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My school years in the early 1950s were spent in the seaside village Muthukur on the Coromandel Coast, a walking distance from the Bay of Bengal.
Muthukur had no railway station. My youthful father and I used to travel once a month to our District Headquarters town Nellore in a creaky bus that took one hour to traverse the 12 miles, halting at a dozen odd wayside villages.
My great attractions in Nellore were the Grand Trunk Road and the Grand Trunk Express. The famous GT Express ran from Madras to New Delhi rushing like the Devil not even halting at Nellore in the beginning. I see that it is still there halting at a couple of dozen stations during its sojourn.
One of the pleasures of Nellore was walking by the railway track from the Nellore South station to my uncle's place a mile away. Father used to be an expert walking on the rails in stretches, which I could never manage. I used to walk by his side jumping from one wooden "sleeper" to the next. I don't know still why they are called sleepers...and I have no interest in Googling for them...let them "sleep" and let my fancy soar...
I also used to collect a couple of blue-white stone chips lying between sleepers and carry them to Muthukur in my pocket. When struck against each other in the night they emitted sparks. Perhaps this was the way stone-age man lit his fires to cook his meat.
By the Vedic age our rishis discovered what are called "aranis"...sticks of wood which, drilled one against the other, emitted sparks in profusion. The upper drill was made of Shami wood while the lower one upon which drilling was done was made of Ashwath wood (courtesy Google).
There is this mantra from the Swetaswataropanishad: (శ్వేతాశ్వతరోపనిషద్):
స్వదేహమరణిం కృత్వా ప్రణవంచోత్తరారణిం
ధ్యాన నిర్మధనాభ్యాసాద్ దేవం పశ్యేన్నిగూఢవత్
"By making one's body the lower arani stick, and the syllable "aum" the upper arani stick, by practicing the drill of meditation, one may see the Lord, hidden as He were"
Vedic Metaphor!
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Sorry for that big digression...that is how thoughts get derailed and meander as a stream of consciousness...(mixed metaphor ;)
I see that that ballast of stones is needed to stabilize the sleepers as well as drain rain water and prevent the growth of unstoppable weeds.
We also used to do this silly thing...father would give me a precious copper coin and I would place it on the rail beneath the incoming GT Express roaring. And look for the flattened and elongated and disfigured copper strip by the track and collect it as a memento.
Copper stayed copper...not converted into cuprous oxide.
On each bogie of each train was painted this slogan in bold letters:
"MSM"
Father used to decipher it to me as:
"Madras & Southern Maratha (Railways)"
And then he would also crack his favorite joke:
"March-September-March" (MSM)
Because, SSLC main exams were held in March, and the Supplementary Exam for failed students in the coming September; and if you fail again, there is this next March...and next September...all of 7 times before the SSLC Register got defaced permanently.
And then there was always this Matriculation Exam (in which First, Second, and Third Classes were declared...and there was also this 'Distinction'...called 'Star' in Bengal if you score more than 80%).
Very recently I came to know a well-kept family secret:
In the second decade of the last century, my father and his three elder brothers shifted from their native ancestral village Krishnapatnam to the town Nellore for getting "English Education" under the British Rule to get cushy government jobs. In their native village they were taught only their mother tongue Telugu and Arithmetic.
And they appeared in the Matriculation Examination.
ALL of them flunked, one by one, in English in their first attempts.
The eldest became later on an English Lecturer and came to be popularly known as the "Nellore Shakespeare". The second one a brilliant government servant in the Cooperatives Department. The third an acclaimed lawyer in Nellore pleading in fluent English. The last one, my father, turned out to be the best English Teacher and Headmaster of the Nellore District! (His son however always topped in English and almost flunked in Telugu).
Akin to MSM was the BNR Company in Bengal. MSM died by when I grew up but not BNR...I am sure the SE Railways Hospital in Kharagpur is still called the "BNR Hospital" (Bengal Nagpur Railways).
Bengalis resist change.
And then there was this wooden 'signal', a mile or so before the Nellore Station, which was often "blocked" for ten good minutes for goods trains.
And the Driver awaiting his signal would look at me, smile, and hand me down a four-inch long black cylindrical stick of what was called "grease" charmingly. It was a mess of course, but I used to carry that too for a few minutes till my hands turned as black as my soul now.
That wooden signal was a pleasure to watch. I used to stare at it in order to catch it in its act of falling down.
Later on there were two wooden things one below the other. We deciphered that if both fall, it meant that the train wouldn't be stopping at Nellore....a "through" train. If the upper one alone fell, it was asked to slow down and halt at Nellore. I don't know if there are three by now...I guess all the wooden signals got to be replaced by electric lights turning green, yellow, or red....all over India.
Much charm lost...
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The Nellore Station itself was a delight. My attention was glued to the room of the Assistant Station Master.
He had an iron mini-rail hanging from the roof outside his office. And a hammer tucked into the hole at its top.
All of a sudden the head-porter in his bright red jacket would emerge out of his office (like that bearded figure in the musical clock at the Salarjung Museum).
And would have a go at the "bell" with that hammer.
I guess he had a 3-round match with that bell. The first long bell was to announce that the passenger train had been cleared and left the previous station. And the second one to cheer the passengers that their train had been "sighted" by the cabin-man. And the third to warn them to get up and be ready...the train has reached the 'outer' signal and got cleared.
This third bell was gonged either twice or thrice to indicate whether the train was an 'up' train or 'drown' train (south to north, or north to south, I forget).
The origin of this "up" and "down" nomenclature was also mysterious.
Let it stay so.
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And the train would arrive dubiously...like this mantra in the Kenopanishad (కేనోపనిషద్):
తదేజతి తన్నైజతి తద్దూరే తద్వంతికే
తదంతరస్య సర్వస్య తదు సర్వస్య బాహ్యతః
"It moves and it moves not, It is far and It is near; It is within all this and It also transcends all this" :)
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(To be Continued)
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