TRACK II

“It’s a good thing happening and now Gede will become internationally famous soon,” laughs Madan.

Preparations are on for this new beginning. The pot-holed platform of this far-flung, remote border station has got a facelift. There’s no litter around, the toilets are clean and new taps and mosaic benches have been installed.

Those are the sentiments of the locals of this border town too who are happy to get some fame instead of the tag of notoriety that Gede has earned over the years as the point of cross-border smuggling. The international border between Indian and Bangladesh is just about a kilometre away and the locals look forward to the day when the Maitree Express will bridge this barrier. For them, the train will be a harbinger of, what the elders in the village fondly refer to as “those days”.

For octogenarian Rama Prasad Bhowmik, a resident of Kolkata, the mention of the Indo-Bangla train evokes fond memories. Bhowmik, who once lived in Faridpur district in what is now Bangladesh, spent his student days in Kolkata’s Vidyasagar College from 1944 to 1946. He travelled regularly between Sealdah and Rajbari (now in Bangladesh) in what used to be called the Chittagong Express.

“In those pre-independence period, I remember the delicious food that was on offer at the Sohrabji Rustamji’s restaurant at Poradah (now in Bangladesh). It all cost Rs 1.75 for a fabulous meal of steaming hot rice, dal and fish curry,” recalls Bhowmik. “I still remember the bogies of the Bengal-Assam Railways, used to be a flaming brick red.”

THE residents of Gede distinctly remember the day when the train service was suspended in 1965. “I was barely 10 and I was out playing with the boys of the neighbourhood. The lalgari (a red rake that used to go from Sealdah to Dacca) and the sabujgari (a green rake that used to come from Dacca to Sealdah) used to have a crossing at this border station late in the afternoon. But that day the lalgari chugged through the border but the green one did not arrive. We were curious, waiting for the green one to arrive. It used to signal the end of our day’s play in the open field, close to the station, when we headed back home. That day was different and the village elders came and prodded us back home, saying that the green rake would never arrive again. That was the last time we heard the grating sound of the trains,” says Sunil Kishore Ghosh, who now runs a grocery shop near the station premises.

Forty-three years after the train link between the two countries snapped, the Gede station will once again unite families and renew old bonds.

As the station gets a facelift, safety features have been reviewed too. A yellow-black fencing has been erected along the outer periphery of Platform No. 1. The fencing ends with giant gates. These are intended to shut out intruders once the international train halts at the platform for immigration and customs check.

Work on tracks is being carried out at a hectic pace. Walk down a few metres from the station, and you will be greeted by the intimidating, barbed, black box fencing being erected by the BSF. This will run right up to the zero point to insulate the train from any untoward incidents.

A flight of stairs down the platform leads one to the swanky immigration and customs office for the passengers across the border. Inside, a huge lounge lined with rows of chairs is waiting to embrace the visitors.

At the zero point on the border, however, it is not the railways alone that establishes the link between two sides. In an interesting contrast, an old parallel set-up thrives. The travellers on foot. And there are hundreds of them trekking the stretch between the Indian and the Bangladesh railhead to reach their destinations. The human traffic is heavy on either side. The old immigration and customs offices are still buzzing with activity. When the train services resume, they will continue to operate to manage the daily trickle of visitors who prefer to walk the one-kilometre stretch from Darshana to Gede on the Indian side.

For most, the only serious consequence of the border divide is defined by mere documents—passport and visa. The border may have separated families on both sides but it has not divided them.

People still trudge down to Gede from Bangladesh with baggage to take connecting trains to other parts of the West Bengal suburbs. The only stopover was the tiny hutment that serves as a BSF checkpost where they have to register themselves and get their baggage checked before heading for the immigration and customs check point on the Gede station.

This daily footfall of “on foot” travellers, between the two sides, has triggered a local industry of sorts. Local unauthorised moneychangers—about six of them—have set up base near the station. A desk, chair and a signboard are all they need to operate from the minimalist office. Business is brisk, they say, but the revival of the train service does not pose any threat to their age-old dealings. They don’t mind competition and talks of an authorised money exchange counter coming up soon don’t seem to bother them much. “The train will definitely boost the local economy and a host of other avenues will open up for all of us. We have seen it happen in the past. We are confident this will happen again,” said a local moneychanger.

The locals have a taste of what the resumption of service would mean to the people on both sides. As of now, a train from Bangladesh comes once a year for three days during a fair in Midnapore district. “You got to see it to believe it. The station at Gede becomes a venue for a massive congregation. It’s such a celebratory atmosphere. With the Maitree Express chugging in, the weekly exchanges can only get better,” says Dinabandhu Mahaldar.

THE SECURITY FENCE

The ‘box fencing’ is the most significant feature of the security set up of the international passenger train service. Proposed by the Indian side, it had at one stage turned out to be a major hurdle in resuming the Indo-Bangla train services. New Delhi had proposed erecting a box-type fencing to cover the platform that will stretch up to the international border to prevent intrusion. But the Bangladeshi government did not initially agree to the Indian proposal for a 150-yard box fencing on the border. “Bangladesh had objected to construction of any ‘defence’ structure within 150 yards from the Zero Line of the international border. But we had to convince them that this fencing is not a defence structure, rather it is being built to ensure the safety of the passenger train,” says S.N. Tiwari, IG, South Bengal Frontier, BSF.

Under this box fencing, the rail tracks will be guarded by 30-ft high fences that will run parallel on both sides. It gives an appearance of a V mounted over a vertical line. The fencing reaches up to the ground level to ensure that intruders do not creep in through gaps left underneath.

The ‘box fencing’ gives a cage-like appearance. “This has been designed to keep intruders at bay,” says a BSF official posted at the international border. Gede and its adjoining villages on either side of the border have been notorious for rampant smuggling. “It is not easy to keep up with them. They draw up innovative ideas to hoodwink the BSF personnel. There have been instances where smugglers had stacked their goods in barks of banana trees. Sneaking in goods in chambers underneath the compartments of the Indo-Bangla goods train, once rampant, is now rare after we discovered the modus operandi and launched a crackdown,” says a BSF official.