Decolonising from London. An Indian psychogeography around Victorian railway spaces (1870-1914)

Abstract

A prisoner paints a landscape on the wall of his cell showing a miniature train en-tering a tunnel. When his jailers come to get him, he asks them “politely to wait a moment, to allow me to verify something in the little train in my picture… I made myself very tiny, entered into my picture and climbed into the little train, which started moving, then disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. For a few seconds longer, a bit of flaky smoke could be seen coming out of the round hole. Then this smoke blew away, and with it the picture, and with the picture, my person…” 1