While I was unpacking my book-pack here the other day, I suddenly heard the booming whistle of a train engine approaching us, Doppler Effect and all.
I ran to our 13th floor balcony dragging Ishani along, and the sight of the Bombay Mail whooshing along at a stone's throw opened yet another window to my remote past.
Everyone agrees that ships (sea and air) and buses and camels and elephants and horses and all other such transport systems hold no candle to Trains when it comes to sheer Romance.
Calcutta trams do come a close second and Calcuttans, romantic to a fault, have kept their trams alive and chugging and clanking along their Maidan which itself is a hopeless romance. But of course trams are a mini-version of trains...both are locomotives running on rails when they don't get derailed.
Elevated bunds, stone gravel chips, wooden sleepers, short rails with fish plates (fish again, Shamik in France!), sheet metal signals pulled by elaborate cable systems, flanged rails as smooth as chubby cheeks, the coal and steam engine with her Anglo-Indian Driver and Fireman, heads covered with white hankies looking out for buffaloes on the tracks, the rear guard sitting on his stool and making notes, the whistle that toots as the Driver pulls his chain with aplomb...everything open and visible...are the stuff of romance for a kid of 5....ask Satyajit Ray...and his Uttam Kumar who was no kid in Nayak, the whole movie shot in a train (Kalka Mail?), Uttam emitting more puffs of smoke than the Engine.
The Romance ended for me with the demise of the reciprocating steam engine...and the advent of AC compartments with windows painted black like so many hooded witches.
I recovered my childhood when I watched the Great Train Robbery a dozen times at home.
Our sea-side village had fishing boats which had their own charm but no trains. We had to go to Nellore which was on the Grand Trunk Madras-Delhi route. There was a single lonely track and very few trains.
When a dozen of us kids, brothers, sisters, cousins and friends used to hear the shrill whistle, we used to stop whatever game we were playing and run a 100 meters to the railway track and clumsily climb the slippery bund and wait; for, there was a signal right there and most trains (except the GT Express) used to come to a screeching halt. The Driver would smile at us and throw short sticks of jet black grease as mementos. And what a mess we made of them!
And when the signal falls 'tupp', he would say ta-ta and with a flourish blow his whistle and scram...
************************************************************************************************************
Jerome K Jerome:
"Then our porter said he thought that must be it on the high-level platform; said he thought he knew the train. So we went to the high-level platform, and saw the engine-driver, and asked him if he was going to Kingston. He said he couldn’t say for certain of course, but that he rather thought he was. Anyhow, if he wasn’t the 11.5 for Kingston, he said he was pretty confident he was the 9.32 for Virginia Water, or the 10 a.m. express for the Isle of Wight, or somewhere in that direction, and we should all know when we got there. We slipped half-a-crown into his hand, and begged him to be the 11.5 for Kingston.
“Nobody will ever know, on this line,” we said, “what you are, or where you’re going. You know the way, you slip off quietly and go to Kingston.”
“Well, I don’t know, gents,” replied the noble fellow, “but I suppose some train’s got to go to Kingston; and I’ll do it. Gimme the half-crown.”
Thus we got to Kingston by the London and South-Western Railway.
We learnt, afterwards, that the train we had come by was really the Exeter Mail, and that they had spent hours at Waterloo, looking for it, and nobody knew what had become of it."
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Don't tell Didi now, but during 1976-79, I had to resort to a similar trick with the Indian Railways.
It was like this:
I used to take the Janata (so-called) Express from my home town GDR to KGP. The blessed Express used to stop and linger at every station and take 36 good hours to reach KGP, soot and all....
The thing started at GDR at 11 AM. At 4.30 PM, it would halt at Bapatla (of the 1977 killer-cyclone fame) where my KGPian (Phy) sister V used to work as a Lecturer in a Junior College:
http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/12/tenterhooks.html
She used to board my compartment to travel with me to BZA, 2 hours away to exchange news and KGP nostalgia.
And she would get down at BZA at 6.30 PM and had to take the incoming HWH-MAS Mail at BZA at 7.30 PM on her return journey to Bapatla, which was a Request Halt, so she could reach home safe by 8.30 PM, a reasonable hour for a comely singleton lady.
The Mail was never late. But my Janata Express had to leave precisely at 7.30 from BZA after an hour's rest and recuperation.
And it was cutting things too fine for me because I had to escort my sister to the other Platform, introduce her to the Mail Driver for a Request Halt at Bapatla, see her board safe, and run across back to my Janata.
So, me and my sister V would approach our Janata Driver and charm him and win him over like Harris above and explain our predicament and get from him the needed assurance:
"No problem, sir! I will surely wait till you get back from the Mail and let me know...Mail is never late and Janata is never on time..."
A metamorphosed payback of the Good Old Grease that we got from the Anglo-Indian Drivers two decades ago...
************************************************************************************************************
While at Nellore in our childhood we were very angry with the GT Express which insolently used to increase its speed right in the town just to show off.
So, we used to run and place a Copper Coin (1/64 of the Silver Rupee) on the rail, run back and watch the GT express devastate it.
When we recovered it after a thorough search, it would be triple its diameter and red-hot and wafer thin....
The coin was gone but so was our venom against the GT.
Our Autocrat however doesn't approve of this childish prank, since there is every chance that the innocuous coin may derail the galloping train; just like a Train of Spoken Thoughts is derailed by a poor joke flung in its way by a foolish audience.
*************************************************************************************************************
In our youth when the Steam Engine was the pride of the Indian Railways, there was a vast circular shed at Bitrgaunta which could house a dozen steam engines and service them. The shed was labeled: "Home of the Steel Horses".
With the death and extinction of the Steel Horses, the shed also shed its residents one by forlorn one and is now a desolate grassy jungle housing stray cows and goats.
i was very happy when our Professor STA, while he was the Chairman of the Nehru Museum at KGP convinced the Indian Railways to gift one of their Steel Horses to NMST.
It was very much there till I retired; and my son and I used to visit it frequently, get up on it and pretend to drive it shouting: "Coo...zugh zugh zugh...".
I hope it is still there by the side of the Gnat (or Hunter?) Aircraft gifted to NMST by the Kalaikunda Air Force Base.....
Auld Lang Syne!
=============================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment