Entering the Gare de Lyon station in Paris yesterday to catch a train to Florence, I was sure I was in the wrong place. This couldn’t be a railway station I thought after all where was the railway station smell? Forgive me for saying this gentle reader, but in Mumbai we know what a railway station smells like.

They may have painted the walls, swept the platforms, upgraded the railway carriages, even, god forbid, air conditioned the compartments, but whether its on the Harbour line or the Western, Bombay Central or Bandra station, the one thing we know that will never change is that fetid, acrid stench of the railway station.