Sardine Express

3.15 pm
THE train pulls out of the station for its 17-hour journey to Patna just five minutes behind schedule. It8217;s a rare event, I am assured by my fellow passengers.

It8217;s actually a wonder that they talk to me. We squeezed our way into the coach at 3 pm, whereas every regular traveller was inside at least 45 minutes ahead of the departure time. The practice is to lock the doors as soon as each coach of this completely unreserved train gets reasonably full. After that, no tickets, no I-cards, no police batons will open doors.

So when we make our way in, with a little help from two policemen, the welcome is a little frozen.

But the focus shifts as the woman in yellow cries out that 8216;8216;mera aadmi8217;8217; has been left behind. Everyone rushes in to quiz one man desperately seeking a toe-hold. Names are verified. Wrong man.

It turns out that the husband is in another coach. And the woman8217;s histrionics are standard fare: The 8216;8216;dying daughter8217;8217; is actually dozing fitfully, if in a very cramped position, next to a window.

3.45 pm
AS the train picks up speed, the movement enforces certain adjustments within the coach. With nearly 500 people occupying space earmarked for 160 passengers, anyone with two feet on the floor of the coach considers himself lucky.

The luggage racks are choc-a-block8212;everyone seems to be carrying at least three pieces8212;the top and bottom berths are full. Even the aisles are packed. Even the narrow ledge of the windows are used as a perch.

The sardine simile seems terribly understated.

5.05 pm
THE train whizzes past Dadri without stopping. In these 100-odd minutes, most passengers have settled in, comfortably or otherwise. Some are plonked on the floor of the coach; others are packed into the upper berths. A card game begins.

8216;8216;I almost changed my mind about travelling when I heard about the stampede,8217;8217; confides Satish Jha, part-owner of a unit manufacturing children8217;s watch components and resident of Kingway Camp. 8216;8216;I didn8217;t want to travel unreserved. But I didn8217;t get a reservation. It8217;s never so bad usually, not even during holiday season.8217;8217;

6.45 pm
THE lines of privilege are very clearly drawn in an unreserved coach. The upper echelons8212;the luggage racks on most other trains8212;are occupied by the Smarties. They came early and blocked their seats by the simple method of sitting down. Now, from their vantage positions and over the tips of their taash, they look down on the densely packed, swaying masses below.

The tired calm that descends in the coach gets a shake-up as the train wheezes into Tundla. The door rule8212;don8217;t open 8217;em, no matter what8212;is honoured strictly, despite the exhortations of as an impressively proportioned RPF constable. Finally, he pokes in his baton through a window, and uses it as a stick8212;literally8212;to get someone to open the door.

There seem to be as many people on the platform as there are inside. Two persons manage to squeeze in, and a red bag squeezes out. Some frantic cries later, the red bag travels back to its legitimate owner.

Taking advantage of the melee, a group of venerable ladies proves yet again that space is all in the mind. They pack themselves and their luggage into the two toilets at one end of the coach and bolt the doors.

From here onwards, the loos are out of bounds. Anyway, few people have the nerve to cross the coach to the toilets, swinging Tarzan-style from berth to berth. Besides, there8217;s every chance a co-passenger will swallow up those precious inches.

7.30 pm
WITH darkness enveloping on the countryside, an Oriental Insurance agent8212;the only person among the 500-odd to be wearing pinstriped trousers8212;seems to have taken it on himself to send Raghubir Nandan Varma, one of the top-berthers, to sleep with seamless spiel about returns and percentages.

But Varma, a garment-seller from Jehanabad, is more interested in narrating his own experiences. 8216;8216;I was at the station yesterday,8217;8217; he claims. 8216;8216;I was so scared when I saw the crowd and heard the rumours, I went back.8217;8217;

The fear obviously did not carry over to the next day. 8216;8216;These days we hear of so many deaths that a few more don8217;t seem like much. It would have been different had it been someone we knew.8217;8217;

The thought evokes several nodding heads all around.

