None to return

It is advised to read the earlier post "Home" before reading this.

Ramprasad was transferred to a station near to his home. He did not expect that his application for transfer to his desired station would get the approval of the authority so soon. But hopes are sometimes fulfilled in this world which seems always to stand against individual preferences only to make fun with its own woldly norms. So one day he packed up his bag and left Sitarampur. The transfer order came all on a sudden only fifteen days after Mallika and her brother had left for their home.

It was a unique situation for me as I always was sympathetic for Ramprasad –who had become a close friend-for his lonely life here in Sitarampur leaving his wife, child and parents in a far away home. So I congratulated him for his good luck. But at the same time I was to lose someone who was perhaps more than a family member in my so called ‘home’. I knew that it was a permanent parting of ways for us as Ramprasad would never come back to this small rural railway station in future.

During Mallika’s brief stay here-the air of Sitarampur had been filled with fragrance and she had induced a seeking in me for a permanence. I had not exactly realised this so far unaccustomed element in my psychology. But I had lost that cosiness of living in one’s preferred place after she had left. The coming and going of the trains had turned the platform and the cosiest bench on it as something abandoned. Mallika had put me in embarrassment for not inviting her just at the last moment she had been leaving me. On sitting over the bench of the platform I had many times –in my silent uttering-told Mallika that Sitarampur had been a lesser world for me after she had left. In the impermanence air of the platform –the inarticulate invitation meant a vague hollowness.

But we mortals live in extended time. So I hoped that next time when Ramaprasad would go to his home I would send my invitation to Mallika through him. I had asked Ramprasad several times about his next visit to his home. A sad smile appeared on his face every time I asked him of it. He did not know that I was sadder than him for his not having the opportunity to visit his home so soon! I always carried a sense of hurriedness like that person who was a bit late and so was hurried in his steps of walking to catch the last train. I would have to mend my lapse by inviting Mallika. But however impermanent the world might be it was certain to me that sooner or later Ramprasad would have his leave application approved by his authority. But sometime our fate gives more than what we want. So Ramprasad’s original application for transfer was approved in an unusual swiftness.

The relieving station master had already taken charges and we all like so many similar occasions in different times and with different persons were waiting for the 2115 UP on the platform. Ramprasad like a good friend became sad for leaving me –as both of us knew that we would never meet again. The 2115 UP arrived and Ramprasad boarded the train.

The train left with Ramprasad in a few minutes. This time I had been robbed of my opportunity to invite Mallika. Mallika was forever lost in the impermanence air of the railway platform.

Home

The present station master was a very amiable person. So he was a good friend to many persons. But here in Sitarampur station he was a waste thanks to those who had transferred him to this station which served only a small township. Mr.Ramprasad Jha –the station master, was an educated person. He had an M.A. degree in history from Patna University. But I liked him because he had an educated mind and was interested in many things of this world and he formed or made opinions depending on his own understanding in the secluded enlightenment of his mind’s inner chamber in stead of being influenced by others. But all his qualities were superfluous and useless to his authorities who needed only a dutiful station master who would never worry his mind thinking about the future of the world or poverty. So Ramprasad felt himself lonely in Sitarampur. Even newspapers were not available. One would have to go to the bazaar to get a
two-day stale newspaper.















