India · Portfolio essay
India Through a Train Window
Seen from a moving carriage, a country resists the neatness of a single photograph.
Written by Paul Wakefield · 2 min read
A train window makes a poor picture frame. It vibrates. It reflects the carriage. Just as the composition begins to make sense, a pole cuts through it and the whole thing moves away.
For a photographer, this is mildly infuriating. For a traveller, it may be useful.
India is often presented in images that appear complete: a face, a monument, a festival, a burst of colour contained within four obedient edges. A railway journey is less accommodating. A platform becomes a wall, the wall gives way to buildings, and another view arrives before the previous one has been understood.
There is no time to insist that each scene explain itself.
The window also complicates the pleasure of looking. Beyond the glass are homes, workplaces and people with destinations of their own. Their lives briefly enter the passenger's view and leave it again. Being able to see them does not confer knowledge of them.
A camera can make that distinction easy to forget. The image looks definite; the understanding behind it may be slight. A person beside the tracks becomes a caption waiting to happen. A careful writer should resist filling the gap with a story that has not been earned.
Sometimes it is enough to describe the view honestly: a doorway open towards the railway, washing moving above a wall, a stretch of track running beside the train. Details can be held without being made to stand for an entire country.
Inside the carriage there is another journey. Luggage has to fit somewhere. A bag occupies too much room. Someone needs to pass. The traveller who imagined uninterrupted contemplation discovers the practical business of sharing space.
That, too, belongs in the account.
By the time the train reaches its destination, the window has supplied hundreds of beginnings and very few endings. The journey cannot be reduced to the finest view. Its character lies partly in the succession: the unfinished scenes, the interruptions, the things noticed too late to photograph.
The train stops. The platform holds still. For a moment, after so much passing, the simplest act is to step down and stay.