People are not as bad as they appear. They are worse,
Oscar Wilde would quip. They are better, much better, deep inside provided you
care to see, Clare Pooley would chide Wilde.
The People on Platform 5 is Clare Pooley’s novel
which is more inspiring than most inspirational literature and more motivating
than most motivational books. It belongs to a new genre. Feel-good fiction is a new genre, I guess. This
book belongs to that class and it deserves an eminent place there.
This novel brings some strangers together
on a train from Hampton Court to London Waterloo and back. These people are all
regular commuters on that train as they go to work in the morning at the same
time and return home in the evening, at the same time again, every day. They
see each other regularly. But they don’t know each other, they don’t care to
know either. That’s how people in cities are.
But a medical emergency brings a few
of these people close to one another. And there begins the story of this novel
which shows us the beautiful personalities that lie hidden beneath the masks
that people wear. Each character in this novel is charming in his/her own way,
though initially and externally they would appear just like any ordinary
office-goer – banal.
57-year-old Iona takes most of our
attention though every other character is equally enchanting. Iona is the one
who brings out the magic that lies in the hearts of the others. She is a
lesbian who lives with her partner Beatrice who is referred to as Bea. It is
only halfway through the novel that we will come to know that Bea is now in a
care home because she is a patient of acute Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t remember
even Iona though Iona is working to earn money for Bea’s care. Lulu, her
bulldog, is Iona’s constant companion on the train, in the office, wherever she
goes.
Iona is a magazine advice columnist –
an agony aunt, though she hates that label. She answers readers’ queries about
life’s problems. But her answers aren’t particularly appealing to the new gen.
She learns to answer the new gen’s questions better by consulting some of her
fellow passengers. But then she realises how “fake” she is. It’s not her own
answers that she now gives. But she needs the job. However, her magazine chucks
her soon.
In the meanwhile, she had become a
favourite among her fellow passengers on the train. They come together to
convince her that she should start a YouTube channel which eventually becomes
so successful that the same magazine which threw her out now wants her back. She
tells them to get lost. They are still fake and Iona is not.
The problem with most people is that
they are helpless in a tough world and hence put on masks which make them look
fake. The stylish dress that Piers wears, his Gucci shoes, Rolex watch, Hermes
tie and the smart business suit are all masks because he is now an unemployed
worthless man who pretends to be otherwise. He lost his job as a master-trader
with a trading firm but is unable to tell his wife, Candida, the truth. So he
travels in his business attire every day looking smart. Only looks. Fake.
But he begins to help Martha, a
student on the same train, with her math and eventually becomes a teacher in
Martha’s school. He is good at that, he finds out. His real self emerges soon.
He becomes happy though he has much less money now. It’s not money that keeps
you really happy. It’s authenticity. He loses Candida, however, as well as his
children. “I don’t want to live a teacher’s small life,” Candida tells him
bluntly. She knows another man already who is ready to give her and the children
an affluent life that a schoolteacher never can. Candida is a fake too.
Martha was naïve enough to send a
photo of herself naked, legs apart, to her boyfriend who convinces her that he
has seen the vaginas of quite many girls and there is nothing strange in his
request. But Martha becomes the school’s joke as her unseemly photo spreads on
the social media like a farcical virus. Iona teaches her how to obliterate an
unpleasant past by creating a successful present. Pierse teaches her math which
was her biggest problem at school. Eventually Martha the blunderer-introvert
becomes a shining heroine.
Sanjay (of Indian roots) is a nurse
who is another passenger on the train. He falls in love with Emmie, another
passenger, without knowing that she has a live-in relationship with Toby. Toby turns
out to be a psycho with perfectionist obsessions which begin to put certain
straitjackets on Emmie. Emmie now has to wear the dress that Toby chooses, eat
what he decides is good for her, do the job that he selects for her… Toby is an
extreme form of fakery. Emmie liberates herself from that fake world of Toby’s
and… I shall not be a spoilsport. You read the novel, it’s worth it, I assure
you.
This novel will teach you that people
are not what they seem. Are you ready to dig deep enough? If you are, you will
be rewarded with a world of magic. A world of beautiful people. Who, for
example, would ever have guessed that this man Piers, who is wearing a dress
that an ordinary guy’s entire month’s salary couldn’t afford, is carrying a
wretched hell inside him? That his father was an unemployed and worthless
person and that his mother was a pathetic alcoholic? That beneath the attire,
Piers is a tender person who longed for love?
Who but Iona with her tremendous
capacity for penetrating through people’s masks would have discovered the
heroine that lay hidden beneath the Martha’s mask of introversion and
diffidence? Who else could have taught Martha lessons like: If you give up,
they win; They want us to be small, so we have to stand tall; They want us to
be silent, so we have to be heard; They want us to surrender; so we have to
fight…?
The world isn’t a kind place. Far
from it, the world is a harsh place which is determined to decimate us if we
don’t fight on. How to put up an authentic fight? This is the most fundamental
question that this novel seeks to answer. And it does answer eminently. Read
it. I recommend it with my whole heart. You will be rewarded, no doubt. And you
will smile a lot too as you read.
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteThis sounds delightful, and I have added to me ereader directly! One required uplifting words in these wrought times... YAM xx
Reminds me of my commuting in the Mumbai local to work and back!
ReplyDeleteAnd you didn't know the fellow commuters 😅
DeleteFeel-good fiction? I like that concept. Too many sad books out there. I like happy stories.
ReplyDelete