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The abiding highly visible British legacy to India is its railways...and the wayside railway station.
My romance with it is all of 55 years vintage. When I lie down nowadays on my bed and stare at the unchanging ceiling, I often revisit the railway station at a small place called Kovur where Father shifted from Muthukur. I was by then in the University at Vizagh and used to visit Kovur during the Dasara, Sankranti and Summer Vacations.
We were then living by what was cutely called the Railway Feeder Road...Feeder?
And the station was just a furlong away. And whenever I was bored at home, which was often, I used to walk down to the station with a Sherlock Holmes book.
The station was hemmed in by iron stakes and barbed wire forming a fence surrounding a garden of sorts...I was now in the railways property as an intruder since I was neither a traveler or a see-off.
Then there was this shed with a sloping roof. It acted as a waiting hall as well as the ticket-vendor's cubicle. The waiting hall had no chairs...just a few cement benches which were always vacant...folks used to sit and wait on Platform # 1...there were just 2 platforms, the other on the opposite side of the two tracks. Apparently there were no VIPs then at Kovur.
The vending clerk had a bored face peering at the small hole that allowed a single hand to pass. But he was as grand as the captain of an airplane in his cockpit since he was surrounded by racks and racks of tickets stacked one above the other. And looked busy jotting down the ticket numbers on each rack at its bottom.
As soon as you enter the platform you see a row of breezy trees...neem, aam, peepal and the lot. Under each tree was a cement bench you can sit or even lie down on. When you get bored of this you take the over-bridge and sit on its floor, reading.
There were always a couple of red-clad porters...the drag-me luggage was unknown. And there was a peon in uniform. There were three important functions of this Eminence:
1. Whenever a passenger train that halted at Kovur was due to arrive he would appear with his hammer to ring bells on the steel rail hanging from the branch of the nearest tree...there were three bells in all...the first bell, the second and the third...as if heralding a king with a twenty-one-gun salute.
2. There was this circular belt of twisted steel with a glove compartment at its bottom. It held a small cylinder which held the key to the lock of the next station...the All-Clear. This chap, after he rang his third bell, would run up to the edge of the platform, holding the belt aloft for the driver of the approaching train to scoop it up on his forearm which bore marks of his adventures over decades...corns.
3. At even-fall he had to go to the signal stands at either 'outer', climb up their ladders and instal the lamp that had two filters...red and green. There was no electricity at Kovur station then.
But there were telephones alright in the Station Master's (SM) room. The SM was the high priest of his temple. He was always found in his white uniform and sat looking busy in his office that had just a desk for the telephone and a chair for him to sit on. And a machine with a slot into which went the All-Clear cylinder.
Everything would be quiet for a longish while till the telephone rings...that was the sign that something was afoot...the porters got up and dusted their bottoms, the peon rang his peal of bells and the SM would walk to the edge of the platform with two flags...red and green as you guessed. And he would whistle too with his police whistle.
By and by the train would chug in and clang and hoot. And there would be hustle and bustle...a couple of passengers trying to get down in a hurry, and another couple trying to sneak in...and there would be bad blood and name-calling between the boarders and de-boarders.
The porters would be busy uploading boxes of paan leaves, for which Kovur was famous, into the luggage compartment opened by the Guard.
And the SM would show his green flag or lamp and the Guard would do the same. And the train would chug away...and so would be me along the Railway Feeder Road.
By then I would have finished the 'The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans'....
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Inspector Lestrade
tells Holmes that a passenger has seen fit to report hearing a thud at
about the location in question, as though a body had fallen on the
track. He could not see anything, however, owing to the thick fog.
After an examination of the track near Aldgate, Holmes reaches an
astonishing and unusual conclusion: Cadogan West had been killed
elsewhere, was deposited on the roof of an Underground train, and fell
off when the jarring action of going over the points at Aldgate shook the coach.
...The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
The abiding highly visible British legacy to India is its railways...and the wayside railway station.
My romance with it is all of 55 years vintage. When I lie down nowadays on my bed and stare at the unchanging ceiling, I often revisit the railway station at a small place called Kovur where Father shifted from Muthukur. I was by then in the University at Vizagh and used to visit Kovur during the Dasara, Sankranti and Summer Vacations.
We were then living by what was cutely called the Railway Feeder Road...Feeder?
And the station was just a furlong away. And whenever I was bored at home, which was often, I used to walk down to the station with a Sherlock Holmes book.
The station was hemmed in by iron stakes and barbed wire forming a fence surrounding a garden of sorts...I was now in the railways property as an intruder since I was neither a traveler or a see-off.
Then there was this shed with a sloping roof. It acted as a waiting hall as well as the ticket-vendor's cubicle. The waiting hall had no chairs...just a few cement benches which were always vacant...folks used to sit and wait on Platform # 1...there were just 2 platforms, the other on the opposite side of the two tracks. Apparently there were no VIPs then at Kovur.
The vending clerk had a bored face peering at the small hole that allowed a single hand to pass. But he was as grand as the captain of an airplane in his cockpit since he was surrounded by racks and racks of tickets stacked one above the other. And looked busy jotting down the ticket numbers on each rack at its bottom.
As soon as you enter the platform you see a row of breezy trees...neem, aam, peepal and the lot. Under each tree was a cement bench you can sit or even lie down on. When you get bored of this you take the over-bridge and sit on its floor, reading.
There were always a couple of red-clad porters...the drag-me luggage was unknown. And there was a peon in uniform. There were three important functions of this Eminence:
1. Whenever a passenger train that halted at Kovur was due to arrive he would appear with his hammer to ring bells on the steel rail hanging from the branch of the nearest tree...there were three bells in all...the first bell, the second and the third...as if heralding a king with a twenty-one-gun salute.
2. There was this circular belt of twisted steel with a glove compartment at its bottom. It held a small cylinder which held the key to the lock of the next station...the All-Clear. This chap, after he rang his third bell, would run up to the edge of the platform, holding the belt aloft for the driver of the approaching train to scoop it up on his forearm which bore marks of his adventures over decades...corns.
3. At even-fall he had to go to the signal stands at either 'outer', climb up their ladders and instal the lamp that had two filters...red and green. There was no electricity at Kovur station then.
But there were telephones alright in the Station Master's (SM) room. The SM was the high priest of his temple. He was always found in his white uniform and sat looking busy in his office that had just a desk for the telephone and a chair for him to sit on. And a machine with a slot into which went the All-Clear cylinder.
Everything would be quiet for a longish while till the telephone rings...that was the sign that something was afoot...the porters got up and dusted their bottoms, the peon rang his peal of bells and the SM would walk to the edge of the platform with two flags...red and green as you guessed. And he would whistle too with his police whistle.
By and by the train would chug in and clang and hoot. And there would be hustle and bustle...a couple of passengers trying to get down in a hurry, and another couple trying to sneak in...and there would be bad blood and name-calling between the boarders and de-boarders.
The porters would be busy uploading boxes of paan leaves, for which Kovur was famous, into the luggage compartment opened by the Guard.
And the SM would show his green flag or lamp and the Guard would do the same. And the train would chug away...and so would be me along the Railway Feeder Road.
By then I would have finished the 'The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans'....
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