Let me start
this with two Wikipedia entries:
1. X (25
September 1916 – 11 February 1968) was an Indian politician. X was one of the
most important leaders of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the forerunner of the
present day Bharatiya Janata Party.
2. Y (station
code MGS) is an Indian Railways railway station in the Indian state of Uttar
Pradesh. Y is the fourth busiest railway junction in India. Y
contains the largest railway marshalling yard in Asia.
You know what I
am getting at: Mughalsarai will be renamed to Deen Dayal Upadhyay. I am sure
this is the Government’s own way of honouring a significant man in their history, renaming
perhaps the most iconic junction in North India.
The Government is obviously keen on making India forget the mighty Mughals. Renaming
Mughalsarai is the easiest way to make sure tourists visiting Taj Mahal remain
blissfully unaware of the history of the Mughals in India.
Being a person
averse to travel, I do not have sentiments or associated with Mughalsarai. I
did not feel sad at the town being renamed. A part of my childhood was not lost,
not even a minuscule.
Of course, a
part of history was lost — at least temporarily — with the renaming. I
understand that.
However, as a
nation we have collectively failed to preserve our history, so this was always
on the cards. It has been a habit carefully nurtured over millennia. Indeed, we
are unlikely to care for our history unless we get to know from WhatsApp groups
that our history has been acknowledged as the best in the world by UNESCO.
Where was I? Ah,
Mughalsarai. Take the station away, and there is really not much in the town. I
am yet to meet someone from Mughalsarai. The only eminent
Mughalsarai-born person I know of is Lal Bahadur Shastri, a man born on October
2 — the day when Ajay Devgn took his family to Panjim for Satsang. I am not
sure of the date when Mohanlal did a similar act before Devgn.
In other words, Mughalsarai
does not hold memories for me — except one. And that is what you are about to
learn now.
When Mughalsarai
was relevant
I had spent a
year of my halcyon days in Delhi. I stayed in a hostel on Shaheed Jeet Singh
Sansanwal Marg, a place from where the Qutb Minar looked tiny and aeroplanes
looked humongous. You can figure out the location if you are from Delhi.
Obviously we
needed breaks from rajma, paneer, butter chicken, and temperature
that varied between -75°C and 140°C (blame the Delhi weather for the
exaggeration). Even the newly-acquired swear-words did not make up for the
challenges.
So we
had to return home. I did that five times in a span of a year — in July
(for an emergency), for Pujo, and for Christmas; the last two trips were in summer.
This
was a May trip. The trains were crowded. Tickets had to be booked two months in
advance. In a few years’ time IRCTC would come to make things worse. This was
an era when internet was still spreading its, er, net in the middle-class
stratum.
1998
was all about long, serpentine queues, the only plus of which was a richer vocabulary
of swear-words — something that scaled levels hitherto unknown to me till I
reached Delhi.
But
the tickets were acquired. We marched on to Kalka Mail. I think the train used
to leave Old Delhi at 0700 and reach Howrah Station about the same time the day
after. Basically it was a morning-to-morning thing that started with chhola-batora
at Tundla and ended in that impatience-saturated stretch after Liluah.
Since
the train was crowded, they added a couple of compartments at the end, after
the pantry car. The sleeper class compartments typically go by the name of S1,
S2 ... and so on. The additional ones were named (I think) AS1 and AS2. Perhaps
A stood for additional.
Mughalsarai
is located famously almost midway between Delhi and Howrah. Kalka Mail arrived
there in the evening. We set out in pursuit of some concoction of chicken and
carbohydrates. The food was duly acquired and the money paid. We strolled back
towards AS1 (or AS2).
Wait,
what compartment?
There
was no compartment. Our compartment, our accommodation for the night, complete
with luggage, was gone, along with its neighbour.
Just
like that. Poof!
It
was not a pretty sight. Four or five men, all in their early twenties, waiting utterly
flabbergasted in a station named after one of the greatest dynasties in the
history of India that the Government would choose to forget in about two
decades’ time.
One
of these men decided to get the food out of his way first. You have probably guessed
who it was.
Did
the others join in the act? Of that I have no memory whatsoever. However, I
remember a stern look from at least one pair of eyes.
But
then, since when has appetite depended on vanishing compartments?
We
did not even know whom to ask. There were officials in that gigantic junction,
but none of them could answer our query. Worse, they looked supremely
unconcerned. There could have been two reasons for this (or at least I think
so):
1. Missing
compartments was not a part the curriculum when they had appeared for the
admission test.
2.
There was a substantial chasm between their brand of Hindi and ours.
Was
this the greatest heist ever pulled off at the junction? What about the nation?
Two entire compartments, presumably with people inside them...
Time
passed. Our group sunk into various postures of resignation that ranged from
slouching helplessly to staring blankly into the starry night sky to washing
hands after a hearty meal.
More
time passed. And some more. Every second felt like an hour spent in Saki Naka
traffic in office hours (Google it) without an oxygen mask.
Wasn’t
the train supposed to leave in half an hour? Hasn’t it been longer?
What
if it left without us?
What
if it had left without us?
Where
would the compartment go? Would it roam about aimlessly all by itself in the
labyrinthine stone-chips-and-metal-clad realm that goes by the name of Indian
Railways?
The anticlimax
Just
when we had resigned to the unknown deities of Indian Railways and were considering
rummaging our pockets for money, we heard it. From some far, far land they
appeared, two supremely familiar metallic cuboids on wheels, dragged by an
engine certainly past its expiry date.
We jumped
on to them. We found our seats. Everything was there. Every lock. Every chain
with which the ancient suitcases where attached to the seats. Everything.
Then
we talked to the handful of smart passengers who had opted to stay back during
this cataclysmic chain of events that was on the verge of changing the future
of the planet. “It’s perfectly normal for additional compartments,” they told
us. “They sometimes add another pantry car.”
That
was it. There is no climax.
Climaxes
seldom happen in real life, you see. And when they do, like most things in
life, they are often impeccably faked.