8.00 pm
VARMA8217;S friends, the card-players, finally tire of their game, and begin what they call 8216;time-pass8217;, Bihari slang for exchange of views on anything and everything.

8216;8216;Few unreserved seats. That8217;s the only reason the stampede happened and why these trains are so crowded. Apart from a handful of trains like these, regular trains have few unreserved coaches. With more such trains, there will be less overcrowding,8217;8217; says Suresh Kumar Mandal, schoolteacher and amateur musician from Jehanabad. He dismisses objections that this would eat into railways revenue since reserved seats cost more.

Conversation turns, invariably, to Laloo Prasad Yadav, but after a few vague comments about 8216;8216;leaders who pretend to be of the masses8217;8217;, talk veers to Union railway ministers, most of whom have also hailed from Bihar.

8216;8216;If you think this is crowded, you should see other general compartments throughout the year,8217;8217; Mandal says. 8216;8216;At least this one has lights, working fans and is nicely painted.8217;8217;

8.30 pm
VENDORS seem to have given this coach a wide berth, so along its entire length, tiffin boxes make an appearance. Munching on some very fat rotis, 12-year old Bajrangi Lal, on a lower bunk near the aisle, looks blank when asked why he is on his way home alone with his 72-year-old grandmother Nagma Devi. He has not heard of the stampede or the crowds.

Nagma Devi, with soda-bottle glasses perched on her nose, is reportedly hard-of-hearing. Seated uncomfortably near the aisle, directly in the way of the Tarzans, the old woman makes the journey safe and sound, although with much muttering.

She could take a few pointers from the die-hards, who have made this trip many times and are unfazed by the congestion, the lack of toilets, the long night. They have their own survival tactics. Somaru Munda, a very laconic young man 8216;8216;I have a business in Mehrauli,8217;8217; was all he would say, strings out his shawl to create a makeshift hammock from one handrail across the aisle to another. By 10 pm, his perch is ready and he has perhaps the easiest night among all his co-passengers.

8216;8216;Anything is better than being kicked down there,8217;8217; he explains, disregarding the snide 8216;8216;udan khatola8217;8217; comments from the crowd. His hammock holds out till the morning. As he says, he has done this before.

9.30 pm
THE first food vendor, a chanawalla, makes an appearance8212;and a killing, managing to crisscross the coach. The coach, incidentally, is curiously constructed. It is divided into two separate halves by a partition, so that only one pair of doors provides entry and exit in each half. Passengers thus can access only one half of two coaches8212;their own and the one adjacent, though the connecting passage, too, is brimming with people.

11.30 pm
AS the train leaves after a 20-minute halt at Kanpur, the Jehanabad group begins another round of cards, and Suresh Mandal launches into a religious discourse on the merits of sharing with others. There8217;s no sign of a ticket checker, and quite a few of the travellers are vague when asked whether they have tickets. There is no sign of the police either. What if there is a fight or a robbery? 8216;8216;It is too crowded,8217;8217; is the laughing reply.

2.30 am
DRINKING water has run out, and bottles are shared depending on the pasengers8217; mood. Since there are only five stops in the journey, there is no question of geting a refill on the platforms.

Sleep is difficult, but by now there is a forest of heads, arms and legs splayed at impossible angles. The insurance agent alternates stretching his legs. Passengers in the lower bunks complain when swinging legs come in contact with their faces.

Upper berth passengers have placed their shoes on top of the fans, and with each big shudder of the train, a few shoes fall down. So do a few pieces of luggage from the impossibly packed bunks. Loud muttering follows when a heavy bag drops down on Nagma Devi, destroying her nap.

4.00 am
AT Mughalsarai station, a few brave passengers get down to refill their bottles, but are refused entry as the doors clang shut. The little quiet that had descended on the coach disappears in an instant as disembarking passengers struggle to free their bags. In keeping with the general mood of belligerence, the toilet ladies are unceremoniously evicted by co-passengers. Within an hour, however, they return.

