more intense and moving:

"The train, with its reddish-brown wagons, slowed down as it entered the platform area and almost crawled while passing us by. Ad for a moment frozen in time, I saw the old man with glasses who smiled and waved with his right hand while he stood in an open doorway of a compartment. He held the yellow door handle with his left hand."

Now you can see it too--even if, like me, you weren't born when the event happened.

Many stories dealt with people being brought face-to-face with poverty and their feelings of shame or humility when someone much poorer than they are acts with generosity and honor. I found these touching. (Two good examples are "A Sweet Memory" and "A Slice of Apple.") There's always a risk that one can read those sorts of things, have a moment of sentiment, and then just move on with life, but even if that's all that happens, I think that moment of remembering and that feeling of humility are worthwhile. And there's always the chance that it can change people's outlooks (as in "Journey Full of Lessons"). One story of a small generosity from a more privileged person that I liked was "Between Trains," in which a passenger lifts three siblings onto the train so they can cross through it to the next track.

I highly recommend the book--in fact, I've already bought it as a gift.


Tags : Railonama [Anupama Sharma] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. RAILONAMA is an anthology of short stories and poems about unforgettable experiences people had while traveling by the Indian Railways. In the book you will find stories that are heartwarming,Anupama Sharma,Railonama,Good Times Books,9380619790,Literature & Fiction Short Stories

Railonama Anupama Sharma 9789380619798 Books Reviews

It's been a while since I got a chance to ride the adventurous Indian railways again. Reading railonama brought the excitement back through the amazing stories the author has compiled. I would love to read some more stories. Living in Canada, railonama seems to be the only railway station which entertains me with that aroma!
Great effort to create an anthology that captures different stories of travel in India that would have been lost otherwise. The book and its stories captures all the emotions experienced by a common man in his/her life....confusion, happiness, contentedness, sorrow etc. The story 'Courage is Everything' is funny yet serious where a medical student had to save a life because he realized everyone in the train is dependent on him and have faith in his capabilities. Yet another story 'Steel City of India' tells about the confusion and sadness of a person when he looses his luggage and the pursuit of it.

Go ahead and read to feel the stories.
Here is a collection of vignettes, but not just any vignettes. As the train leaves the station we follow a little boy’s gesture à “l’éclair au chocolat” as he passes chocolate pastries, in a friendly romance, to his new little friend.
This book is full of precious stories that make us smile tenderly as above or shake our heads with an “I could have told you Not to do that” as our traveler gets stuck with a new companion who just won’t go away. And then there’s the little lessons that are given in slices of apples, foolish, serendipitous acts of courage, and plain old good stories. I don’t know when I will be hopping onto India’s train of unexpected events, but I do like reading about and riding with my new railonama fellow passengers.
Driven by her passion for travel by the Indian Railways, Anupama Sharma has gathered short story writings and poems of dozens of travelers and their unforgettable encounters on the Railways. The book's charm lies in the fact that the author and reader together find that frequency of ridership is not a prerequisite to discovery. It doesn't hurt that Sharma is the lucky daughter of a longtime Indian Railways employee who himself loved to travel with his family whenever possible. Sharma makes for a terrific tour guide.

Travel writers invite the reader as a guest through a trove of memories. The willing reader accepts the invitation, open to new experiences and shared memories. The collection of stories in "Railonama Unforgettable Train Stories" is testament to Sharma's ability to invite guests that will mix and mingle comfortably in a casual yet stirring party, balancing the traveler's desire to share their observations and experiences and the reader's excitement to engage them. Drawing from first-hand experiences spanning decades, Sharma’s storytellers expertly illustrate how travel by Indian Railways reflects a microcosm of India's infinite complexity and diversity.

Railonama encourages the reader to recognize the potential of creating travel memories of their own...no matter how fleeting or grandiose. The reader will feel as though they are traveling the world where in fact they have not left India's borders. In their own way, each storyteller encounters unexpected meetings and chance occurrences which provide touching peepholes in to the lives of many railway employees, commuters sharing secrets, and long-distance travelers committed to make the most of their trip. Railonama recognizes travelers as individuals, not nameless faces; for some storytellers, the railways were daily experiences, and for others just once in a lifetime.

