Chennai Express

After completing my studies, I was searching for a job.  I got a letter for the selection test for the post of Accounts Executive in Metals and Minerals Trading Corporation (MMTC).  The test centre was Madras (now Chennai).  So, I reserved ticket from Ernakulam to Madras by the Alleppey-Madras Express.  That was my first visit to Madras.  But what made me more uncomfortable was that it was my first overnight journey by train.  Before this, though I had travelled many times by train, all those journeys were for few hours, that too during daytime.

On the day of journey, I boarded the Alleppey-Madras Express in the evening from Ernakulam.  The train was to reach Madras the next morning.  I was allotted the middle berth in a sleeper coach compartment.  I occupied my seat.  I had no idea, how those seats got converted to beds in the night.  I was also anxious about the safety of sleeping on a rail berth.  However, I didn’t reveal this to anyone.  My co-passengers included a young boy and an elderly man.  After dinner, my co-passengers got ready to sleep.  The young boy lifted the middle portion of the seat and fixed the bed. He climbed to the upper bed and the elderly person occupied the lower one.  The young man took out a book from his bag and started reading lying on the berth.  (No mobile phones, tabs, or laptops those days!) Now it was my turn to climb to the middle berth.  I somehow managed to squeeze in.  I found it extremely uncomfortable to get stuck between two berths.  First of all, I didn’t get sleep due to the movement of train.  On the top of it, I had all sorts of apprehensions: Will I roll and fall down while sleeping? Will the upper berth fall on me? Will the chain holding the middle berth break? and on and so forth!  At night the speed of the train increased, which added to my apprehensions.  After a while, the young boy stopped reading, switched off the light and went to sleep.  I got down a couple of times and walked from one end of the coach to the other.  Almost everyone was sleeping.  Meanwhile a policeman patrolling the coach asked my whereabouts.  I told him I was going to the washroom.  I silently returned to my berth.  I couldn’t sleep at all, whereas everyone around me was in deep sleep, some snoring loudly!

In the middle of the night, without my knowledge, I slipped into sleep.  Suddenly something fell on me, and I got up in shock, thinking my worst fear had come true.  When I sat up, I couldn’t see anything.  I searched in darkness and found something.  It was the book my co-passenger was reading.  He had kept it on the berth, which slipped through the gap and fell on me!  I lied down for some more time without closing my eyes.  The train pulled into a big station.  I got up and went to the door.  It was Katpadi.  Sunlight was beginning to appear in the horizon.  I decided to stand near the door, enjoying the landscape, occasionally sipping hot coffee brought by early morning vendors.  I kept reading the names of the stations passing by, Arakkonam, Avadi, Perambur.  Slowly I could observe the changing landscape; the big, ancient, and historic city was approaching.  Finally, the train pulled into the huge, covered platform of Madras Central.  I got down from the train with a sigh of relief!

This was just the beginning of my rail journeys.  After this, I might have travelled more than hundred times by train to various destinations.  Still, the memory of the first journey is fresh!