The Rail Reseervation journey

The Train Booking


On a cloudy day we set out to book a few tickets at the Noida Railway Booking office. Reaching there was through a number of curves and returns which we had to take due to construction work for elevated road at Sector 33 and consequent shifting of the power lines. The last piece from Prakash hospital 'mor' (turn) till the Reservation office on the right side of the road did not have a pedestran walk way and we had to walk in the main line road where the vehicles both big and small came against us on their journey to Delhi. The road was slippery from the just then unusual March rains and the rain water with the extreme dust made a lethal chutney (cream) a recipe for accident to both humans and two wheeler riders. However, the people of the place are good and kind and the drivers took good care of the pedestrians on the main line road.


In side the Booking office we went to the Senior Citizens line and was about to get the reservation, the computer system failed. Every thing came to a stand still. Officers expressed their helplessness as nothing can move now without the computer lines working. Every body was free to wait. We chose to wait as there was every chance of the computers becoming operational before long. Those who were anxiously waiting and standing in the lines slowly settled down in the seats for the visiting customers.


We also settled down in our seats. That was absolute bliss. There was nothing to be done. Just as if it was in the running railway coach. Nothing to be done, no where to go. The officials also waited and took rest or saw whatsup videos or chit chatted in their respective seats as they can't do anything without the computer lines coming alive again. Now nothing can be done until the system became active. We are hooked. All around are hooked too Those who came to buy and leave in a hurry is blocked, if they wanted the ticket. Alll was free to leave without buying a ticket if they chose to do so.


I started feeling to go to the urinal due to my prostate and moved towards the huge urinal which had been built when the new building opened. To my dismay, it was not only closed, but also locked. The condition of the toilets and urinals had worsened by the misuse by people around and the visitors coming for booking tickets. The lack of supervision and cleaning by the concerned staff contributed to the total break down of the usable wash rooms. Most of the equipment had became unusable or broken by vandals and paan masaala and betel leaf spits which corroded all metallic parts.


A question to the Booking Supervisor and the Floor Supervisor got a benign assistance in the form of an allowance to use their personal wash rooms which was a great solace. In the meantime, the number of people visiting the facility kept on increasing and many new comers did not know what was the delay.

We kept waiting and enjoyed the peaceful wait.


The wait became slowly unbearable as people were asking if it will work at all. But nothing much can now be done as we used to do in olden times. The manual system has been totally replaced by the computer - inter-net systems which worked in coordination with their compact local servers. We were to wait. We were waiting from 12 o' clock and now it was 2 pm.


Waiting peacefully was not as much a problem as the mosquitoes around biting us of and on made the wait slowly miserable.

I was to buy a few tickets for May where as my immediate follower in the line was patiently waiting for a ticket for the next day. He waited peacefully in the dust and mosquito bites without any complaint with his gaze far away. It gave me strength and patience. Even otherwise, I found it a good time to write all that I was witnessing. We had all the rhetoric for progress and quantum jump, where as something was pulling us back, how so ever, all of us tried to move forward and that too at a fast pace. But the hiccups were too loud not to notice.

There was a huge bill board asking all the visitors to “SAVE YOUR precious TIME by bookig your tickets on the internet”. A gentleman down the line was fingering his pocket phone to book his ticket by the net. He has been doing it for long and still fingering. He may not have got the ticket. Otherwise he would have gone by now.

The patience of my colleagues waiting for their tickets was remarkable. So was mine. Me and my companion skipped our lunches to keep at the windows in wait for a machine to work. The mosquitoes at the seetings had their fill of our blood and troubled us from time to time. Next time we visited we have to bring the mosquito killer bats and other kinds of repellents. No body seems to give any care to the cleanliness of the counters on the side of the customers.


The lighting at the building was old with use and had lost most of their reflectors. The electricians are the ones who are to keep up the lights. But cleaning is not their part of the job. The long tube light fittings were covered with cobwebs and at places the best of things do not work. The bulbs and tubes had fused off or removed and not replaced. Anything in our country are like that. Everything work for a while and slowly the nicest of things do not work. The bare skeleton only works. It is as if no body has a care for the nicer part of things to work. The result, every where we get slip-shod work or service.

