True, a passing breeze may bear an occasional whiff of the all-too-familiar ammonia in its breath. But if the havaldar on Platform No 12 duty could have chased it with his lathi, he would have done so. Because, strictly speaking, it is a refugee from Platform No 9, or No 8 or any of the other platforms in this gargantuan complex that handles some 191 trains every day. It really has no business to be loitering about on Platform No 12.

On Platform No 12 one is not supposed to perform the thousands of familiar acts that have become synonymous with train travel for us Indians.

On no account must one leave traces of pan-stained saliva on the flooring near dustbins (although there is evidence to suggest that some visitors seem to have been either overwhelmed by their overworked masticatory glands or plain forgotten this rule).

One is not expected to stand around the familiar khadai of stale, smoking oil perched uncertainly on a makeshift stove which is in turn precariously placed on a handcart and eat piping hot bhajias.

Instead one imbibes Wimpy burgers dispensed from a neat little counter with the crisp notes accessed from the Citibank automatic teller machine that New Delhi Railway station has acquired for its Platform No 12 denizens.

The detritus from the meal are then presumably not allowed to litter, like leaf containers which once held alu ki sabzi do the other platforms. Instead, they are to be carefully put into the specially designed fibreglass dustbins of Platform No 12, which are a world apart from their overflowing country-cousins made of tin and painted a bilious yellow, that surface elsewhere.

The coffee/tea arrives on Platform No 12 not from the common aluminium spout belonging to a large soot-bottomed kettle but from automated dispensers housed in spanking new modular stalls with neat lettering proudly proclaiming -- `Rail Ahar'. And it is sipped while sitting on aesthetically designed wrought iron chairs -- quite removed from the concrete slabs that less fortunate travellers have to make do with.

But then the traveller on Platform No 12, doesn't even remotely resemble their counterparts on other platforms -- the great unwashed, worn, wretched of the earth, lugging ungainly pieces of luggage held together with pieces of rope, and the mandatory wailing baby.

Babies on Platform No 12, when they put in a rare appearance, gurgle happily in their ever-dry Pampers, and the accompanying luggage is sleek and minimalist. In any case, most people here seem to travel only with a patent leather briefcase with gold fittings which is usually teamed with the morning's pink papers worn under the right arm.

This lot look, in fact, as if they are about to board flight IC 405 for Mumbai, what with their well-shined shoes that the myriad shoeshine boys who swarm Platform No 12 so energetically polish.

All in all, Platform No 12 is a spit-and-polish affair. If one were somehow to be spared the sight of the other platforms, with its plastic bag litter and curlicues of shit on the tracks, the garbage piles and the inexplicable patches of dirty water everywhere, one could even imagine that the Indian Railways is indeed steaming into the future.

Time is, of course, the great leveller. The big question is: will the railways do something about bringing some of the privileges of Platform No 12 to the other more pedestrian platforms in New Delhi station and elsewhere, or will this brave new facility begin to wear the look of utter neglect that has unfortunately become the hallmark of the Indian Railways?