At a public gathering, a speaker once announced that he would narrate three incidents—the first ‘khatarnaak’ (dangerous), the second ‘khaufnaak’ (frightening), and the third ‘alamnaak (tragic). Taking a cue from him, I would also like to describe three real-life incidents related to train travel, in increasing order of their tragicality. While these incidents may seem humorous and reveal the victims’ foolishness, they offer lifelong lessons in planning train journeys.
The first incident concerns booking reservation tickets. The boss of a private office instructed one of his clerks to book a train ticket to Delhi. The clerk dutifully returned with the ticket but failed to inform his boss about his coach and berth number. Just a few days before the journey, the boss asked for the ticket. The clerk produced it from his file and stated that the berth number was W/L 43. One can only imagine the storm of emotions the boss felt upon hearing that. Needless to say, the clerk received a severe dressing-down for not knowing that W/L stood for Waiting List.
The second incident is more humorous and, at the same time, more unfortunate. An acquaintance of mine, holding a senior post, was to travel to Tatanagar via the Muri Express (also known as Hatia Mail) from Amritsar. He was accompanied by a junior staff member. Both arrived early and waited in the waiting room. Half an hour before departure, the officer sent his junior to check if the train had arrived. The junior asked a coolie, “Has the Muri Express come?” The coolie replied, “Aa Hatia laggi te hai” (Look, the Hatia is already standing here). But the junior, who didn’t understand Punjabi, misunderstood the coolie’s response and came back to say, “Coolie keh rha hai ye hategi to wo lagegi” (When this train leaves, the next one will arrive). This exchange of communication was repeated twice more. When only a few minutes were left for the scheduled departure of the train, the officer became nervous and worried and decided to check for himself what the matter was. As he stepped out of the waiting room, to his horror, he saw the Muri Express slowly moving out of the platform. He stood frozen, helplessly watching the train pick up speed and vanish.
The third incident, which happened to our family, was more tragic than the previous two. In July 1986, we were returning to Punjab after spending the summer vacation with our relatives in Andhra Pradesh. We were to board the Janata Express (running between Madras and Jammu Tawi) at Vijayawada, where it was scheduled to arrive at 12:05 a.m. The confusion over midnight timing led to the entire tragedy. As we boarded the train and settled into our berths, another family arrived and asked us to vacate the berths. We showed them our tickets. Both parties had identical tickets—same train, coach, and berth numbers. When the TTE arrived and checked our tickets, he threw a bombshell at us, saying, “You should have arrived the previous night. Your tickets are now invalid.” The issue was that our train was scheduled for 12:05 a.m. on July 25th, and we had to board it on the night of July 24th. Realising our gross blunder, we quietly disembarked with our luggage. That misunderstanding taught us a lifelong lesson in reading train timings correctly.
Bilal Ahmad Shamim
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