Recently read book - "Othappu' by Sara Thomas

Recently read : Othappu – A book by Sara Joseph

The word othappu in Malayalam means temptation. This is a word which every body underestimated from the time of creation. It was the devil tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden.

And both Eve and Adam fell as we all know. Thereafter all kinds of jealousies and violence take place on earth which continues till date both individually and in groups.

Here the simple theme is around the life in central Kerala where a simple youth from a poor family goes out to learn and become a devoted priest, becomes one and in the nascent stages gets shaken by the mesmerizing eyes and feet of another youth, a nun who comes to the church for her prayer activities. It encompasses the lives of the priests and nuns of the Malayalam country, especially central Kerala.

Hilarious and emotional to read, especially for those who have grown in and near the churches, the novelist is depicting the life and times of yesteryear Trichur and to an extent its Catholics who are so much devoted and stead fast in the daily activities which are bound by tradition. It is difficult for them to escape from that circle and have another life.! The Trichur Rice Market which the novelist depicts is so well put in, one can smell the odour of red chillies all over in that market even today.

And the dialogues of the people with the original beauty of it in Triichur, where most of the families will have a 'double name' by which they are generally known by the people around and another great name to be used ceremonially, once they are rich and had to be addressed in public where great people are around. “Channere Varkey Mashu” is so well set, any body in the District of Trichur will feel they are reading somebody near their own houses.!

I felt this has something to do with the caste system of the olden days, in which the poor people were allowed only to put in names bearing a kind of lowness in it, like 'thevan', 'koran' 'kandan' etc, in the south India and dhukhia', 'kaalu' in the north. The tradition is always to get rich and keep the riches so that the family flag flies high, but in the process people became arrogant and overlooked ones own brothers and sisters who are not that accomplished as themselves and went on to heckle and put down who wanted to come up.

The youth, in any case, are not much subdued by all that. Others help them from time to time and they survive most of the life's trials as all youth but in the process are unable to help their near and dear, viz. their beloved, fathers and mothers. The father of the young priest who leaves his priesthood is a gentleman who does earn his daily living and feed the family with his meager salary in the 'Whole sale Rice Market' by lifting the huge bags of rice and other groceries which landed up in the market. His head is held high among one and all around him, as 'His son is going to become the Priest, becomes the Priest, 'and proves to be a good Priest at that', whom even his own 'Mothalaali' (Merchant owner of the shop where he works) looks with awe. But alas, the moment of extreme paang comes for him in the form of the news, that his loved son whom he was looking forward as a icon has left his calling as priest hood and is going here and there! In a traditional setting like Trichur, this is some thing which no mortal can take..and naturally, he ends up his life

on the very beam of the shop where he was lifting the huge and heavy rice bags for the last forty-fifty years.

The novelist beautifully touches up the lives of people who are still kind and dare to help the youth and his fiancée who run for their dear lives while still trying to do all the good to others wherever they moved, but without wherewithal finds it difficult to go forward. It is here the nun out of the convent who does not have much standing dares to return to her brother to ask for a job to which she is well qualified. There is a situation created as 'if the ignominious girl' picks up the job, the brother Mayor will find it shameful for 'STATUS' ego. This kind of difficulties are found in all places and parts of our country among all kinds of people.

It is a book which can be read for the beauty of the depiction of Trichur and its people, their markets and the lives of the common man as well as the rich, their institutions and the general belief of the people, their strifes in daily living etc. Over all, the lives of the undaunted Goodness doing priests and nuns who keep on doing good regardless of the outcome and their touch way of keeping themselves the lowest by humbling themselves through acts of fasting and penance.

Now reading book by VKN, 'Pitamahan'

       It is really a hilarious novel depicting the times just before freedom. The jovial way typical to VKN which makes any one a tickle in his ribs is superb.  To read such a book made me really forget the pangs of a long train travel of 48 hours in second sleeper.

As we had entered the wrong carriage as misguided by the Railway sign board, we had to carry our luggage twice through the compartments and through the platform, it was a solace to have this book on the way.  A good read, explaining the old Kerala in style in which the dabbling of the British elite etc. is explained or detailed beautifully.