Naturally we two became friends. We used to discuss many things in the evening in his room in the station. Sometimes we also sat on my favourite bench and discussed perhaps all things under the sun. As a few trains ran through Sitarampur Ramprasad had enough time to think of other things than the job of a station master would have involved him in other not so insignificant stations. He lived in his quarters attached to the station. But except for lunch and sleep in the night he usually stayed in the station. He spent most of his leisure in reading books sitting in the station master’s room on the platform. But when I went to the station he kept aside his books and diary and welcomed me with a smile. It was a pleasure for both of us to meet each other.
Ramprasad was a married person. But there were many problems for which it was not possible for him to keep his young wife and his two year old child with him in Sitarampur. He was not well paid to run two families –as he had to support his parents and brothers at his home place. It had not been possible for him to get a better job elsewhere –in spite of his educational qualification. It was difficult in India. So Ramprasad visited his family only when his leave was approved and the authority could manage a person to work here temporarily for his leave period.
One day Ramprasad told me that his brother in law and his sister in law would soon come here in Sitarampur for a few days. They were brother and sister. They loved Ramprasad and so at the first opportunity they felt to make a pleasant trip to Ramprasad’s place. Ramprasad’s wife would not come as she had to look after her aging in-laws. Ramprasad appeared to be very happy at this information and soon became busy preparing his households for the two guests. I also helped him buying this or that thing as would be felt required by the guests.
So one day Nitish and Mallika got down from 2116 DN. Ramprasad received them with great enthusiasm. They were quite young. Nitish was in his mid twenties and Mallika appeared to have just crossed her teens. Ramprasad was a little busy as the train was yet to leave the station and so I accompanied them and brought them to the station master’s room. Both of them were handsome and jovial as was evident in our casual exchanges in the room of the station master. Keshav the tea man had come to know that they were close relatives of the Masterjee (station master) and so he brought biscuits and tea for us. Mallika told me “Our journey seem to have not yet ended” and turning to her brother said “as if we are resting in a waiting room in the platform!”
I said to Mallika, “But it’s also the real home to Ramprasad and for me it has the warmth of a home and more comfortable a place-psychologically”
“Is it? A railway platform can not be a living place.” –Mallika said in reply. “But why?”- I asked. “It is because the place is not a stable place at all. You can not make a station your address. It exists in transition. One does not come here. When one wants to leave a place-he uses it as a diving board.”-Mallika replied with a smile and continued “Where do you like to dive into to feel comfortable?” “Into my mind.” I said also with a smile. Nitish –so far had not sppken –but shared the conversation with a silent smile now burst into laughter for my statement. Ramprasad entered the room and told them with an apologetic quick tone “Let us go to home. Oh! You are so tired!” The three rose up and went for Ramaprasad’s quarters. After walking a distance Mallika looked back and told “We’ll visit you in your home here again.” I replied with a loud voice “You are heartily welcome.”
They came here the next evening and we three were joined together and sat on my favourite bench. Ramprasad was busy in his room. Nitish told that they had been busy in setting Ramprasad’s household which was in a mess. Mallika cooked, especially for Ramprasad, who –she thought, should relish his favourite dishes at least for a few days they would stay here. At this point I said to Mallika “Can you cook well?”
She retorted “How can I tell it? The taste of a food is proved in its eating” and quickly asked “What are your favourite dishes?”
“There are too many”, I continued “and you’ll need many days to exhaust the menu”.
Mallika smiled and said “Why have you not married yet? A food-lover should not remain a bachelor” At this point Nitish told us that he was going to see the surroundings of the railway station. After he left I said “Mallika, you are right perhaps ” I continued “ but whether there is anyone in this world who will agree to sharing a life with a person who is a vagabond like me –and loves spending more time in the station than in his house?”
“May be a woman could have made a home for you elsewhere.” Mallika replied thoughtfully looking to where the rails blurred in the distant far.
Nitish returned and came to us followed by Ramprasad and Keshav. So we all sat on the bench and keshav entertained us with his hot tea. He told that this tea was special. He refused to take money this time and requested us to have it as the two were also his invitees.
I told Mallika “See! The platform has become a home now!”
All burst into laughter.
They next day I had an urgent work and so I could not visit the station and my new found friends. I had asked their permission telling “Sorry for not seeing you tomorrow-I have an urgent preoccupation. I’m sad to leave you here.”
Mallika had retorted “You are leaving us in your home! Don’t be sad!”
I had returned in the night. So in the morning I went straight to Ramprasad’s quarters. Mallika seemed to be very happy as she has found me in a home now. She prepared tea for me and told me with her typical naughty smile “It is not as good as Keshav’s! But what else can I do?”
Nitish and Ramprasad laughed loudly at her remark.
In the evening Mallika and Nitish came to the station as their sojourn in Sitarampur ended. Ramprasad was also with them. I was there from before an hour of their reaching the station.
Nitish was talking with Ramprasad about his transfer from Sitarampur. Perhaps they were not happy to see the way Ramprasad lived here. It was really bad to live in so far a place leaving one’s wife, child and parents. At this time the bell-man rang the bell. The passengers became alerted. In a minute the face of 2115 UP appeared in the far.
“Good bye!”-Mallika told. The train stopped at the platform. Ramprasad looked sad.
We all boarded the train and helped Mallika and Nitish to sit comfortably.
Nitish again thanked me for my enjoyable accompaniment for these days. The whistle blew and Ramaprasad and I got down from the train. The 2115 UP moved nonchalantly. Mallika, looking through the window threw her words to me, “You have not invited me to come again, have you?” The train passed without caring to pause to allow me to say anything. Mallika had told me on the first day that the station was not a place to go or come to. One goes there in order to leave for somewhere.
For the first time in my life I was robbed of my home in that somber evening.

