In the aftermath of any major disaster, spectators far removed from the site of the tragedy usually fixate on what led to the accident and the number of casualties. In the case of a train accident, rarely does the reader of news seem to spare a thought for where the passengers were headed and why, and what their personal histories and dreams looked like. Even less attention is given to the trauma of rescue work, where, a rescue worker, on the condition of anonymity, confesses to having heard a mobile phone ringing somewhere on the body of a victim—a call from family, perhaps? But the worker hesitated to retrieve the phone given that the body was decomposing. In this photo feature, we attempt to pay our respects to the site of the Balasore tragedy and the people forever enmeshed and entangled in the memory of it.
