Days after the #CoromandelExpress tragedy, I called a friend who’s a powerloom worker from #Odisha in #Surat. He shared a passenger-list, with phone numbers. Relatives of missing folk were using it to find loved ones. I began to call random non-AC passengers. A thread 1/n Dozens of men in their 20s and 30s from #WestBengal on the #CoromandelExpress were to take connecting trains to #Kerala, to go to work 2000-odd km from home. Most were school dropouts, construction workers, masons, painters, unskilled labourers, driven to migrate for livelihoods