Train Stories - the changes 5/n

I often count myself as having been lucky to be born in a generation that saw so many technological innovations and progress. From hand cranked telephones to mobile phones, from listening to radio spending more time fiddling with its settings to watching live TV as events happen globally, from post cards to instant messaging the changes have been disruptive and mind boggling.

My father also watched change which was more developmental as India slowly but surely progressed from 1960 to 1990. That was the time when every man, woman & child felt involved in building the nation India. Where everything you did you knew contributed to the progress of India. Where you did things for idealism, dreams, passion and happiness was when you saw the train being flagged off as excited citizens thronged to watch the marvel.  It was never about money.

But his dream also died a slow death.  Slowly but surely the systems were changing as the greed of many a person overtook their need. My father had somehow spent all his career in small towns which had quaint names like Bezavada, Guntakal, Davanagere, Neyattinkara, Anantpur and it was only during the fag end of his career when promoted to a senior level that he settled down in a city.

It is always easy to criticise and pick holes in hindsight safely ensconced in our chubby holes without understanding the circumstances of a situation, time and era. But yet I do say that my father was perhaps naive, even blind and ignorant that he didn’t attempt to understand the world around him. By the time he opened his eyes to the world around him, close to retirement the effect was quite debilitating and he found himself becoming frustrated, angry, disillusioned and cynical. Those who have met him in those last days remember a grouchy man but those who met him before that remember a wonderful human being.

Even in those days when I can remember bits and pieces as a child I know that while he was a poor government employee the people he did work with were rich and opulent. One scene I can never forget is the fascination I had as a child for the car that his contractor had. It was a blazing red huge Impala car which I called aeroplane car since that is how it looked. What my father used was a beaten up rattling old Willys Jeep with a tarpaulin cover. Here are pictures I gleamed from the net to just give a flavour.

The only way you could start the jeep was by cranking the engine from front while you ran back to press the accelerator to keep it "working". If it was raining, you really really got wet trying to start the Jeep 

That spare tyre protruded OUT and unless you were a good driver, you ended up brushing against a passerby, another vehicle whatever

When it rained, the poor driver got wet, as he ran around on all sides closing the tarpaulin shutters and then tying them up with a cord while the officer sat inside. The wiper was hand operated and you had to drive and operate the wiper - I loved to be the wiperman for every driver when it rained

Now my father insisted that he always drove in his jalopy and as it is the damn thing couldn’t drive fast and my father had his own speed limit imposed on the driver. Funnily whenever my father drove himself the popular opinion was that he drove very fast and furious, but driver ? nyah, he had to observe rules. Anyway, the issue was that my father would refuse to sit in this fancy car, instead drive in his jalopy and god help the contractor if his Impala overtook my fathers car. So the Impala had to trudge slowly behind my fathers jeep whenever they went for site visits.  

An Impala car from the 60's long, sleek and could drive really fast and to me looked like and was a aeroplane as I called it

Did the rich contractor feel insulted or upset ? Many years later my uncle who worked in a totally different arm of the government visited Andhra Pradesh and was in a meeting with several others when the topic turned to railways and my uncle said that his brother inlaw used to work for the railways. A gentleman in the meeting asked for the name and when uncle mentioned my fathers name the man got up in the meeting and with folded hands said "Sir How is he? Where is he ? Please convey my respects to him". It was the same contractor who dared not overtake my father Jeep.

No contractor was ever allowed to enter our house. Even if they wanted to wish him for a festival they had to come to his office. I remember many a occasion when as a teenager I would be embarrassed to see a  filthy rich, elderly  contractor who didn’t know the rules drop by at the house and either a servant or myself had the dirty job of telling him not to enter the main gate and leave and wait in the office for a meeting.  For those who know these railway quarters the gates sometimes were quite far off and an unsuspecting contractor would come in only to be rudely asked how he dare come in. In todays time and age this behaviour would be unacceptable and invite serious reactions but in those days the line between contractor/officer was so clear that most respected and feared any officer known for his ruthless honesty.

