When I was in high school about ten or eleven years ago, I was gifted a Kindle and quickly immersed myself in Kindle Unlimited. At first, I gravitated entirely toward travelogues, mostly written by renowned journalists. While I loved books like Hot Tea Across India, the one closest to my heart, both then and now, is Chai Chai: Travels In Places Where You Stop But Never Get Off by Bishwanath Ghosh.
The book’s premise is fascinatingly simple. While traveling from Kanpur to Chennai, Ghosh stepped off the train at Itarsi Junction to grab a cup of tea. As he sipped his chai and listened to the overhead announcements of train arrivals and delays, it struck him that while Itarsi connects the entire length and breadth of India’s rail map, almost nothing is known about the town itself. This spark ignited his quest to tell the stories behind the country’s biggest railway junctions, including places like Itarsi, Mughal Sarai, Jhansi, Shoranur, Arakkonam, and Jolarpettai. These are spots that are always a stopover and never a destination; names that are deeply familiar to every traveler, yet entirely unknown.
Reading this book deeply shifted my own perspective. My family loves to travel, and together we have journeyed to most corners of India. I realized that I had passed through the exact junctions the author wrote about, entirely oblivious to the fact that they were more than just a temporary pitstop; they are living, breathing towns with their own unique pulse. It made me realize that in our constant pursuit of new, glamorous destinations, we so often forget to explore and appreciate the rich life right in front of us.
Ekaurbook 