‘Does it go to Thane?’ I yelled at the top of my voice to the local train motorman just before it moved from the VT station, Bombay now CST, Mumbai. ‘Kurla – Kurla’ he yelled back. ‘But Thane, I’ve to go to Thane…’ before I asked him in the top of my lungs capacity in the thick of mob he jumped into the cabin giving me depressing look & next second it moved on. That was my first day in Bombay. Later I realized there are locals, fast & slow. Fast aren’t so fast & slow aren’t so slow they just skip few stations & others stop at each of them. So also all the locals do not cover all the stations neither originates from only VT. I was stunned.
Before I reach the destination station, I always doubt about my selection which invariably starts with unreserved travel ticket, departure time of the train, platform, the boarded train itself & of course the Ups & Downs with their numbers. Once I get down at the destined station, read the station name in black in yellow then only my heart beats to its normal. Railway platform is the place where you can test your self confidence to its ultimate levels. You are left like a stray dog there hardly anybody to guide you as each one is in great hurry. Rail reservation slips are pinned five minutes before its actual arrival on the platform. Announcer lady for local languages is imported from 287, 71st floor, Kingsley Mansion, 3rd lane, Windsor Castle, London. For English another lady is called on who was just resting from the nearby goods wagon loading grape cartons on daily wages. All the announcements get me closer to build my self confidence & pump my thighs for more foot work.
All the bogies look same; numbers written with chalk piece has already been rubbed off leading to your opportunity of quarrel with fellow passenger. Now most of the time I’ve experience I’m the looser biting dust at the end of hot dialogue. S 10 berth no 71 isn’t S 10 berth no 71 which I felt or the adjacent bogies. I’ve to walk through three to four bogies to get my destined berth bulldozing standing & sleeping passengers on the way. Doing so, slang-match & abuses heard & used during school & college days come handy. I even get amazed at my own vocabulary & memory. Reaching to berth 71 reveals I’m facing the toilet with broken door visiting passengers there freely. Water is finished and the smell compels me to go back to my college chemistry laboratory where once I smelt ammonia rather deep & fainted on the floor.
Memorizing my own science background, I gather courage & try to sleep only to be wakening up by travel ticket examiner (TTE). On whose seat somebody had prefixed L making it LTTE bring him closer to his profession. ‘There are only four railway employees on the train’, the TTE told me. Till I get sleep again I tried to make the man in black speak. For thousand passengers’ only four employees, I realized the inspiration behind the first English film “The Great Train Robbery”. Of course the robbers must have taken the inspiration much before the director of the movie.
I’ve seen & all Indians have seen the biggest hoarding in ten meter height font somewhere even bigger, everywhere on the railway station & inside railways. That is ‘DOWN WITH SANITATION & DOWN WITH CLEANLINESS’. But hats off to the sustainable & robust health of every Indian. I bet, even doctor may issue sickness certificate, one should travel through train for two hundred km eat & drink everything on the way still ok, to hell with the certificate.
Every train carries same no. of passengers inside & on the top of it still the Indian Railways is said to be loss making. They say to earn hundred rupees they spend hundred & two just two rupees more. Why so fuss then? After all they have run a whole train carrying its minister in charge alone with his rights & lefts, lay new lines in his constituency even if the yearly turnover of passengers is more than thousand passenger & less than thousand two. They have to let morcha burn off their bogies sometimes with passengers inside. As every morcha can not be said to be successful without burning a train. They have to recruit kith & kin of MLAs, MPs, Ministers & their kith & kin. They have turn blind eye on bribery under their nose it may cause insult to the boss, to the politician, to the minister & to the nation. After all, they have to think of the poor people of the nation, the voters. They have to let the voters travel thousands of miles without ticket on their leaders’ birth & death anniversaries & otherwise too. After all one has to observe the principal of democracy in letter & in spirit, ‘by the people, for the people, of the people’. Rail just fits the prescription aptly than anybody around.
I love traveling in train because it gives me more than just carrying me to my destination.
By
Vijay Yelmelwar
Before I reach the destination station, I always doubt about my selection which invariably starts with unreserved travel ticket, departure time of the train, platform, the boarded train itself & of course the Ups & Downs with their numbers. Once I get down at the destined station, read the station name in black in yellow then only my heart beats to its normal. Railway platform is the place where you can test your self confidence to its ultimate levels. You are left like a stray dog there hardly anybody to guide you as each one is in great hurry. Rail reservation slips are pinned five minutes before its actual arrival on the platform. Announcer lady for local languages is imported from 287, 71st floor, Kingsley Mansion, 3rd lane, Windsor Castle, London. For English another lady is called on who was just resting from the nearby goods wagon loading grape cartons on daily wages. All the announcements get me closer to build my self confidence & pump my thighs for more foot work.
All the bogies look same; numbers written with chalk piece has already been rubbed off leading to your opportunity of quarrel with fellow passenger. Now most of the time I’ve experience I’m the looser biting dust at the end of hot dialogue. S 10 berth no 71 isn’t S 10 berth no 71 which I felt or the adjacent bogies. I’ve to walk through three to four bogies to get my destined berth bulldozing standing & sleeping passengers on the way. Doing so, slang-match & abuses heard & used during school & college days come handy. I even get amazed at my own vocabulary & memory. Reaching to berth 71 reveals I’m facing the toilet with broken door visiting passengers there freely. Water is finished and the smell compels me to go back to my college chemistry laboratory where once I smelt ammonia rather deep & fainted on the floor.
Memorizing my own science background, I gather courage & try to sleep only to be wakening up by travel ticket examiner (TTE). On whose seat somebody had prefixed L making it LTTE bring him closer to his profession. ‘There are only four railway employees on the train’, the TTE told me. Till I get sleep again I tried to make the man in black speak. For thousand passengers’ only four employees, I realized the inspiration behind the first English film “The Great Train Robbery”. Of course the robbers must have taken the inspiration much before the director of the movie.
I’ve seen & all Indians have seen the biggest hoarding in ten meter height font somewhere even bigger, everywhere on the railway station & inside railways. That is ‘DOWN WITH SANITATION & DOWN WITH CLEANLINESS’. But hats off to the sustainable & robust health of every Indian. I bet, even doctor may issue sickness certificate, one should travel through train for two hundred km eat & drink everything on the way still ok, to hell with the certificate.
Every train carries same no. of passengers inside & on the top of it still the Indian Railways is said to be loss making. They say to earn hundred rupees they spend hundred & two just two rupees more. Why so fuss then? After all they have run a whole train carrying its minister in charge alone with his rights & lefts, lay new lines in his constituency even if the yearly turnover of passengers is more than thousand passenger & less than thousand two. They have to let morcha burn off their bogies sometimes with passengers inside. As every morcha can not be said to be successful without burning a train. They have to recruit kith & kin of MLAs, MPs, Ministers & their kith & kin. They have turn blind eye on bribery under their nose it may cause insult to the boss, to the politician, to the minister & to the nation. After all, they have to think of the poor people of the nation, the voters. They have to let the voters travel thousands of miles without ticket on their leaders’ birth & death anniversaries & otherwise too. After all one has to observe the principal of democracy in letter & in spirit, ‘by the people, for the people, of the people’. Rail just fits the prescription aptly than anybody around.
I love traveling in train because it gives me more than just carrying me to my destination.
By
Vijay Yelmelwar
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