A tale without an end

Most people, perhaps all want to live in a far greater world than the physical or
no-nonsense practical local world they are habituated to live in. In the morning people eagerly wait for the newspaper to know about the events of the world –that do not have always any bearing on their day-to-day life. Still there lies a subtle concern for that outer world that belongs to them also in their greater selves. If for any reason newspaper is not available to a person on a morning day the reaction is as bad as taking one’s bread without butter. The sense lies in an absence of a required something. One may argue that the discomfort or uneasiness lies essentially in habitual attachment and not in failing to have a link to the outer world. To them I must say that they are partly correct as human beings in their very nature are inclined to move in mechanical routine to feel the existence comfortable. The blatant example of such attachment to mechanical repetition is the existence of creeds in religions. Most believers can not stick to their gods without creeds. Man loves to make everything into religion as they are comfortable in routine and creeds to stick to. But at the same time there exists a greater being in man though not predominantly active and free in reigning in over the ways of life. So what we see in man is the interplay of these two opposite tendencies –the impulse to return to inertness and a will or want for freedom for something otherwise and different from all that limit his soul’s aspiration. But I think I have already been far from my actual position behind my raising the issue of morning newspaper. Actually I wanted to say that as a newspaper brings to man the whole outer world of life which touches him in a greater way so was the platform of Sitarampur railway station to me. I could breathe greater life there. To be true to my feeling I touched life there also which one can not find in the cold and fixed letters of a newspaper. A newspaper makes the world small and the facts can not carry mysteries. It is an official statement or may even be a documentary on life but not the life itself. On the other hand I got a sense of far in Sitarampur station. I found there unknown also. There hung about tales in the station –tales of which I could never know the ends. It was a miniature of a living world to me. Nothing begins or ends in a railway station. So I visited the station frequently without any practical necessity and stayed there for sometime. Generally I strolled along the long platform when it was not train-time. Most of the time I liked to sit on the bench under the tree and roamed in mind’s own ways.

The other day when
I went to the station I found very few people as it was much before the time of arrivals of both the up and down trains. Bhola –a dog who also made the station its home –was sleeping near the station-master’s room. As I walked along the platform I found someone sitting on the bench which was my favourite. There were other benches but I liked it as it was under a tree and was at the outer end of the platform. I went near the bench and gave him a closer look. He appeared to be a Bengali like me. There was no Bengali living in Sitarampur except me and so I thought that he was waiting for 2115 UP. But for that matter the travellers generally did not rest on this bench. While I was thinking about him apparently without showing any interest for him –he suddenly told me showing the other side of the bench, “You may sit here”. And he moved a little to make a comfortable space for me to sit there. I sat beside him. So some casual exchanges went on between us. I came to know that he was not a resident of Sitarampur. Even he had never known the existence of this place before coming here. He had got down here by mistake thinking it his destination-i.e. Balagarh. He had never travelled even in this route before. He had boarded the train as advised by his friend in a letter and whom he had been going to. He had been tired and felt sleepy in the train. So he had requested a co-passenger for making an alert when the train would reach Balagarh. Unfortunately he had been wrongly alerted and as he had been sleepy-he alighted in a hurry. He discovered the mistake after the train had left. So he was waiting for the next train. As he had to wait for two long hours for the next train we tried to get closer to each other as friends and went on talking and discussing many things under the sky and in half an hour we knew each other’s names and relevant information.

