Reminiscence of the Rails

The long awaited train arrives with the familiar whistle, bringing relief, cheer and hurriedness on passengers’ faces. Suddenly the platform becomes alive, buzzing with people and activities all round. Fathers holding their kids’ hands tightly and making way through the crowd to find their way to the compartments, the coolies pushing the luggage in between, with the hawkers shouting, desperately, at the top of their voices, trying to utilize every available space and opportunity to sell their items. Finally the train departs, with the relatives bidding farewell to their kins on the train, till the train fully goes out of sight. Everything becomes as quite as before.

Indian Railways: The one and the biggest entity that connects to all of us in India. Not only because of the fact that it employs more than 5% of total Indians, but also that everyone from all parts of the country have witnessed the activities described in the previous paragraph. Everyone has some or the other experience with train journeys to share.

The best part of travelling in a train is that one gets to meet lots of people from different cultures and backgrounds. One gets to socialize with people with different opinions and all of them share their thoughts and views. Pre-Independence, trains were a major factor in bringing people, with similar thoughts but from different regions, together. Even Mahatma Gandhi used the trains to mix with people that laid the foundation for the independence struggle.
In a long distance journey, one can find everyone to be very friendly with each other and trying to put up their best character in front of others. They kill time by playing cards, discussing over politics, sports and about everything that one normally doesn’t talk about in their daily lives, for lack of time. On the other hand, some keep themselves busy by reading novels and newspapers. There are yet others, who use the precious time in retrospection of their lives. If there is nothing else to do, one can simply observe people and their activities, both, inside and outside the train, like watching a mother scold her child for spilling things or a farmer working on the fields or simply the nature itself in its full-fledged pure form.

The charms of trains are also evident by the fact that many scenes of Indian movies are related to trains, most famous being “The Burning Train”. Also one can’t forget the famous last scene in DDLJ, where Raj pulls Simran towards him in a moving train. Since then, parting and meeting in trains have often been romanticized in films. Many love stories start in train in films, and may be in real life as well.

Even though Indian railways are much behind in infrastructure, when compared to their foreign counterparts, nevertheless, travelling in a train is still the most comfortable and enjoyable ride and every ride is a unique experience in itself. In spite of the tragedies and mishaps like train theft and train delays, memories of rail journeys will keep reminiscing us throughout.