The storytellers' senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, as well as their balance, perspective and instinct, were vital in communicating their memories and experiences. The storytellers' and passengers' senses of anticipation and excitement, patience and urgency could not be missed. Their solitary time gave me quiet space to look out their windows. The humming of the train and occasionally unsteady movement of the cars were palpable. Although I would have enjoyed reading a memory or two that would rather be lost to history but were nonetheless unforgettable, this by no means detracts from the complexity of what makes Indian Railways traveling so unique.

History is comprised of memories and experiences gathering dust, changing over time, or imprinted so strongly that they can be precisely recounted decades later. The magic of Railonama is the fact that, through the words of the storytellers, I too developed unforgettable memories of the Indian Railways. The book's main characters, Memory and Travel, are indivisible. The stories universally recognize that the value of life is rooted in relationships, whether fleeting or permanent, experienced or observed. Railonama provides unforgettable insight in to the highly socialized and generous world of Indian Railways travelers, and will give birth to one's desire to join them.
I loved this book. The stories--mainly reminiscences--are very brief, so you get many many different tastes and views. I've never been to India, but I have several friends and acquaintances from India, other friends who've lived there for significant amounts of time, and others who've traveled there, and I've been interested in India since childhood, so I was eager to ride the Indian Railways in an armchair way. But Railonama is not only for people like me--I think it will be equally enjoyable for people who *have* had lots of experience with India's trains.

Some of the stories were very explicit about the moral or message they wanted you to take from the story. You might think this would be tiresome, but I didn't find it so at all it made the stories seem all the more immediate and unselfconscious people were telling their stories the way they thought they should be told, in their own voices, not flattened down to some bland rule for how an essay or short story should be told. And many of them were brilliant.

Let me share some of my favorites early on, I liked the story of the little boy offering sweets to the girl in the next compartment ("The Boy with the Chocolate Eclairs"), and I loved "Journey Full of Lessons," in which the narrator sets a good example of not littering and then sees how that lesson took hold. Amusingly, much later on in the collection came a story in which a woman is cheered on to littering ("The Discus Thrower")--congratulations to editor Anupama Sharma for getting both those stories! Two other favorites were "Blue Hawaii Chappals," in which a boy loses a new slipper hurrying to get back on the train--I just adored how this story ended--and "A Very Special Passenger," in which the author remembers being four-and-a-half years old and seeing Mahatma Gandhi pass through his town by train. The train didn't even stop, just slowed down, but everyone turned out to see the great man. This short reminiscence had lots of digressions--about the author's father, about the household servants--and this made me feel as if I were actually sitting with the grandfather of a friend of mine, actually hearing the tale from his own mouth, and that made it all the more intense and moving

"The train, with its reddish-brown wagons, slowed down as it entered the platform area and almost crawled while passing us by. Ad for a moment frozen in time, I saw the old man with glasses who smiled and waved with his right hand while he stood in an open doorway of a compartment. He held the yellow door handle with his left hand."

Now you can see it too--even if, like me, you weren't born when the event happened.

Many stories dealt with people being brought face-to-face with poverty and their feelings of shame or humility when someone much poorer than they are acts with generosity and honor. I found these touching. (Two good examples are "A Sweet Memory" and "A Slice of Apple.") There's always a risk that one can read those sorts of things, have a moment of sentiment, and then just move on with life, but even if that's all that happens, I think that moment of remembering and that feeling of humility are worthwhile. And there's always the chance that it can change people's outlooks (as in "Journey Full of Lessons"). One story of a small generosity from a more privileged person that I liked was "Between Trains," in which a passenger lifts three siblings onto the train so they can cross through it to the next track.

I highly recommend the book--in fact, I've already bought it as a gift.