Meanwhile I called a porter and asked him
to call Keshav –the Chai-walla. Keshav was very loyal to me and though there was no passenger then for his tea-buisness-he came to me within a few minutes carrying his kettle. So our chatting got a boosting with Keshav’s hot tea and in another half an hour we became friends. Time, which had hung as a heavy burden on my friend when he got down here, overtook his waiting mind now. Slowly a shadow of parting pain gathered about us. So I invited him. I requested him to drop here on his way back to his home from Balagarh. He happily accepted my invitation. The time was rushing towards us by an unavoidable pressure by the imminent 2115 UP that both of us were very much eager to ensure our next meeting together. I told him to drop a letter to the station master here informing him with reference to my name the exact day of his coming so that I would be able to be present at the station to receive him. It was always better to get me under the care of the station master who was my friend. There remained many unfinished discussions and tales which could only be finished on another day under this tree where they were born. The bell on the platform tolled for both the arrival and parting times. We got up and I led him to a suitable place on the platform for boarding a proper and good compartment. In seconds the train rushed in the platform and fixed everyone’s destiny instantly with its overpowering presence. We embraced each other. I reminded him again of my invitation to my home. He boarded the train and got a convenient seat beside a window. None of us at that parting moment felt that we had been strangers to each other even three hours ago. The train left the platform.

I did not receive any letter from Amal (the name of my new found friend) in the next week when he was scheduled to return from Balagarh. But I got it after a year not from Balagarh but from his home. He wrote that he was sorry for not dropping in my place as the return ticket had been bought by his friend in a hurry without knowing my programmed destination. He knew it only after his train had left Balagarh. In spite of that he had not been discouraged as he thought that he would break his journey at my place. But instantaneously he came to discover that he had not known the name of my station as during our discussion the name of the station had never come to our mind as something necessary. I knew it as my home and not by its name and he had never required to know the name of this station as he started for Balagarh station with the ticket he had bought before coming here. Perhaps man is always unaware of most important thing he is living with like air he breathes in. However he had checked the names of all the stations of this route but it had not helped him anymore as the name of Sitarampur was never a known name to him. It was only recently that while discussing the matter with a friend –he referred my name and other matters that he knew about me; he came to know the name of this station as the friend came out to be a common friend of us incidentally. He wrote that he would surely come to me whenever he would find an opportunity.

I did not know whether he would ever find that opportune time as life has always been seeking through its own instincts newer destinations with people and places for telling other tales. So even if he would chance to be here through detour slipping the course of destiny –we would not be able to continue the unfinished tale that had began a year ago under the tree. It would be another tale and also with two different persons though with the same names.

But whatever it might be –a tale never reaches its end in life.

Continuity

I was away in Delhi and had to stay there for almost two months as my office thought of no other alternative to manage their problems in easier ways than to disturb my stability in staying at Sitarampur. They were used to think that an official action towards any betterment could produce a conceivable result only in changes of their staff's postings . So I had to be transferred temporarily. However finally I could be able to return only because my absence here caused much more troubles than what they faced in Delhi. So –on a Sunday I got down in Sitarampur and felt enlivened with fresh air of this place. I had never thought while staying in Delhi that the air I breathed in was polluted there. Nobody thinks about the quality of air of their living place as air also is tasteless. So for the first time my being tasted something consciously which was as refreshing as one feels after a cold bath in a summer noon.

