I traveled to Mumbai on Tuesday and returned back to Pune on Wednesday. And I traveled by train.
I have never been a fan of traveling by train in India, but sometimes one just does not have a choice. And in India, since there are no private railway companies, we just have one option – the Indian Railways.
For all the noise about Lalu Prasad Yadav doing great things for the Indian Railways, here are some hard facts from just one journey:
- The railways stations stink. Pune Station is supposed to be one of the most important stations in the Central Railways division. The stinking smell is overpowering. It’s surprising that I survived waiting on the platform for the train to arrive.
- Speaking of platforms, is there really a platform number 2 in Pune? All I saw was some mud, dug up and scattered all around. One had to be extremely careful not to trip over and fall.
- The train bogeys stink. What’s that smell? Shit! Shit? And this inside the ‘Chair Car AC’ bogeys. You know, the ones which are supposed to be ‘Air Conditioned’!
- That’s right, the Chair Car bogey is ‘supposed’ to be Air Conditioned. Is it, really? Looks like the air is pulled straight from the toilet, chilled and blown at full speed into the bogey.
- There is no temperature control – You are alternatively frozen and fried, depending on whether the AC is working or not.
- The chairs in the bogeys are from the pre-independence era – at least, that’s how they looked to me!
- Forget the chairs, the train bogeys look as if they are straight from the pre-independence era!
- Was the train really moving on rails? It didn’t seem like that to me. The bogey was shaking and bouncing around so much, I started to wonder if the train had gone off-track! You know, cross-country ‘railing’ by Indian Railways!
After every journey by train in India, it takes me a couple of days to ‘forget’ the stinking smell that my nose is very keen to ‘remember’. A shower doesn’t help!
Hopefully, Lalu has made enough money off of Indian Railways – he should be proud of his ‘achievements’.
Hindustani 04:21 on December 2, 2008 Permalink |
I think you are a very good citizen of India. I would like to ask you a question when you saw all this dug all shit shit in stations and also in compartment. what the next thing you did when u came home?
Did you try to do some thing for this situation? I mean other than complaining? Did you take any initiative to improve the condition? Oh yes! you made this website and wrote all possible things you can tell bad about our railway system.
You could have motivated people to be apart of your fight against taking and inititative and help Lalu to make railways better…
Did u ever gave a thought on how Indian railways employed or i can say saved the 1.6 million peoples job and how it is contributing in keeping there families survived.
Its easy to complain but tough to do something. If you cannot motivate the system do not complain. Be a part on India’s fight to imporve….
Hope this will work.
Thank You!
JAI HIND…
I love INDIA.
Dileepa Prabhakar 08:55 on December 2, 2008 Permalink |
It’s all very good to ask “what did you do in the situation?”
I pay my taxes. Do you? What exactly is being done with the tax money? Do you know?
It’s not my job to tell them to keep the railway station clean. It should be clean without me telling it. The railway bogeys should be clean without me telling them to keep it clean. I don’t think that’s too much to expect.
Do you know how backwards a majority of the country is? Do you know why? It’s exactly because of attitude like yours.
Your kind of stupid arguments are what is holding back the country.