A train journey and a mighty river

Nowadays, I am suffering from sleep disorder. Life is like that! When I was younger, I could have slept for long hours, but needed to get up and run to the office for the 8 am shift. Now, when I can actually devote some more time for sleep, I find myself awake at 4 am nearly every day.

In the early hours, when the world is eerily silent, the sound that gives me some relief is that of the whistle of trains passing by the nearby Nizamuddin railway station. I try to imagine the scene inside the train. Maybe a cranky child; maybe a mother who has taken half the space she requires so that she can accommodate the kid in her bunk, maybe a young lad who has forgotten to take off his earphone; maybe an old unclejee whose nose is emanating the noise of a printing machine.

It also brings back childhood memories – of walking with my father to Sodepur railway station near my home sometimes in the afternoon for “train dekha”. We used to be there on the railway over-bridge for half an hour or so. The suburban (we call them ‘local’) trains would travel slowly below the bridge, like giant pythons, letting me count the number of compartments with ease. The Express trains would rush through. I wished to travel in an Express train.

My first long distance train journey was in 1984 -- from Howrah to my mom's parental home in Guwahati -- in Kamrup Express. We were paying the visit because my grandmother had expired, but the seven-year old me was oblivious to the solemnity of the situation. I was excited and happy; happy to see miles and miles of green paddy fields, happy to furtively look at the food basket that contained ‘luchi’ and ‘aloo bhaji’; happy to read the names of unheard-of stations (I remember I found the name Barpeta in Assam quite amusing because in Bengali it meant “beat up the groom”. I don’t know the Assamese meaning). And then, my happiness turned to awe as we reached near our destination and I saw the river Brahmaputra. It was grand. It was beyond the scope of my imagination. My mom used to sing an old Assamese song by Bhupen Hazarika – “লুইতৰ পাৰ দুটি/জিলিকি উঠিব ৰাতি/জ্বলি শত দেৱালীৰ বন্তি/হাঁহিব কাতিৰে মাহটি”. In the month of Kartik, hundreds of lamps will light up the banks of Luit (Luit/Lohit, as the Assamese call it), glittering like a smile (apologies for any mistake in translation). But I could not see the “paar” or the banks of the river, it was so huge. That was the most significant moment of my first Express train travel.

P.S.: Mom can still sing that song and remembers it in full. I found the lyrics (with minor variation; আহিব in place of হাঁহিব) via Google but it is not there in YouTube.