The train 2116 DN slowly passed from my eyes and erased many persons behind it on the platform. Soon it became an empty place. I had no hurry to go to home. The place which I loved most was not Sitarampur –but its railway station. So the home with all its known surroundings gradually embraced me and I relished that- what people know by the phrase –‘home, sweet home’. I went to the bench and sat on it for rest after many hours’ journey. Actually I did not feel for rest. I was not that tired at all. I was rather feeling an extra vigour perhaps for an inner cheerfulness like a bird for getting back to its known old perch. I looked around my old dear place and the whole surroundings also looked back to me simultaneously and we both knew each other and shared between us a single silent word ‘hello!’. The place I had left two months ago remained perfectly loyal to my eyes now. The trees, the discoloured shade over my head, the round hanging brass plate used for bell, the shanty on the other side of the boundary wall where Keshab- the tea-man lived with his family and the smell of burnt coal were all exactly the same. Perhaps this sense of 'known' lies in discovering something where one essentially belongs to –is a source of a spontaneous and unconscious delight of existence.

Keshab was seen coming toward me carrying his kettle. I looked on the same station clock and instantly knew that it was time for the arrival of 2115 UP. The time –I thought was not changed even. It also returned back with me! Keshab was standing near me and asked me with his friendly smile “When have you come?” etc. He gave me a cup(a disposable earthen pot) of tea. I sipped and instantly felt that I had not tasted tea for the last two months. I always felt that if it was not from Keshab –in the platform of Sitarampur railway station-the tea did not have so much of the taste of tea. While sipping tea and talking to Keshab –like two friends meeting after a long time-I heard the sound of the station bell. The bell rang in my heart and I knew it was coming and tried to find the face of the engine tracing along the far stretched rails. I also discovered many people meanwhile arrived in the platform for catching the 2115 UP.

The 2115 UP train arrived and as usual there was a commotion and the whole station rose to its festive excitement. Now I stood up and entered the room of the station master. I knew him and he also regarded me as one of them-the railway staff as both of us considered the station as our home. But I did not find Kamtaprasad in his seat. Instead I saw an unknown person sitting in his place. He raised his head and looked to me-“Yes?” I told him that I wanted to meet Kamtaprasad-the station master. He stared at me for sometime and asked me the reason. I told him-“Nothing. We are friends. I have been out of station and only returned today. So this is mere courtesy.”

“He has been transferred –to another station ten days ago. I have joined here as his replacement.”-he told me and suddenly began to be busy with his works.

On my way to my home I asked myself “Who remains there in this continuity to roll on?’’

Generating Electricity From Running Train

The other day the station master of Sitarampur Railway Station told me that the railway authority had approved the electrification of the route passing through Sitarampur station. I was sitting on my favourite bench on the platform and was thinking over the matter of this electrification. I knew it would take a long time for materialization of this proposed project. Now the trains were pulled by steam engines here. It is good to avoid stream engine considering pollution and the rapid depletion of coal reserve. Even in the United States most electricity generated comes from burning coal? In 2006, nearly half i.e. 49% of the country's 4.1 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity used coal as its source of energy. The situation is same with diesel –driven engines. Moreover India can ill-afford to use diesel for all the railway engines. So electricity is the best option if one can generate it. That was the stream of my thoughts that evening. But India is still a poor generator of electricity she needs badly to meet everyday consumption. It came to my mind suddenly over the possibility of getting electricity from a running train itself. We all know that we need some mechanical energy to move the dynamo for generating electrical energy. So we manipulate in every possible way to utilise constantly all the available means to get mechanical energy. But it is also not easily available situation in any country to get access to some automatic mechanical devices without least compromise. You need coal to produce thermal energy, force of moving water to produce hydroelectricity. And there are some other modes also to move a dynamo like nuclear energy. There can not be an easy way though the wind force and solar energy are being tapped nowadays.

