My first train journey as a newly minted railway employee began in an unreserved compartment bulging at the seams. The four of us settled in the passage near the washroom with our concerned fathers. As they worried about what us after the training, my friends and I chatted without concern. We had made it. And we would meet the rest of our friends the next day.
At Bangalore station, we changed trains and settled in a congested compartment. As the train left the station, we realised the goof-up when we asked a passenger the time the train would reach Tiruchirappalli.
We had boarded the wrong train. Rather, the wrong compartment. This train split at a junction where a few compartments advanced to Madurai (MDU) and the rest to Tiruchirappalli (TPJ). And we had hopped into the MDU segment of the train. Passengers advised us to alight at Erode Junction (ED), where the train stopped for thirty minutes to fill water, clean the toilets, etc.
None of us slept that night (sitting or standing) as we dared not miss our stop. The train was late. We were supposed to be at ED at night, but it was daybreak when the train finally rolled into the station.
At the Zonal Training School (ZTS), we arrived after the classes for the day had already begun. We met the principal and handed our orders. He rattled off a long sentence in Kannada as our orders were from Mysore. He then noticed our puzzled, sleep-deprived faces and switched to English.
“Your batchmates have completed half of the training, and you’re just arriving? You have two options now. You can join the next batch that would begin after two weeks or join them now.”
“We will join our batchmates,” we replied in unison.
“In that case, instead of A to Z, you will learn P to Z with them, and later A to P. Is that acceptable?” Everything was acceptable.
Nothing else interested us more than being back in a classroom with friends.
The two weeks of training at the ZTS, back in a classroom after two years were joyous. After our friends completed their training and left to join their stations, a separate class and a tutor were assigned exclusively to the four of us – Sunil, Priya, Balaguru and I. Deepavali holidays intervened, and the principal pitied us young souls, allowing us to travel home for festivities. But he couldn’t be partial toward us, so, for the first time in all its existence, the ZTS closed for Deepavali.
This is how we students of the VCRC set a precedent wherever we went.
Completing a written examination at the end of the training period, we travelled with our parents to the Mysore Divisional Office, where our official orders awaited us.
With unsteady hands, I read the station’s name written on the paper. I did not know where it was, nor did the clerk who handed me the orders. I scanned around and saw equally baffled faces. My friends were flung far and wide. The “lucrative railway job” did not seem lucrative or prestigious anymore.
I scampered to the large railway map of India hanging on a wall inside the divisional office, procured a wobbly plastic stool and stood atop. A search of the map of Karnataka showed a tiny fleck at the end of a line. Indeed, was it that? Surely, that blink-and-you-miss-it station could not be mine. That line seemed like the end of the world. There was no railway track beyond my station. It was the final terminal on a broad-gauge line. 424 km from MYS.
Most of the luckier ones, who had completed their training and reported to MYS earlier, had received their postings in and around the city. But we were tossed to different corners of the division. Balaguru’s station was 500 km from MYS. His was the farthest posting. Tears threatened to flow from his eyes. Sunil’s was the closest: 100 km from Mysore.
My batchmate Priya, a short bunny-toothed girl with glorious silky long hair, and I were posted to adjacent stations, that were 30 km apart. Resigned to our fates, my parents and I, along with Priya and her father, boarded the train to our destination.
This was becoming a habit. Travelling in unreserved compartments swarming with women wrapped in unwashed, musty blankets (Amma and I had a bout of sneezing), wailing, snot-dribbling children and swaying drunk men. The passenger train lumbered at a snail’s pace. In the subsequent stops, many more bodies crammed into the overflowing carriage. My parents squeezed me between them. All of us, stiff like cadavers, perched on a seat meant for three. After five gruelling hours, the night passenger train crawled to reach Bangalore, a distance of 150 km. We grabbed some bread and water at the bustling city station and caught the train to my destination.
It was the district headquarters, so there was a direct train (small mercies).
Priya and I, Railway “Commercial Clerks” (our designation), huddled and discussed options with our parents. We would find a working women’s hostel in between our stations and stay together, shuttling for work. Living alone wasn’t something we could even consider at that time.
En route, the scenic countryside eased my mind off the reality of heading to an end-of-the-line station. As the monsoons had just ceased, the train wended over many brooks and cut through lush farmlands. I stuck my face to the grille, and the chilled morning air numbed my nose and lips. Vast swathes of countryside, fields, trees and villages dotted with huts whisked past. Many houses had green moss and plants growing on the tiled roofs. The verdant scenery appeared cosy with steam rising from the chimneys.
At Priya’s station, we witnessed smoke-belching vehicles and factories – a big town. I had great hopes for my station; it was a district headquarters, after all. Priya and her father sallied forth, and my parents and I cruised on.
Then my station loomed ahead – carpets of grassy farmland as far as the eye could see. The train halted, and the platform blazed with life; perhaps the station was secluded from the main town, I surmised.
Apprehensive and excited, we descended on the throbbing platform which, like steam after a hot shower, metamorphosed in precisely eight minutes. A desolate ghost town greeted us as our train was shunted to a distant track.
The scene I witnessed was straight out of an art-house movie by Adoor Gopalakrishnan or Satyajit Ray – empty parallel tracks flanked by vacant platforms. A crow on a cracked stone bench heralded my arrival and pierced the haunting stillness. The semaphore on the side of the track stood with its red hand at 90 degrees, indicating a stop signal. My old life stopped here, and a new life was to begin. Was I home?
I gazed at the blue skies, the long winding tracks, the white-and-red semaphore, and a colossal peepul tree where the platform tapered and ended. This was my station.
A face peeked out from an opening near the shuttered stall. The board in faded lettering read Shetty’s Vegetarian Light Refreshment (VLR), inducing hunger instantly. VLR stalls and I have a history. Every summer vacation as long as I can remember, the moment the train halted at Palghat Jn, at an unearthly 04.00 hrs, I demanded pazhampori (sweet banana fritters) from the VLR – Amma’s excuses about it being stale evaded my ears. The pleasure of sinking my teeth into the oil-dripping snack is incomparable.
Achan clanged the shutter of this VLR until the face rolled it up.
“Aenu beku?” (What do you want?) A Pinocchio nose darted out.
I went near Achan, leaving Amma to guard the baggage even though no one was around. This was an extremely significant risk. We belong to the generation who secured their luggage with a chain and lock. While travelling, one of us would sacrifice sleep inside the train to sit guard over the luggage.
Beku in Tamil means a fool, a stupid person. For a second, I wondered if that man called us fools. He understood our confusion and gestured “What?”
“Sir, food?” I mimed the universal sign of food.
“Chitranna solpa idhe. Banni.” (There’s some chitranna left. Come.)
I had no clue what he said, but we followed him inside, as he raised the shutter a little. His daughter, in school uniform, smiled at us. She played the interpreter. We were introduced to chitranna (almost a staple food in the region), a tasteless plate of yellow rice with coconut chutney to accompany it. Another prominent dish in this area is chow chow bhath: one serving of uppittu (upma) and one serving of kesari bhath (sheera).
Mr Shetty, in charge of the VLR, informed us that the station saw six trains per day, and he opened his shop only during the train timings. He served us the leftovers after a busy sale. When I told him I was the new railway clerk, his stunned surprise matched our shock.
“You are the first lady employee in our station!”
Amma bawled her eyes out.
Excerpted with permission from Platform Ticket: The Untold Stories Of People Who Make Train Travel Possible, Sangeetha Vallat, Penguin India.