The old 'Nair' and 'Namboodiri' way of life are also briefly touched upon and laterally how things worked in the State.   It is a window to the past of Kerala and the ruling class and how the poor had been at the receiving end.

As people generally wanted a peep into the past with a view into the lives of the ones who mattered, VKN has done justice to the reader and also the great Pitamaha's escapades which would interest the readers.

Next the main touch up is on the Pitamaha's tryst with the general elections and the niceties of running for a position in Indian elections as seen by him is also beautifully put in.

Altogether and interesting and enthusing book, hilarious to read and enjoy. 

Reading through the books by OV Vijayan and Madhavikutty......

Travelled with OV Vijayan in his Thalamurakal (The generations). Ponmudi Tharavaadu is somewhere in Palaghat as introduced by the author. Went with him to see the story of the 'before the freedom' times of Palghat in Kerala. The tharavadu (the clan headuarters) was slowly coming to its end days as the book which came from the public library.

The letters danced from page to page but the pages themselves were tattered and were coming of from their bindings as the pillars of the great 'tharavadu' called 'Ponmudi'. Reading through the pages, my own old recollections of Palghat came up. The road leading to Palghat from Thrissur was full of cycas scent as it was the flowering time of the cycas plants which abound the large compounds on either side of the road. The rest of the places were paddy fields adorned with rows of huge 'Yakshi' palm trees. A huge bright moon lighted up the road and looked at the red bus we were travelling in!

As the bus sped on the moon seemed to travel with the bus. Some where along with way, among the various village houses and house clusters there was the 'Ponmudi' tharavadu, Vijayan was introducing. Palghat was a rich district full of greenery, forests and a simple loving people. There would have been ups and downs of generations there, no doubt, which is so cleverly introduced in the book.

The bus I was travelling ultimately stopped at the Corporation Bus stand which was only a place called the bus stand. Once the bus stopped my brother with whom I was going took me to our stay at the drivers' stay behind the bus stand. It was a small hutment with a number of small rooms a number of toilets and bath rooms at one side. Our aim of sleeping there for the night to go in the morning to the near by Victoria College for a Railway Test was the eason we were there. Few drivers who ended their trip there were the only occupants, all in transit! We simply slipped into sleep after the tedious journey, of course, a pleasant one in a summer evening, to get up refreshed in the morning to the chirping of birds.

We made it to the exam hall in time and after the exam we took a tour to the nearby forest area where brother said he used to know some of the forest villages. The thrilling journey by foot to the jungle areas soon turned out to he a desparate one as we lost the way in the thick jungles and were fumbling for the correct way in the thick green foliage which did not allow sun light to come in even at three o' clock of the day. Brother said, we seems to have lost our way and shall return back fast as sun light will not last long and when the evening settled down it will be difficult to get out of the jungle. We returned and walked fast with awe as various birds were making their sounds from all around. Luckily no wild animals came our way. A walk of about two hours brought us back to the outside village and we easily took our way back from there. However, we could never, find out the village, my brother was up to and wanted to show me.

Back to Vijayan, his expert ways of story telling enthrals the reader in the ways he relates the story of the thravadu (which seems to be a soliloquie of his generations before and after him). One can get a whif of the old Palghat and also the travels of the boy called Chandran, who later becomes a 'Newspaper man' (Journalist)! He isthe generally relating the story from the point of view of an athiest, at times, with kindness, and at times some what relating the irony of things or the way ups and downs occured in the 'Tharavadu' ..!

The book became a good read in my travels to Chennai after the floods. The flood waters had receded and we could travel without any difficulty as we were heading towards south Chennai which was less affected compared to the main Chennai ..! But tell tale signs of receding water was every where to be seen.

The two books I carried as an after thought was 'Thalamurakal' by Vijayan and 'Neermathalam Pootha Kaalam' by Madhavikutty. Both were saying the stories of their respective generations in one way or the other. First has to fifnish 'Thalamurakal' before starting 'Neermathalam Pootha Kaalam' ..! Both are worth reading and having a glimpse into the past generations of both the authors and through them to the general ways of old Kerala and its people.

