History Stories

http://chaiwallahsofindia.com/2015/02/railway-station-chai-wallah/  Ravindra Bhalerao Ravindra Bhalerao is a rail heritage activist and member of the Indian Steam Railway Society. In this post, Ravindra Bhalerao writes about railway station chai wallahs of the 1970s and 80s. Although times have changed, with many passengers drinking chai provided by Indian Railways’ catering companies, station chai wallahs still occupy a special spot in travelers’ hearts. For years the  chai-wallah  on Ajni platform served out steaming hot cuppas to folks. With its darkened walls and lack of electric lighting his stall looked dismal; it did not look inviting. Whether he did brisk business or not, I am not prepared to say, for Ajni was only a transit station, 3 kilometers south of Nagpur, built to serve the army of railway folk who lived in the railway colony here. The crowds were to be seen at the platform only a few times each day, as when the Kolhapur Express halted, or wh

 http://double-dolphin.blogspot.com/2017/03/garden-reach-metiabruz-nawab-wajid-ali-shah-calcutta-kolkata.html  DEEPANJAN GHOSH Garden Reach: The Forgotten Kingdom of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah My research into Wajid Ali Shah, the last Nawab of the Kingdom of Oudh ( Awadh ) started as a simple question – where was he buried? I knew that he had come to Calcutta once the East India Company had dethroned him. But if he had come to Calcutta, would he have died in Calcutta and if he had died in Calcutta, wouldn’t he have been buried in Calcutta? Google threw up a name – Sibtainabad Imambara. But where was this? Further curiosity would lead me to this post on the Astounding Bengal blog . There were scattered newspaper articles on the Nawab as well, but there seemed to be no one place where I could get the complete information. That is when I knew that I would have to do this myself, and as a friend and collaborator, I found Shaikh Sohail, who has the twin advantages of being a res