India, June 17 -- By Dr. R. Balasubramaniam

There is something deeply philosophical about an Indian railway platform. It is, if you think about it carefully enough, the only place in the country where everyone, regardless of caste, class, conviction or confusion, arrives at exactly the same level of anxiety.

I must have been around eight years old the first time my father took me to the Bengaluru railway station to receive an uncle arriving from Madras (now known as Chennai). The sheer ceremony of it was overwhelming. Father wore his good shirt. Mother had packed tiffin for the uncle who was, apparently, the kind of man who could not survive a train journey without being received with food. Platform tickets were purchased with the gravi...