I am sure, those of whom, read the books would have enjoyed those best sellers of their times, through and through.

The Afternoon thoughts!

December s gone and January is in with the heat of winter during the day and the slight cold and fog at night! The Palakkadan wind is blowing all through cooling the extra heat. But the sun is closing in. Or are we right to call it the climate change, the way the television channels call it?

Television channels! They have less time for the change as change overwhelms them. But, they keep trying – they have to tell the world, the story of what happened! When I listen to it, I forget what to do next. The I go to the filmy channels. Some are good, but too sad, some are ferocious with a lot of blood shed, the good ones with humour – the ones I want to see are few and far between. Science and discoveries are strewn in between. But this is not a college. One does not learn any thing by heart – all one can do is just watch. Watched it for a while and shut it down. Oh.what peace! When the blabber of too much wisdom and sale is over, what peace!

The birds and minahs are making their usual sounds and going around searching for their meals in the garden. People do not care for the birds of the air and there are far too less seeds in the soil for the to prey upon. The little rivulet near by is making a last gurgle before it dies off. A little white pelican is patiently waiting for its fish! Trying till the evening it earns something.

Had it been olden times I would have been in the capital among the hustle and bustle! The office I was working, the officers who bossed over me, the lower staff who assisted me all busy with work! Set systems, set agendas, set programs all going from time to time to help the largest mass of people! The capitral had huge wide roads with the stone palaces which we called the office. There were medows in the English style and water ways called boat club which was sparingly used. The fountains and the gladiola filled gardens gave a solace during our walk during the lunch hour!

The large post office became old and just disappeared. The huge jumbolana trees and peepul trees also became old and left the place for more sophisticated arrangements.

The old DTC buses changed colour first into red buses and then blue buses. They took rebirth as green buses and cherry buses! The old travellers left the town for new places in the villages! Times change! But the villages too had changed! The village anybody left was different! They had lost the earlier serenity and tranquility! Huge vehicles called tippers and many axled vehicles squeezed into the roads which earlier had only buses and few cars. Now all roads big and small had cars and trucks all the time with endless number of motor cycles and scooters. The old pulling rikshaws and their pullers are long gone and their place is taken by three wheeler autorikshaws.

Capital life is punctuated life, like a clock it ticks. Flock to office in the moring, settle down and do paper work, errant works and keep tab of endless office matters! Have teas in between and have a munch at lunch! Again over see the office works, continue to work with tea in between and take a break at five to have a stroll to energize and get back to complete the day's work and get out at nine to flock back again in the next moring. The great night comes down as a peace, the traffic die down and all are quiet! Reach home and refurbish, sleep and hop back! Days fly off.

No other programs, no functions in the village which all are thwarted off ' no, difficult to get leave' that one sentence saved and kept us off from all functions in the village for forty years. Now we are back. The village we left was different. The old 'Sreeramachandra' bus with the loose gear liver which a boy precariously kept holding for the driver to shift whenever he wanted is no more. The rythm of the old buses is not there. The present ones are new and they roar and overspeed with blaring air horns! If one is in front of it in his smaller vehicles do give way quickly or even stop on the side as the very young drivers at the wheels are far too impatient then the old drivers!

All people travelled by one or the other mode of motorised transport and walkers are too few. One really got frightened on the road for fear of whiffing motor cycles or cars! Buses ..oh..keep off and be watchful, to save yourself. The old bullock carts which made the length and breadth of all states are all almost gone and replaced by little mini trucks or autoriksha boxes.

The new transport mode went over our coconut trees. They contacted us with their sounds only. But that too has become far too many ..Flights, helicopters and such others. Once in a while we saw them as small steel pins in the air. But mostly in the mornings and evenings. Not now, in the hot sunny afternoon.This time, it is the solitary birds and squirrels and one or two workers here and there in the near by compounds.

Had to attend a function at noon. But not going though. It is good to relax at home to write a few lines on the blog or watch the movie on the box. Going is by the four wheeler which the young boys at home are happy to if they are available. Today the youngster was there. The four wheeler car was his choice. We earlier had the two wheeler. But with two children and husband and wife it became difficult as the children grew up. Four wheelers do not fall down like two wheelers. That is a great comfort. Plus they care covered equipments.

