Title - Stories of love, courage and hope from the railways

In the 1980s, an announcer at Dadar station noticed that a woman used to come 20 minutes early to take a train to Victoria Terminus every time he was on duty. She approached him one day and told him that his voice was beautiful and she felt like listening to it forever. Surprised, he simply said “thanks”. He thought he would propose to her the next day but she never came back.Small, interesting trivia and anecdotes like this have been stringed together in a book written by a retired railway controller, Venkatesh Borgikar. Rail Chakra, written in Marathi, gives an insight into the behind the scenes of the Mumbai railway.“I worked with the railways for 39 years, of which, I have spent 20 years in Mumbai. Thereare a lot of interesting experiences about running the Mumbai suburban railway which I have compiled in the book,” said Borgikar, 73, a resident of Mulund.He said there were no railway announcers before Independence.“The post was created in 1950. JS Brownson was one of the most popular announcers back then and big names of the Marathi theatre industry used to come to Dadar station to listen to his voice,” he recalled.Once an unclaimed parcel – the name on it was Deepa Shekhar with a hostel address in Nainital — was carefully opened in the presence of the police, only to be found containing trophies, medals and certificates.The chief parcel supervisor SP Joshi shot a letter to the hostel and got a reply that the girl had left for America. He sent her a letter in the US.The girl’s father rushed to India to reclaim his daughter’s trophies. The parcel had got lost in transit and a complaint had been filed elsewhere. “I have been looking for it all over Indian Railways,” the father had said while profusely thanking Joshi.There was a case of another parcel of reptiles addressed to Haffkine Institute. A snake escaped, creating utter chaos. Officials of Haffkine came to the station, caught the snake, put it back into the box and left with the parcel.Railway gang man Ambaji Dhanaji Dhamdhere too finds his name in the book for putting up a name plate with GM written beside his name. When the writer asked him the reason, he said: “I am a GM -- gang man.”There is a heroic tale of motorman Jayant Nimsudkar, who was driving a CST-Ambernath local when he saw that the Deccan Express had derailed in front of his speeding local. “Nimsudkar braked and saved thousands of passengers,” said Borgikar.