Diary 
Andrew O’Hagan
Howra Station is on the quiet side at 7.38 a.m. A sheet of dust lies on the surface of Platform 13, and there, just under a sign for Horlicks (‘the Great Family Nourisher’), a pair of yellow birds peck and bounce in yesterday’s stomped chewing-gum. The people will come in a minute: the thousands of clerks on trains from the Calcutta suburbs, and dust will cover their shoes and the birds will scatter. But at 7.38 the station is quiet. Three small boys are sitting in the space between the tracks, their dirty limbs gathered round a fire of loose coals and plastic bottles. Together they are eating something. This is where they eat; this is where they live.
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Andrew O’Hagan’s The Atlantic Ocean, a collection of essays on Britain and America, many of which were first published in the London Review, will be published in June. Be Near Me, his last novel, won the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize award for fiction.
Other articles by this contributor:
In His Hot Head · Robert Louis Stevenson
How to Survive Your Own Stupidity · Homage to Laurel and Hardy
Blame it on the boogie · In Pursuit of Michael Jackson
Still Reeling from My Loss · Lulu & Co
A Journey in the South · Andrew O’Hagan travels to New Orleans
Cartwheels over Broken Glass · worshipping Morrissey
The Nominee · With the Democrats
Hating Football · Andrew O’Hagan deserts the Tartan Army
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