Earlier cars were only with the Government for officials. The while ambassadors. Outside generally people had yellow topped ambassadors. A gentleman had an ambassador if he was rich enough. The lesser rich had a fiat! The so and sos had a two wheeler and the poor had either a bicycle or nothing at all. All could in any case use the public buses which was better organized in those days.

The random train riides..!

Random

Travel is like a life journey. Every journey takes a part of your life.  It has its own joys too.  That is train journey in India. First of all the pain of departure.  With that it starts.  It is like death when you depart from a place.

But the joy is when you are about to arrive and actually arrive.  You feel the joy of child birth and seeing a new world.  In between there will be innumerable sights and happenings mostly without much to say about but at times very heartening.

Old days we purchased a ticket, a thick paper ticket with a few details of the Start and arrival stations and the ticket fare and distance and a long curvy line in colouur mostly red on which the counter officer put an initial on the blank side with the simple two letters viz., SR, WR or something like that, in which SR meant Southern Railway, WR meant Western Railway and another common print was SCR meaning South Central Railway.  This ticket in pocket one waited with bated breath to see the train reaching their station of departure and in came the huge steel giant spitting and spewing smoke and steam, the long arms of the large fly wheels pushing up and down with the chuck chuck sound and the blue dressed coal man with a hand ker chief on his head looking out of his engine window.  Sometimes steamy hot water will be coming from one of the tubes or shafts which children were always afraid of.

Once the engine passed the bogeys or compartments came to the platform area where in the travellers looked out and those who were to entrain looked in to see if they found their reserved coach. The there was the hustle and bustle of those alighting and those trying to board either by themselves or with the assistance of either relatives or a coolie who carried and helped them with their luggage.  The train pilot or engine driver got down and went to the local vegetarian or non-vegetarian food stall and so did most of the ticket examiners or other staff who were on long route duties.

By the time the people were all in and out, the coalman pushed coal and the engine driver pulled his string giving a 'boh..boh....whistle'  The sound and tenor of the engine changed and the long arms of the old 'James Watt' engine started pushing once again first slowly and then it picked up speed. Before starting of course there definitely were one or two bells..!  Those were the olden days.

Now the picture changed in the last forty years first to a diesel engine in which the coalmen disappeared and then came the electric engine in which the helpers too disappeared.  Now there are only engine drivers.  The bell too disappeared which used to ring before arrivel and before departure being replaced by mike announcements in three languages, viz.Hindi, English and the local language of State through which it is passing. The driver or examiners rarely got down at stations these days.  The trains arrived and after a short few minutes stop for alighting and entraining for passengers it started off.

We travelled from our Thrissur city to catch Chennai and now it is turn to travel back.  A few weeks after the rain and floods went in a jiffy and it is time again to leave our near and dear to catch up with our dear Thrissur which reminds of a compact life!

The Chennai station is always its ever inviting self with the beautiful platforms and the end of the trains coming till the numbered platforms.  The rush and din and bustle of the place is always there all the twenty four hours.  So many people will be resting, so many will be rushing about and in that station there is no day and night but inside there is only day.  Day in and day out trains came and departed.

Once inside every body guaged their co travellers to see if they are good to travel with.  If they are one, perhaps, struck up a conversation, if not, quietly took ones food, cleaned up and went to bed.  Almost always we travelled in a train to Thrissur by morning like the old London coaches. But times have changed there too, in which now there are trains leaving and reaching at un even and un-earthly times which people take in their stride.

I had travelled up with OV Vijayan in his book called 'Thalamurakal' which kept me company all through my stay in Chennai.  The ups and downs of the 'Tharavaadu' mentioned there is more or less the story of many 'tharavaadus' of Kerala in one form or the other.  OV was kind enough to jot them down for posterity which one is able to read and ruminate.  The Velappan of the story will really give a nudge to any one who had anybody connected with the erstwhile force called 'M.S.P. of Kerala.  The inscription on the belt reading "Yudhivikrama" will touch hearts about the impartial 'Police man' from a virgin police force which perhaps, is not there now.