By the time he retired my father would say with sadness how the country had changed 180 degrees between his joining the railways and his retirement.  He used to say that when he was young and if a railway accident occurred he would stride over the spot and summarily suspend those he felt had failed in their duty. Suspension orders would be issued on the spot as his stenographer typed them out at site and he signed them. Such actions were not insults. They were akin to being punished in school like standing up on a bench or being thrown out of the classroom. After a period you were back suitably chastened and having learnt a lesson. Both the punished and other colleagues including the unions understood the need for discipline and someone to enforce it.

By the time he retired he said, there would be a railway accident, people killed, the accident  quite obviously due to dereliction of duty of some staff. But punish? take action ? discipline? Nyah. Instead the same staff would work 24 hours and clear the site of the bodies and debris, restore the track and resume train traffic and they would then be awarded for exemplary work done. As for taking action, that was well nigh impossible since the unions would be up in arms and god forbid if the offender was a  employee who could use his caste/ religion as a argument.  The immediate accusation was caste bias and the threat? Non bailable arrest warrant if a FIR was lodged with an allegation. So no officer bothered to initiate or enforce action or discipline.

The ‘60s to ‘80s were the era of steam engines with coal fired boilers. These trains invariably slowed down near villages and outskirts of towns and youngsters would clamber into the engine and pilfer the coal quickly obviously with connivance of staff. My father and his colleagues whenever they could, conducted raids and tried to control such theft. Much later as steam engines were being phased out he attempted to take action against such incidents since the trains slowed down behind our house, we could see the pilfering going on. The police knowing him came by to tell him that unlike before when such youngsters feared the law the current crop would simply kill him and they the police would be able to do nothing since these activities had bigger hands behind them. He had to stop such behaviour.

On another occasion in the late ‘70s he found that a very senior officer, accompanied by family/friends often travelled by train during the day across the stretch under his control enroute to some place. The whole lot would order breakfast, lunch and snacks all along the way and never paid up. Soon the hoteliers/caterers landed up at my fathers doorstep demanding money. He paid up substantial amounts from his pocket for a few months and then it got to him. He went to the head office and complained and found amusing chuckles for his ignorance of handling such issues. Given the person involved and his rank there was little that anyone could do and the railways were not going to reimburse these expenses. The solution that was usually followed – nominate a trusted person in the office to establish an “entertainment” fund which would be funded by the contractors on a monthly basis by rotation. All such bills were paid out from this fund. You get tainted indirectly & how many can afford to walk away from their jobs or protest? Protests were not appreciated and the result would be a posting to some dingy corner of Assam or some such place and with a family, children most preferred to stay quiet with the logic – there is no personal corruption involved!!!

Closer to retirement he was asked to take over a project that in popular public opinion was a money spinner. Common opinion was that every officer/staff involved made tons of money given the complexity of the project.  He was surprised that knowing him he was yet being asked to handle the project. He started working and found the going smooth which surprised him. He was ruffling no feathers. He finally confronted a contractor who he knew well and demanded to know what was happening. Apparently the political masters had called the contractors and told them that since Gopalakrishna did not take money, his cut should be given to the politicians instead.  He soon ensured that he was shifted out of the project. If he had continued, the taint of corruption would have singed him even if he hadn’t taken a penny. That he was denied promotion and punished for this is another matter.

He used to say that the labour unions unlike earlier when they  respected an honest officer and supported him, over time became belligerent and threatening. An honest officer would face serious action and even death if the shenanigans of the staff/labour were not overlooked.  The system as a whole did not work and he blamed the corrupt communist idealogy which ruled the unions. This after, he, himself having been admirer of the idealogy when younger. A telling experience of this was what happened to us as a family in 1972.

