Summary
"The Woman on Platform 8" is a short story by Ruskin Bond from the 8th Standard English supplementary reader. The story is narrated by a twelve-year-old boy named Arun, who is waiting alone at Ambala railway station on Platform No. 8 for the midnight northern-bound train to his boarding school.
While sitting bored and lonely on the platform, a gentle woman in a white sari approaches him. She is kind, dignified, and simply dressed with a pale face and dark kind eyes. She takes him to the station dining room, buys him tea, samosas, and jalebies, and they share a warm conversation. Arun tells her about his school, friends, and interests, and they form an instant bond.
As they walk back along the platform, a boy leaps across the railway tracks near an approaching engine. The woman clutches Arun's arm in fear, revealing a deep, almost maternal anxiety. When Arun's schoolfellow Satish arrives with his mother, Satish's mother assumes the woman is Arun's mother. Surprisingly, the woman claims to be Arun's mother without hesitation. Arun, instead of correcting her, accepts this and even feels protective of their bond.