For ever so long, I didn’t even know what the general compartment of a train was. When I saw people lining on station platforms, I assumed that they couldn’t plan their travel in advance and so, they didn’t get tickets. I knew all about not getting tickets because each year, we would stand in line at the ticket counter for hours, months in advance, to buy our tickets for the summer. Sometimes, even after our long wait, we would have to change our travel dates because no tickets were available.
Years later, getting into the general compartment was an eye-opener. There were so many people! Where were they going? How did they manage? And how did so many people share four toilets?
No Ticket, Will Travel is a collection of six stories about people who have no choice but to travel. Getting caught travelling ticketless is a risk they take because hard-earned money cannot just be spent on tickets. Each of the stories is open-ended because really, where can these stories end? A mixture of hope and resignation underlines each tale. Fuelled by optimism or something even more basic than that – the need for survival – people travel away from their homes to places that give them opportunities to work.
In the last year and a half, especially, we’ve heard the term ‘migrant worker’ over and over again. What does ‘migrant worker’ even mean? Why do workers migrate? Why is life any different for them from that of local workers?
The six stories in this collection are a step towards understanding just that. Like House of Uncommons, No Ticket, Will Travel gives readers a glimpse of a world that is almost invisible to urban children.
| Title | No Ticket, Will Travel |
| Author | Subuhi Jiwan |
| Tags | PARI, Short Stories, |
| Rating (out of 5) | 3.5 |
| Age-group | 10+ |
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