Our photographer returns to the coach without water, and discovers that his pocket has been picked.

7.00 am
DAWN sees the Jehanabad group at another round of cards, accompanied by ribald jokes, until a couple of men in the lower berths complain. Passengers begin stepping down from the train with practised ease as it slows down on entering the last stretch.

8.47 am
8216;8216;Be thankful the train is not late,8217;8217; says Satish Jha, the watch component maker from Kingsway Camp, as he struggles to unload four suitcases and a couple of plastic bags at Patna station.

The train vomits its load of very tired and sore passengers. Somaru Munda unhitches his hammock and walks away.

On the platform, old women with bell-metal sieves beg for money. This is, we are told, a normal practice during festival time.

After the deaths, Railways on track
BHAVNA VIJ-AURORA

IT took five deaths to bring unreserved8212;and utterly unregulated8212;rail travel under the scanner. Wiser in retrospect, the railway authorities are now busy working out ways to ensure smooth flow of unreserved traffic, most of which originates in Delhi and heads towards Bihar and, to a lesser extent, Uttar Pradesh.

8216;8216;At the risk of sounding cliched, the stampede was a tragedy just waiting to happen. And it is no surprise that it happened because of a train heading towards Laloo-land,8217;8217; a senior railway official says.

If it was a tragedy waiting to happen, and if it is no surprise to the railways that it happened on a Bihar-bound train, the question inevitably arises: Why couldn8217;t it have been prevented?

Railway officials blame it on the 8216;8216;clubbing of various festivals8217;8217;, the celebration, in quick succession, of Diwali, Bhai Dooj, Id and then Chhath.

8216;8216;The unreserved travellers8217; rush towards Bihar and UP is a daily phenomenon. And we manage it quite successfully,8217;8217; claims an officer. 8216;8216;At the same time, there can be no excuses for what happened.8217;8217;

Consider the traffic originating from New Delhi and Old Delhi Railway Stations. Of the total 405,000 lakh passengers who use the two stations to leave for various parts of the country everyday, about 300,000 board trains from New Delhi. There are around 272 trains leaving New Delhi station daily, while another 196 originate from Old Delhi.

8216;8216;There are nearly 100,000 seats available in the unreserved category everyday, about 50,000 each from both the stations. These are only in the inter-city and long-distance trains, not including suburban trains,8217;8217; says Northern Railway spokesman D P S Sandhu. 8216;8216;More than 70 per cent of unreserved traffic heads towards Bihar and UP.8217;8217;

Trying to explain the logistics, an official holds socio-economic causes responsible. 8216;8216;Most of the migratory labour comes from these parts of the country, and they cannot afford the fares for the normal reserved category. There is also an element of rowdyism and hooliganism. And with most railway ministers hailing from Bihar, they have been more than generous towards their people. The number of unreserved seats keeps going up. Not only are new unreserved trains introduced every year, more and more unreserved coaches are attached to other trains where reservation is required,8217;8217; he says.

Most trains heading towards Bihar or even passing through the state have at least four-five unreserved coaches. Most of them are overcrowded, with people packed like sardines. As per Section 50 of the Indian Railway Act, the authorities cannot limit the sale of unreserved tickets.

However, the railways have taken some decisions to regulate passenger entry into the station and also regarding unreserved trains.

8216;8216;A proposal being considered seriously is to start all unreserved trains from the under-used Safdarjung and Patel Nagar railway stations. This will mean a big chunk of passenger traffic being diverted away from the New Delhi and Old Delhi railway stations, which will bring much-needed relief,8217;8217; an official discloses.

Till that happens, the railways are operating all unreserved trains from Platform number 12, on the Ajmeri Gate side. 8216;8216;Not only is this platform the biggest, there is also a huge waiting area. Moreover, being the last platform, regulating passenger movement will be easier,8217;8217; says an official.

The railways are also launching an awareness campaign to educate passengers on the benefits of travelling light. They also want to discourage the idea of large seeing-off parties.