The various characters appearing in the story and their times are all fit to move any lover of literature and reading in Malayalam language.  When one travels with the Great Grand Parents, Parents, Son and Son's family time flies and the stay time passed in a jiffy.  Towards the end of the stay, the book ends making me take a sigh of back thoughts and angst and I move on to the next book in hand by the famous writer of Kerala 'Madhavikutty' in her book 'Neermaathalam Pootha Kaalam'.






















To continue

Reading books - 'Thalamurakal'

Travelled with OV Vijayan in his Thalamurakal (The generations). Ponmudi Tharavaadu is somewhere in Palaghat as introduced by the author. Went with him to see the story of the 'before the freedom' times of Palghat in Kerala. The tharavadu (the clan headuarters) was slowly coming to its end days as the book which came from the public library.

The letters danced from page to page but the pages themselves were tattered and were coming of from their bindings as the pillars of the great 'tharavadu' called 'Ponmudi'. Reading through the pages, my own old recollections of Palghat came up. The road leading to Palghat from Thrissur was full of cycas scent as it was the flowering time of the cycas plants which abound the large compounds on either side of the road. The rest of the places were paddy fields adorned with rows of huge 'Yakshi' palm trees. A huge bright moon lighted up the road and looked at the red bus we were travelling in!

As the bus sped on the moon seemed to travel with the bus. Some where along with way, among the various village houses and house clusters there was the 'Ponmudi' tharavadu, Vijayan was introducing. Palghat was a rich district full of greenery, forests and a simple loving people. There would have been ups and downs of generations there, no doubt, which is so cleverly introduced in the book.

The bus I was travelling ultimately stopped at the Corporation Bus stand which was only a place called the bus stand. Once the bus stopped my brother with whom I was going took me to our stay at the drivers' stay behind the bus stand. It was a small hutment with a number of small rooms a number of toilets and bath rooms at one side. Our aim of sleeping there for the night to go in the morning to the near by Victoria College for a Railway Test was the eason we were there. Few drivers who ended their trip there were the only occupants, all in transit! We simply slipped into sleep after the tedious journey, of course, a pleasant one in a summer evening, to get up refreshed in the morning to the chirping of birds.

We made it to the exam hall in time and after the exam we took a tour to the nearby forest area where brother said he used to know some of the forest villages. The thrilling journey by foot to the jungle areas soon turned out to he a desparate one as we lost the way in the thick jungles and were fumbling for the correct way in the thick green foliage which did not allow sun light to come in even at three o' clock of the day. Brother said, we seems to have lost our way and shall return back fast as sun light will not last long and when the evening settled down it will be difficult to get out of the jungle. We returned and walked fast with awe as various birds were making their sounds from all around. Luckily no wild animals came our way. A walk of about two hours brought us back to the outside village and we easily took our way back from there. However, we could never, find out the village, my brother was up to and wanted to show me.

Back to Vijayan, his expert ways of story telling enthrals the reader in the ways he relates the story of the thravadu (which seems to be a soliloquie of his generations before and after him). One can get a whif of the old Palghat and also the travels of the boy called Chandran, who later becomes a 'Newspaper man' (Journalist)! He isthe generally relating the story from the point of view of an athiest, at times, with kindness, and at times some what relating the irony of things or the way ups and downs occured in the 'Tharavadu' ..!

The book became a good read in my travels to Chennai after the floods. The flood waters had receded and we could travel without any difficulty as we were heading towards south Chennai which was less affected compared to the main Chennai ..! But tell tale signs of receding water was every where to be seen.

The two books I carried as an after thought was 'Thalamurakal' by Vijayan and 'Neermathalam Pootha Kaalam' by Madhavikutty. Both were saying the stories of their respective generations in one way or the other. First has to fifnish 'Thalamurakal' before starting 'Neermathalam Pootha Kaalam' ..! Both are worth reading and having a glimpse into the past generations of both the authors and through them to the general ways of old Kerala and its people.

I am sure, those of whom, read the books would have enjoyed those best sellers of their times, through and through.