RailEnquiry

THESE days tactful officers are in great demand. They are supposed to be far more efficient than the straight-forward ones, and cause the least amount of bother for their seniors. They usually sort out problems and handle the situation with fair means or foul, without aggravation, and not bothering the seniors to come to the spot and handle complicated stuff. Quite often, this tactfulness may involve turning a blind eye to brazen defiance and flouting of the law. The apprehension is that picking up a confrontation may lead to a more serious law and order problem; so why bother, let bygones be bygones and live and let live.In this context, I had a recent experience with the story commencing in Varanasi. As we waited for our train at Varanasi platform, it happened to be the hottest day of the summer. But, thankfully, Amritsar-Howrah Mail was almost on time, and our coupe was really chilled, providing instant relief.To me, a train journey has always been a fascinating experience. At times, when one is looking out of a fast moving train, he may not be watching the objects, but his train of thoughts may be racing much faster and farther and sometimes recollecting old memories. This is what precisely happened on this occasion also as I tried to recount the history associated with Amristsar-Howrah Mail to my wife.Amrtisar-Howrah Mail was one of the most important trains of the British Raj, and used to connect Lahore and areas beyond Calcutta. After Independence, the terminus shifted from Lahore to Amrisar, the rest remaining unchanged. Tagore’s Kabuliwallah would have perhaps come on this train to Calcutta had it been running at that time. Netaji, while under house arrest, escaped in disguise from Calcutta to board this very train at Gomoh, to finally reach Kabul, and then continue into Russia.

As our journey from Varanasi coincided with the last rites of ‘Mukhiyaji’ of Aarah, I had taken the precaution of checking before boarding, and had been assured of normalcy. Smug with the satisfaction that there was adequate police escort with the train, my memory took me back to an incident from this very area. It was December, 1973, while traveling from Port Blair to Delhi, I had boarded the chair car in the Delux-Express from Howrah.

Towards the evening, we reached Patna, and as the train was coming to a halt a horde of young boys, may be 40/50 of them, barged into our AC chair car. Apparently, they had come from a neighbouring town to Patna to watch “Bobby” and were full of ‘her’ description and songs. They had filled up every inch of the aisle and even pushed and squeezed the bona fide passengers to make room in front of the chairs.

Those were the days of rampant chain-pulling on trains, and now one understood why and how it happened. But just then, a policeman came in, yelled at the crowd, banged his cane on the floor, and caused an unbelievable commotion and a stampede. The entire crowd of hooligans vanished in a couple of minutes leaving the compartment littered with chappals of all kinds. As a young officer, I had watched all the action from sidelines and felt happy that each one in our compartment was all praise for the lone policeman.

Forty years later, as we were to get off at a very unearthly hour of 2 am, we had an early dinner and were preparing to retire. Around 8 pm, the train reached Aarah and all hell broke loose. Instinctively, I bolted the coupe from inside and switched off the lights. Outside, in the narrow aisle of the AC bogie, there was a crowd of hooligans hurling abuse, shouting slogans and creating general mayhem.

Our door was continuously banged on and I was mentally prepared to pull the chain, had the bolt loosened even a wee bit. There was noise of shattering glass and vandalism on the doors of other cabins. This must have lasted about 40-45 minutes till the train reached Patna and suddently all was quiet. As the door was slid open, the sight was as of a battlefield. Curtains in the corridor had been torn, and some removed, the curtain rods had been unhinged and used to damage glass and other fixtures. Water bottles had all been removed, the linen store on the way to toilet, where the railway employees were seated, had been vandalised.

The attendant complained of removal of sheets, pillows and blankets. And while all this had happened, I found the same compartment had four men in uniform, quietly sprawled in their seats, with rifles between the legs as if nothing had happened at all.

And as the train moved on towards Jasidih, I was left comparing the two situations, focused around Patna, but separated by about 40 years. I was wondering whether the armed escort in our compartment were simply negligent or were being tactful. And whether the overall deterioration, so visible in public behaviour these days, had come about due to the cumulative effect of years of tactfulness.