Some trips on the trains of the public mover, Indian Railways, become ‘memorable’ for wrong reasons. When I say public mover, I do not mean Vande Bharat, Rajdhanis and Shatabdis; they are class movers between class places. By public mover I mean ordinary express and passenger trains which stop at every 20-30 km or at every station and carry everyone along.

A trip back to home from Mihijam in Jamtara district, Jharkhand, in Howrah-Amritsar Express was such a trip. This train covers over 1,900 km distance between Howrah and Amritsar stopping every 18 km in 45 hours. The train was about 15 minutes late at Chittaranjan, the station that serves Mihijam. The train arrived and I boarded my allotted seat.

As the train accelerated the compartment shook and rumbled terribly as an old washing machine, or a cement concrete mixer. The good part was that when the speed exceeded a certain limit the rumbling was gone, but jerks were still there. A sense of fear gripped me. What if the upper part of the compartment got detached from the wheels? All of us in the compartment were sure going to die.

I raised the issue with the ticket examiner when he came to check the ticket. He offered a weird explanation: the coach was jerky as it was empty and the jerks would go away when all the berths were occupied in an hour or so. I did not buy his logic and insisted on complaint book. I wrote the complaint, the ticket examiner dutifully signed it and gave a copy to me. But he suggested that I also made an online complaint for nothing would happen to this paper complaint.

That was one part. Come Jaisdih and the coach was filled with pilgrims, whom the ticket examiner and coach attendant addressed as bol bams, from Vaidyanath Dham at Deoghar. The bhagwa robe has now been replaced by bhagwa T-shirts and shorts. They made noise till midnight, adjusting their kanwars. The bells in kanwars continued to make sound till they got off at Benaras in the morning.

The last part of the journey is about the food. Forget that you will get anything in the trains without pantry car. Mine was such a train. Tea is available in the train from unauthorised vendors. Onboard lunch and dinner are made available from the base kitchen. But even at big stations like Patna, Mughalsarai (sorry Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Jn.) and Varanasi, no tea vendor makes round. Samosa wallah, chana wallah, chhole wallah, puri wallah, bread-omlette wallah… all are gone. Now these ‘dirty’ things have been replaced by ‘hygienic’ cakes, biscuits, namkeens and wafers from ITC, Nestle, Britania, Haliram, etc. The Government has effectively decided what one would eat and what not.

As the train neared Lucknow several high rises appeared adjacent to several km of mango orchards. In time to come the mango orchards will fall prey to the evil eye of some builder and go away for eternity.

The train reached Lucknow station 17 minutes before its scheduled time!