A train journey in the time of floods
Sometime in the 1970s, days ahead of the Pujas, the skies opened up and poured sheets of rain on Calcutta. For three days and three nights, there was no let up. The streets filled up, lakes in our neighbourhood bloated and spilled over on to thoroughfares. Drains overflowed. Cars went under water, their roofs barely showing. Brave rickshawpullers ferried people driven by desperate need to step out of their homes. The walls turned dank and clothes strung up on indoor clothesline stank to high heavens.
It was an experience. I had read about the fury water can unleash but never seen one. This was it. For hours, I stood in the balcony surveying the water world, sat alone in rooms darkened by bolted windows listening to the non-stop whistling of the angry wind driving the rain. School was under water and shut. This doubled the fun quotient.
By day three, we had almost run out of provisions. One day, my uncle had pulled out his old, musty gumboots, waded through waste-high water and returned with rice, some eggs and potatoes. We ate boiled rice, eggs, mashed potatoes with mustard oil, salt and chopped green chillies for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A calamity of this scale meant everyone’s attention was riveted on handling the next crisis. Nobody bothered about studies. Nobody had the bandwidth to needle us.
It was going fine, till the realisation dawned that the Puja vacations were about to kick in and we had to get out of Calcutta and reach our real home – our quaint Orissa mining town. At any cost. But how? The trains weren’t running. The tracks had been washed away — twisted and hanging mid-air in places, the ground below swept away in torrential rain. On higher dry grounds, along the tracks, hundreds of homeless had taken shelter under tarpaulin sheets. In those days, we didn’t have a phone at home. We were cut off from our father who was away at his work place in Orissa.
Till, six days after the deluge began, Jitu, the company peon, managed to travel from Thakurani with mail and reached us. He had travelled on a bus to Chakradharpur, boarded a packed train that had taken a circuitous route via Adra and reached Howrah. That was the only functioning rail link and the only train plying. This was our opportunity. We told him we’d go with him. He agreed, promised to buy three tickets and wait for us at the station.
On the designated day, there were no taxis. So we boarded a state bus that took us till Posta, where the narrow streets were still flooded. At the crossing, we coaxed a rickshawpuller and paid him a bomb to take us across to the station. Initially, he grumbled but found the lure of cash hard to resist. It would be one dangerous ride, fording the dark, sewer-laced, filthy waters. The wheels could hit a submerged crater, or get stuck in a deceptive, open hydrant. And then, the rickety wooden vehicle powered by an equally doddery human being would easily topple over. The possibilities were spine-chilling. It took the stick-thin rickshawpuller one nerve-wracking hour to cross the stretch – a hair-raising experience, the hapless rickshawpuller putting his life and limb on the line as he bent twice over, straining every nerve, every muscle to drag us through the nagging drizzle and the stinking stretch that had turned into a canal.
By the time we made it, Jitu was a bundle of nerves. It was getting dangerously close to departure time. We got off the rickshaw, paid the man and bounded for the platform where the train had already pulled up. It was a test of might and muscles getting past hundreds of desperate others pushing, shoving, cursing for a toehold. Hats off to Jitu. He found us three seats. I got a window seat, my mother and elder brother sat crunched between a whole lot of others, shifting, fidgeting, digging with their elbows to fit in. The corridors were choked with people standing on each others’ toes, bunks threatening to come off their hinges, moaning and creaking as more and more people clambered up. People suspended from the ladders locking themselves in with their arms, the toilets jammed with sacks and those braving the overpowering stench for a ride on the train to Chakradharpur. As we sat glued to our seats, the train lurched and crept out of the platform. Suddenly, the tedious roar of voices that rose from the compartment fell silent. A hush descended.
As the train crawled along the fragile tracks, the wheels let off threatening screeches, the coaches listed perilously nearly slipping off the tracks and splashing into the endless sheets of water all around. Elderly women cried out in alarm, almost certain they wouldn’t survive this journey. A sixty-something woman sitting opposite me blabbered endlessly, talking mindless rubbish just to keep her nerve-jangling tension down. No one else spoke.
The progress was painstakingly slow. Most of those who had boarded had no hope of getting any food or water. Thankfully, the agony, discomfort and scare the train ride was putting us through had numbed our senses. occasionally, the train would stop at a desolate place. For hours, nothing would stir. Then, another heave and the crawl would resume past submerged villages, vast stretches of water – mirroring a dull, gray sky pouring more misery on us.
Beside me, just as crushed as I was, sat a twenty-something girl, probably a villager. Pretty faced, rather sisterly and affectionate, she kept whispering – as if talking to herself – “Sab thik ho jayee, Ramji saath hain.” All along the blabbering woman kept up her dull monologue.
Some hours later, an unbearable stench filled the air. Everyone looked suspiciously at the other person. What was the source of the stench? Someone surmised: “It’s this stagnant water all around… things are rotting.” Seemed a plausible explanation and after a while, everyone got used to the stink. The slow rocking motion induced sleep and people dozed only to be nudged and rudely admonished to sit straight and not to roll over into someone else’s lap.
Day melted into night and our stop-start-stop journey continued. By then, everyone was spent and people snoozed, half slept, lolled, snored and scolded. It rained in fits and starts, the drops splashing on the window rails and hitting my face refreshingly as I stared blankly into the night. Everyone was just stuck there, as if with glue at impossible angles and strange contortions, barely hanging in there, hoping against hope that the journey would end soon and tomorrow would be a better day – more livable.
Towards late evening the next day, the train huffed, puffed and slipped into Jamshedpur, where many got off – among them the blabbering woman who, it emerged had soiled her white sari. She was the source of the stench. The train reached Chakradharpur around 5 pm. Half dead and cramped, we got off the train.
But that was just half the journey done. A government bus would take us to Bara Jamda, some three hours away. Having slugged it out on the train, this was a breeze. There were seats available, and although people boarded with sheep and goats, the ride wasn’t as painful. Around 7 in the evening, we were at Bara Jamda, where we ran into a friend of my uncle’s – a strapping, young mining engineer who had gone to IIT Kharagpur with my uncle. He drove us home in his jeep.
The ordeal had ended. Fun would begin now.
