Every afternoon at quarter past three, the old man arrived.
He came through the main entrance of Allahabad Junction with the slow, certain walk of someone who has been going to the same place for a very long time and has stopped needing to think about it. He wore a white kurta, usually ironed. He carried a cloth bag that held a small steel tiffin box, a thermos of tea, and one copy of the day's Hindi newspaper that he never read. He wore glasses with thick black frames repaired twice on the right hinge with rubber wire and once on the left hinge with thread.
He sat on the same bench. Bench number seven, Platform 9. Second from the left end, directly beneath the old ceiling fan that turned too slowly to do much good but that he preferred to any other spot in the station.
He sat down, opened his thermos, poured tea into the cap of it, and looked at the tracks.
Platform 9 was not one of the busy ones. It was used mostly for local trains and goods traffic, and at this hour the goods train had already come and gone and the next local was not until five-thirty. So the platform was quiet. A few porters sat together at the far end playing cards. A tea stall sold samosas and chai to whoever happened to come by. A pigeon had made a nest in the gap between the ceiling and the old announcement board, and her three pigeons made small pigeon sounds that echoed in the rafters.
