The Boy Who Loved Trains by Deepak Sapra | Book Review

If any fans of The Big Bang Theory are reading this, do not be misled by the title. This book is not about Sheldon Cooper.

This is a book about a boy who fell in love with trains at a very young age, so much that he had the entire railway timetable memorised – for every train, at every station. A boy who stumped his college interview panel with his fascinating knowledge about trains and went on to study at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE) and then was commissioned to work in the Indian Railways Service. This is the story of that boy who loved trains.

As a young officer posted in India’s Eastern Railway, Jeet Arora is responsible for running trains on one of the densest train routes in the country.
In doing so, he encounters pretty girls and thugs, shares space with buffaloes and goats and finds himself in the midst of oil spills and fires.
As he stumbles across several unexpected, hilarious and entertaining adventures, can he keep trains, and his sanity, on track?

Deepak Sapra uses his experiences earned during his career in the Eastern Railways to take you on an exciting train journey unlike any other. From his stint at the IRIMEE where he earned his engineering degree, to the challenges of working in an establishment of this magnitude as the Indian Railways, he keeps his readers engaged with a delightful story.

In addition to the insight that this novel offers on life within the IRS, generously flavoured with anecdotes on the mechanism of a government operation, there is also the subtle, often dry, humour that Sapra brings forth – of Jeet working amidst dust, oil and grease – which is extremely entertaining.

Amidst all this is Jeet’s family, who assume he must either be a Ticket Collector or Train Driver and can supply them with free train rides for the rest of their lives. Then, there are his own aspirations as a young man, doggedly vying for the romantic affections of his lady friend and hoping to put down some roots between the many directions that the train tracks follow.

After having read this novel, I wonder why more Indian authors do not write such pieces of fiction with a backdrop of the workings of large scale Indian industries. I believe they could be real entertainers, despite including what many would (incorrectly) assume to be mundane details.

As Jane Smiley wrote: Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage, and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark; passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves.

There couldn’t have been a better metaphor for this novel about the boy who loved trains.

Title: The Boy Who Loved Trains
Author: Deepak Sapra
Publisher: Readomania
ISBN: 978-9385854644
Edition/Year: First Edition 2018
Format: Paperback
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 256
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4 Stars

Available on Amazon.

About the Author: Deepak Sapra is a former Indian Railways Service officer. He is an alumnus of IRIMEE, Jamalpur and IIM Bangalore. He travels, blogs and writes on places and people. His diaries have been published by the Outlook Magazine.
He currently holds a very senior position in an MNC and lives in Hyderabad with his family.
To know more about his life in the railways, connect with him on Facebook and Twitter.

Picture Source: aquamarineflavours.wordpress.com

 

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