But I thought a novel way of producing electricity simply from a running train while sitting on the platform. For instance if we can manipulate the constant whirling of the wheels of a running train by connecting them with dynamos fitted alongside the wheels –the dynamos would start generating electricity. Initially the engine would have to be driven by electricity from outside overhead electric line. But once the engine gets momentum –it might get electricity from its own running wheels. The driver of the engine might then switch of the connection to overhead source as it is no longer required. The engine itself and all the wheels of the train become a source of mechanical energy for generation of electrical energy free of cost. If the engine is allowed to run without stop it would run perpetually. But the train must stop at stations. So once stopped the engine would require again to get connected to outside source of electricity for its initial movement till it is enabled to generate electricity from the running wheels. But it would reduce the consumption of outside electricity. Moreover –we may charge a battery inside the engine so that the battery may be used to generate initial motion after stops at stations.

One may ask how much electricity can be generated in this way to run a high speed train. Obviously there might be some loss of energy in this process which may affect the engine getting a required momentum. But it all depends of the innovation of technological devices to utilize from the optimum mechanical energy from the running wheels. The modern trains in many countries including Japan run at very high speed. But such trains do not have conventional wheels. For example the modern technology of high speed trains works on magnetic levitation. In that case the device required to be changed in another way.

Finally, the linear motion of a high speed train itself may be used to support the auto-system Blog Awarddevice for generating electricity.

Blog Award

Everyday for some time you are in the habit of surfing different websites and in the way you come to know many ideas, facts, works, activities etc of innumerable people and countries. Sometime for some needs you require to find the desired sites i.e. for further studies or say about modeling and sometime it’s for sheer mechanical inquisitiveness. You are in many ways connected to various persons. Some of them are friends and some relatives. So you have to check your inbox regularly to find your mails from your acquaintances and some of them may need immediate responses. There are also some mails from persons whom you do not know. So you have to reply some mails.

You have your cell-phones. There are, if I am not wrong, saved many cell phone numbers of different people with whom you receive and send messages and calls everyday in proper and also odd times. You have to reschedule your program on the basis of some calls or messages. You have to know and enquire on different matters related to the callers. This is necessary.

You have your car which carries you to different places of both of your liking and disliking. You have to be frequently still and stagnated in traffic jam. You have missed several important matters for this traffic jam like failing to board your plane, not being able to be present in the solemn-moment of birthday-cake celebration etc. There are several instances like this. You have been harassed with the policemen for someone’s FIR for consequences resulting from your driving.

You are always in a terrific whirl of sociability. You are never alone. When you can manage some time of your own and feel watching a television serial or a program on social crime-you are thrown amongst some people you are not related to but you become disturbed.

The modern devices that help you always –also constantly wind you with a constantly moving wheel that never stops. You have long forgotten to know you –taste you in your terms. It’s the system that drives you, moves you and generate every moments several things to lure the palate of your life impulses so that you may never feel yourself as separate from this whirling situation. Your psychological system is gradually changed into the working system of the society. You become a live commentary of produced by the gadgets you use. Man formed society for his own secure living. Now the society itself needs man for its own sustenance. It’s now a huge super-structure that claims its millions of needs like a octopus spreading everywhere its sucking tentacles. This may sound like a philosophic symbolism but it’s more powerful and strong than its symbol.

Sitarampur is almost a village. Its only attraction is its railway station and the giant-known to people as 2115 UP. Otherwise it’s a calm place. The world of Sitarampur speaks with the thirsty birds in the noon, the barking of a lone dog in the night and the sound of the bells hung around the cows’ neck when they return from the field. In the dead of night when you turn your side on the bed you may hear the faint whistle of an engine of a goods train passing through Sitampur station. The world is related to you here. When you hear it, you hear yourself. When you touch it, the world touches you. You are not alone here as the very word ‘alone’ is a word of urban and modern man. When you are here you exist with on a bond between you and the world you were born in.

But I’m not telling you to return to your own home. You can not return. You can not dismantle the superstructure that has grown on you. A day will come when you will feel restless and suffer like anything. Anguish and suffocation will push you on the verge of extinction-death. But however certain its coming -it is never an escape route. Alas! You will not get rid of this superstructure that has been created by your desire and mind-the very constituent of your life. If in any future you feel that you are more than what you are and you want desperately to exceed yourself-then and only then you will find the power to re-create you. You will get the universe that is within you.

