RAILSONG by Rahul Bhattacharya

RAILSONG by Rahul Bhattacharya is a sweeping, elegiac, and at times wonderfully comic novel — a powerful portrait of a woman forging a life for herself amid the social and political upheavals of twentieth-century India.
At its heart is Miss Charulata Chitol — Charu — born to a Bihari mother and Bengali father in the fictional town of Bhombalpur in Bihar. Her father, a Railways chargeman, trades his Brahmin surname for the caste-free “Chitol” in an act of protest, setting the family on a lifelong path of defending their identity as India deepens its divisions.
After her mother dies young and her family faces strikes, famine, and hardship, Charu boards a train to Bombay at 16, determined to build a life on her own terms — eventually becoming a railway welfare inspector who witnesses the exploitation of the poor and the marginalized.
The novel spans 1961 to 1992, structured around India’s national census and the vast railway network, following Charu from a restless girl to the quietly ambitious Miss Chitol — navigating love, marriage, career, and a modernizing nation.