In the hot brooding month of summer, in one of the crowded platforms of Allahabad railway station, six souls eagerly wait, to be transported to a new state, a new place in the northeast, Tezpur, Assam. As there were direct train services to Tezpur, they planed to go via Guwahati. Among the six, the youngest one very happy at the site of crowded scurrying people all around, vendors selling fruits, biscuits, tea and varieties of namkeens.
The coolie’s in red uniform and a metal badge tied on their arm just below their shoulders with numbers inscribed on them, to identify them, and proclaim them as licensed to carry the passengers baggage and huge luggage over their head or by using trolleys to the desired platforms in which they are expecting their train.
People chewing beetle leaf (Banarasi Pan) and spitting the red,copper colour very similar to a rusted iron kind of juicy liquid into the pots filled with sand placed on metallic stool in the platform. Women wearing saris and covering their head with a pallu (the edge of the sari) and men in white dhotis.
The entire family is shifting to Tezpur, as the head of the family who happens to work in the defence as a junior commissioned officer, gets the orders from the high command due to the regimental shift. The entire regiment got shifted in the winter and it was the high time for the families to shift during the summer vacation of their children without disturbing their educational process.
The aura surrounding them getting hot and enveloping them in its heat, its afternoon the heat waves, turning the entire platform into an oven, readily waiting to bake the human souls, rather than their body to frustrations, anger, annoyance and irritation.
The train arrives at three O ‘ clock on the platform empty, as Allahabad is the originating station. Four young souls very happy at the site of their train, excitedly enquire their father ‘ Is this our train?’
Father worried and tensed about the transporting of their luggage and the scooter. The scooter which is sealed and packed resembling an Egyptian mummy, only the wheels and the steering exposed properly, so that it could be pushed and taken to the cargo bogie and labelled with black paint on a coir bori with stencils perfectly cut, ‘A Rajan, Madras sappers, Allahabad to Guwahati, so that it could reach its destination without being lost during its journey from one city to another.
Rajendran makes no reply to his children’s queries. The children with angel eyes look at their mother, she asks them to keep quiet and watch the luggage that was kept in front of them. The eldest son Ramesh accompanies his father to check whether the scooter has occupied its place in the bogie like the passengers in the reserved compartments.
After a while, both father and son rush to the spot where their rest of their family awaits to be escorted into their respective coach. Ramesh with an air bag around his shoulders, Geeta with a 5 litre turquoise blue plastic water cooler, Suguna’s arm being tugged between her mother’s elbow and belly and the little one occupying a very comfortable place in her mother’s hip, move towards the coach S6.
Rajendran is followed by his son Ramesh and Geeta.hurriedly, suddenly by mistake Geeta steps on her fathers foot wear from behind, he turns angrily and asks her to watch her steps, ‘ Either walk in front of me or beside me, stop stepping on my foot.’ Frightened Geeta follows, walks beside her father,
Their mother and the other two children follow them with a lot of struggle, panting and sweating looking exhausted head to toe. The father asks the mother and the two little one to wait in the platform till they return back. Ramesh, Geeta and their father rush to the coach to occupy their places. The father checks their names on the chart pasted near the entrance door of the train and carefully carry their baggage to their seats.
These two children hurriedly searching their names in the list, feel very delighted to see their names on the passenger list chart.Ramesh with full of satan in his eyes quickly boards the train battling through the people on the passage conquers the window seat and declares, ‘ This is my seat’ immediately Geeta who was following Ramesh all the way from the platform declares her possession, ‘ this is mine’.
Rajan leaves them as the custodians of the baggage and tells them to not to move from here until he fetches their mother and their sisters. He rushes to the spot where he had left his wife and 2 daughters, and carries suguna in his arms and enters the coach.
As they enter, the children rush to occupy the window seat, Rajan busy arranging their suite cases and trunks under the lower berth of the sleeper class. Observes Geeta and Suguna having a sort of push of war, (instead of tug of war)using their bottoms to occupy the window seat, Rajan gives a good shouting at Geeta and asks her to leave the seat to Suguna as she was older than her by six years. The little one’s get priority here as usual in a family of four children and 2 adults what else could be expected?
After a while the announcements is made, train number 2506, north-east express, is ready for departure from platform no 9. The announcement repeats several times in a recorded female voice with the same frequency and pitch, the words clearly pronounced for the benefit of the passengers.
Finally the time comes for which the children excitedly wait, the train gets a thrust forwards and leaves the platform gently, softly and slowly gaining speed, momentum and velocity step by step, leaves its origin to reach its destination in the north east.
Geeta looks through the window and sighs deeply, regrets for this evanescent moment in her life. The plenty of friends that she had made in the school, Nutan, Anitha sisodia, mona Pandey, sapna Chaudhury and many more, memories registered in the small compartments of her brain, memories of Allahabad, she very well in her heart knew, she may not be able to see this place again and will never meet her friends for rest of her life. But the autograph book very safely secured and kept in her bag told her that she could meet them as she had taken down their residential addresses and could contact them. She is going to miss all the fun and joy but was very thrilled about the new places and the kind of friends she would make and the teachers she would meet. The bright afternoons shimmering sunrays fall into the compartment obstructed by huge trees.Geeta looks away from the quivering of the sunrays and quietly observes their fellow passengers. Suguna and Ammu very delighted to see the train leave the platform.
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