Do not think of Sitarampur. It will have long ceased to be what it is now. Modern man has no native land.

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Missed the train

I was sitting on the bench on the platform of Sitarampur railway station. I liked this place and whenever I felt for a refreshing atmosphere I went to the station. A railway station has a peculiar distinctiveness. It’s not a place in the sense a market or a sea-beach is a place. The very sense of place is absent in a railway station. The far from every side of the world effaces the local. It never allows a sense of stagnation and repetition in the psychology of one when he or she enters or waits in a railway station.

Slowly the Sun dipped behind me leaving his magical hues for the clouds in the western sky. Suddenly I remembered that it was 17 th April today. Aye –I had come to Sitarampur exactly on this day five years ago by 2115 UP. Five years had gone by and Sitarampur had nothing new for me. No corner of this small town lied hidden to me. But five years ago when I had got down on this very platform the place had had a queer and exotic look.

The signal was given for the coming 2115 UP.

The train entered the station. I stared and was watching from head to tail of this nonchalant train –just waiting with a restless tension. Sitarampur was just any other station to it.

Suddenly I wanted to board it and to be one with it.

Sitarampur was a world of everyone. 2115 UP knew none.

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PROMOTION

Gagan-babu is the station-master of Sitarampur Railway Station. After serving the railway many years as assistant station-master, Gagan-babu was promoted to the post of station-master at the fag end of his life and posted at Sitarampur station two years ago. Those who joined the Indian Railways with Gagan-babu as assistant station masters are all now superior to Gagan-babu in positions. He remained in the same position from the date of entry to the railways for forty years. If anyone becomes inquisitive enough to enquire about his efficiency it is open for him to find that inefficiency was nowhere recorded in his service book. His colleagues felt pity for him and many of them also felt it their ordained prerogative to advise him to bring the matter of the injustice to the cognizance of proper authorities. But Gagan-babu could not be able to make an application. He carried in him a sense of humiliated self and so deep was this sense of humiliation that he always avoided any discussion about his career. He generally shied away from his colleagues as his very presence amidst them would trigger a sense of pity and compassion in the mind of his friends.

He had no grievance against his authorities. To him reminding the authority of denying him a promotion would be an act of digging out some hidden inefficiency about his performance hitherto unknown to all. So what was the use of making open a point of his inefficiency for a wider public?

It had been very difficult to get an employment when Gagan-babu got an assignment and that too in as big an organization as Indian Railways. Gagan-babu in his childhood had been very fond of reading travelogues and about the places of tourists’ interest. But he could never dream of travelling to far off places like Delhi, Shimla, Kanyakumari etc. They were for the well-off persons to travel in such places. It had not been easy for him to go to Calcutta for attending the interview for the railway service. The up and down train-fares from his village to Calcutta was too much for his father to afford. So after getting the service when he found that he was entitled to get two free passes a year to travel by railways he felt indebted to the railways for being so generous to its employees and with this also, for the first time in his life, Gagan-babu had become relieved to be under the care of such a giant and and generous master.

So it never occurred to him that he needed, by means of an extra effort, to remind the authority that he should get more.

It was after many years Gagan-babu began to find unevenness in the system in respect of treating the employees. He was not considered at par with his colleagues. He found himself as left out at every sorting every year and a day came when he discovered that he had been discarded for something more. He began to feel ashamed of himself and always faced a sense of guilt at any incidence of facing his higher authorities. It was, he thought, a great wrong on his part by failing to please his authority by getting a higher responsibility. He was growing very keen to hide his ‘inefficient’ self from the eyes of all. Fortunately for Gagan-babu he did not have to work with many persons in a small station as assistant station master.

