'Anything,' said the stationmaster. 'This is not the city, after all. All sorts of things happen in lonely places like this: there are thieves and brigands and dacoits… '

Phulboni burst out laughing. 'With so much water around,' he said, 'dacoits will need boats to get here. And if they did, this is what they'd have to face.' He tapped his canvas gun-bag.

'And snakes?' said the stationmaster.

'I'm not afraid of snakes,' said Phulboni with a smile. 'Where I grew up people used pythons as pillows.'

The stationmaster cast a despairing glance around the room, at the grimy, belittered desk and the massed cobwebs hanging from the ceiling in sooty honeycombs. 'But what will you eat, sahib?' he said.

'Since your house is so close,' Phulboni said equably, 'I hope it will not be too much trouble for you to bring me something from your kitchen.'

The stationmaster sighed. 'All right, sahib,' he said reluctantly. 'Do what you like; but just one thing: don't blame Budhhu Dubey later.'

'Don't worry,' said Phulboni. He prided himself on his knowledge of village folk, and knew that rural people often had set ideas about certain things. 'If I'm attacked by snakes or dacoits,' he said with a smile, 'I'll be the one to take the blame.'

The stationmaster left and Phulboni busied himself unpacking his things and settling in. He forced open the shuttered window and left the door swinging wide. Soon, with a little dusting and cleaning, the room began to look much more cheerful.

Encouraged, Phulboni decided to dust and clean the charpoy too. He pulled the hold-all off the bed and carried the frayed old mat outside and gave it a vigorous shake. A cloud of dust rose out of it, and once it had cleared Phulboni spotted a strangely shaped mark upon the mat; a fading, rust-red stain. He laid the mat on the ground and took a closer look.

It was an imprint of two large hands, placed next to each other. But there was something puzzling about them, something that did not quite fit. Phulboni had to turn his head this way and that before he worked out what it was: the imprint of the left hand showed four fingers and no thumb.

There was something just a little eerie and menacing about that strange outline, imprinted on the yellowing rush. He rolled the mat up and put it away, out of sight. He went back in, heaved the hold-all up to the bare strings of the charpoy and made a comfortable bed for himself. Then he put out his nightclothes and laid his shaving things in a neat row on the alcove, beside the signal lantern, in preparation for the morning. Standing back he looked around the room: everything was in order now, but somehow he still had a bad taste in his mouth. He decided to go for a walk.

It was late afternoon now. The clouds had parted and the sun was shining brightly through the rain-washed skies, touching everything in sight with an iridescent brilliance. Phulboni walked along the tracks, hopping from sleeper to sleeper, watching the parallel rails shoot away towards the horizon, slicing through the flooded, shimmering fields that flanked the tall embankment.

When he came to the point where the tracks separated he turned to look at the overgrown siding. He noticed fleetingly that the steel point-tongues that joined the siding to the main tracks were stiff and rusty with disuse. Then his eyes fell on a family of egrets that were using the weedcovered rails of the siding as a perch, to hunt from. Captivated, he walked stealthily towards the birds and seated himself on a rail, at a safe distance. A mound of raised earth – possibly once a platform – ran between the parallel rail tracks. The writer sat lounging, with his back against the mound, and spent the better part of an hour watching the egrets as they foraged amongst the frogs that were skimming the surface of the flooded fields below.

At last, filled with a sense of peace and well-being, he stood up and stretched. He was doubly glad now that he had decided to stay in the signal-room instead of going to the stationmaster's house: this was the kind of place in which solitude was its own reward.

He got up and walked on, balancing on a rail. It was almost sunset now, and the scudding flat-bottomed clouds above were shot through with streaks of scarlet and magenta. When he came to the points switch that joined the siding and the main line into a single track, Phulboni decided to turn back. He stopped to cast one last glance over the spectacular sight of the flooded fields glowing in the sunset. Inadvertently his eyes fell upon the red handle of the switching lever. He noticed, to his surprise, that the mechanism looked well cared for. There was no trace of rust on the lever and nor were the wires that connected it to the point-rails at all overgrown, even though they ran very close to the ground. On the contrary, the deep grooves in the grass under them suggested regular maintenance and use.

Phulboni had an instinctive interest in machinery. He liked the feel of cold metal, took pleasure in a good, wellcrafted piece of iron or steel. He crossed the rails and went over to cast an appreciative eye at the gleaming iron lever: it gave him an obscure sense of satisfaction to see a wellcared for piece of machinery in these unlikely surroundings.

As he leaned over, arm extended, he heard a shout. Straightening up, he saw the stationmaster struggling up the embankment. He was waving frantically, making signs to Phulboni to step back from the switching lever. He had a cloth bundle in one hand and an earthen pitcher in the other. Phulboni realized suddenly that he was ravenously hungry. He waved and went hurrying back along the tracks.

The stationmaster was waiting for him a hundred yards down the track. He had an angry frown on his forehead. 'Look,' he said to the writer. 'You may be a big sahib and all that but if you know what's good for you, you won't meddle with anything around here.'

He added, as an afterthought: 'This is government property, it belongs to the railways.'

Phulboni had been intending to compliment the stationmaster on his maintenance of the station's switching gear. He listened now in abashed silence, unable to think of an appropriate response.

The stationmaster thrust the cloth bundle and the earthen pitcher into his hands. 'Just put them in a corner after you've finished,' he said abruptly. 'I'll take care of them in the morning.' He shuffled quickly to the embankment and went scrambling down the side, towards the water-logged field below.

Recovering himself, Phulboni shouted: 'Why don't you stay a minute? Eat something with me before you go.'

'I'll be back in the morning,' the stationmaster answered, over his shoulder.

There was something about this hurried departure that disquieted Phulboni. Going to the edge of the embankment, he called out: 'Masterji, is there something you have not told me?'

'Tomorrow,' called back the stationmaster. 'Tomorrow… everything… it's getting dark… ' Hurried splashes drowned out the sound of his voice.

Phulboni felt oddly forlorn now, standing by the deserted rail tracks in the dying daylight. He made his way slowly back to the signal-room and pushed the door open. It was dark inside, but a metallic glint led his eyes to the floor. It was the curved blade of his razor: lying beside it were the pot of shaving soap, the brush and the lump of clear alum that he had placed in the alcove before leaving for his walk.

Phulboni placed the food and water on the desk and looked around to see if the window had blown open to let a draught or a gust of wind into the room. But the window was still firmly shut. For want of a better explanation, he decided that the objects must have been blown off when he opened the door. He picked them off the floor and arranged them neatly in the alcove once again, next to the signal lantern.

He decided to eat outside while there was still some light. Carrying the food and water to the door, he sat crosslegged on the ground and opened the cloth bundle. He found a stack of parathas, a generous helping of mango achar and a heap of golden-yellow potatoes thickly encrusted in masala. The food smelt better than anything he could ever remember and he fell upon it with gusto.