So one day when he received the office order promoting him to the post of station- master he kept an emphatic low profile with his promotion and did not inform any of his colleagues who had been working in other far off divisions of the railways. Losing was not so bad but to receive a crown only for the last two years rubbed salt into the wounded and hidden sense of inferiority.

Gagan-babu’s tenure as station-master in Sitarampur station has now come to an end. He will have to retire today. A young man of his early thirties has arrived yesterday and took charge of the station from Gagan-babu. Gagan-babu had been living here in the railway quarters with his family. He sent them along with all his belongings to his village home a week ago.

Gagan-babu is free today- the last day of his stay at Sitarampur. The young station-master is very smart and has already brought everything of the station under his command in a single day. It has been at his insistence the assistant station master arranged a get-together at his quarters and the three have had a great lunch, the cost of which has been borne by the new station master. There has been no other way of giving a farewell to the outgoing station master.

In the evening all the three-Gagan-babu, the new station master and his assistant are waiting for the last train 2115 UP. Gagan-babu will never return here. The train appears in the far. Suddenly Gagan-babu feels the powerful authority of the railways is coming in the train to bid him good-bye. A sense of repentance darts through his mind.

Gagan-babu has left to join another phase of his life. Does any authority exist there to whom Gagan-babu will have to prove his efficiency anymore, and if yes, what for?

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2115 UP on hidden rails

In one summer afternoon I went to Sitarampur Railway Station at quarter to 6 and sat on the bench on the platform waiting for the last train which was scheduled to arrive at 7.30 pm. So I would have to wait. It was not comfortable and rather bothersome to wait for a long time especially as I was a little restless then in my mind for my uncle whom I wanted to meet as soon as possible. I had received a letter yesterday from my uncle requesting me to meet him as soon as possible for an urgent matter. He had not, in his letter, mentioned the nature of his urgency. He was a bachelor and lived alone with his servant cum manager, Bhutnath, who was very trustworthy and had been living with him for a long time. So I was worried with the word ‘urgent’ in his letter although he had advised me not to be worried and read too much about his request. But it is futile to claim a calm poise of mind if one is summoned to visit someone for an urgent but unknown need. My uncle should have studied a little about human psychology!
Naturally the time passed in a slow pace and played tossing with my worries to every conceivable direction. When I took out the last cigarette, moved to the waste-bin and threw the empty pack into it- the small but convincing light appeared in the far end of the rails. Suddenly I felt indebted to the train.

There train was almost empty as it was a Sunday. I sat beside a window and became relaxed. The body had been feeling uncomfortable for bearing for a long time an unusually heavier mind which it was not accustomed to. It was always pleasant to sit beside a window of a train. Though little could be seen through the darkness outside, I enjoyed the cool air blowing gently over my face and hair. Darkness has also a face. Only she prefers to be enigmatic and likes to reveal much while consciously hiding herself. Night, perhaps, showed much-I thought. I went on discovering that we could see the world through eyes which were dependant of light and we could never be independent of those slaves of light in daytime. We were shown only what were there to be shown in this limited world. But in the night we could find in our own way. And we were the limit.

The dots of lights outside ran past my window. I wanted to see more but-they went past before I could grab them. After some time the world vanished as the night grew. Slowly there appeared a sky above and it expressed with its innumerable stars the hidden hearts of all those now gone hidden in sleep.

Suddenly I found brazen light outside. There were so many people running here and there and coolies with luggage on their heads moving in a single direction as men of sorrows with the burden of life move towards a single destination-death. It was a scene of commotion everywhere. There were none inside my compartment. What station was it? I looked at my watch. It was 11.30 pm. I got down from the train and came to know that the train reached its last station. I had fallen into sleep and had been unaware when I went past Giridi –where my uncle lived. I became frightened at this unimaginable situation. I ran to a railway official in uniform and enquired about the next train to reach Giridi. He informed me that there was no train at that hour of time. I would have to wait in the platform to catch the first 2115 DN tomorrow.

I had never faced such a situation earlier in my life as I had never missed any train for not coming to station in time.

This time perhaps the 2115 UP had run through the hidden rails.