Posted in a small town in Kerala our house was on small hillock kind of location and we could see the main road below us from the compound. Based on directives from the Prime Minister’s office (Mrs. Indira Gandhi) the number of labourers the railways could recruit was drastically curtailed. He had no choice but to follow the rules.  By early morning we had no paper, no milk, no maid and the house was surrounded by a mob of hundreds of people baying for our blood. Nobody, including the union leaders were willing to listen that the decision was not a local one taken by my father but a decision across the country by the government. The crowd was growing restive and needed but a spark to enter the compound and kill us. We were petrified and my father furious. He called the SP of the district and the answer was “Gopalakrishna, when you retrench labour, you face such backlash, you created the mess, you solve it”. Then the crowd cut the telephone lines. Now we were trapped. The traffic on the road piled up and soon news came that the other unions in the state like road transport etc had also gone on sympathy strike. The situation was becoming uglier by the minute and we just prayed that we won’t get killed. 

Somehow my father’s stenographer managed to get entry and said that he could carry a message from my father but little else. He was asked to go to Trivandrum, the next town and inform the senior most railway officer there about the situation and then leave it to him to decide. A gentleman Mr. Nair, a senior officer - Engineer in Chief, a Keralite himself was livid and he came with a large contingent of railway policemen and we were taken to safety with nothing but the clothes on our back and some valuables. We were put up in the public waiting room of the railway station since it had an attached bathroom. We cooked, lived, slept there for months and as a matter of ego/prestige  my father worked from a corner of the  railway platform converting it to an office. I went to school from the station with somebody escorting me. 

In the school things were no better. My teachers who were fairly elderly and probably in their ‘40s and ‘50s had nothing but contempt for me. They insisted in speaking and teaching in Malayalam in spite of the school being an English medium school. As a young boy in 8^th standard aged 12/13 years the trauma was considerable though it made me stronger. I was then shifted and put into a hostel in Bangalore while my parents continued their life on a railway platform. After months of this kind of living my father finally requested the railway administration not to make this an ego battle with the unions and transfer him out. They did.  It was only many months later when the emotions in Kerala had cooled off that my father went back quietly, packed our stuff from the house and collected our dog left behind with a contractor that they resumed normal life in a house in a new place - Guntakal.

Barring for the officer who saved our lives that day, the police, the government, the unions (there was no media like now a days) the politicians – not one person in the system could address the situation. However wrong, the Indian system surrendered to the militant posturing of the entitled class of unions.  To my mind such militant actions not just in Kerala but across the system in India also played a role in influencing Mrs. Indira Gandhi to impose the emergency in 1975 though the reasons and circumstances were unjust and different. I say this because I remember not just my father but many of his colleagues having a silent sympathy for the emergency since they felt that the country was being hijacked by militant attitudes and discipline/ethics fast eroding. It is another matter that the emergency only exacerbated and worsened the situation in reality.  

Considering that we are talking of the period between 1960 and 1990 the fact of the matter is that corruption and such ills were as prevalent then as they are now.  The scale, magnitude and blatancy today have changed but the fundamental issues remain.  What has changed and this was evident even in the late ‘80s however is that the criminals, the corrupt, the politicians who in the ‘60s and ‘70s respected an honest officer, no longer respected them. Killing an honest officer or terrorizing him into submission was par for the course. Even if honest, the system without even the person involved knowing would have ensnared him into a trap and all it needed was a tug at the right time and the honest officer would suddenly realise that he was in reality compromised and for the sake of his self respect he stayed quiet.  He then learns to “adjust” with the system while some others join in.

Consequent to retirement even though the Metro man Sridharan invited him to join his team for the Konkan Railway project he preferred to stay away and worked  for a private consultancy getting involved in some exclusive projects.  He used to say  that while the private sector was bereft of idealism or nationalism and money was the mantra and business was done based on the “rules” that prevailed they appreciated his honesty and ethics, kept him away from all the underhand dealings and said that he was respected only for what he contributed and nothing more. That nobody was trying to trap him or compromise him since he posed a “risk” to the corrupt system was what he was thankful for.

If I had to recount a incident that I myself witnessed, Bengaluru hosted a All India trade union conference of all Railway unions and the whole area around the railway offices in cantonment area wore a festive look. The various trade union office bearers and others were sitting around along the road that led to the offices smoking, gossiping and many a railway officer alighting from cars walked to the buildings. Nobody cared. My father and another tough honest, no nonsense officer called Mr. R. Jayaram arrived together and walked by. Most of these union leaders who recognized them threw down their cigarettes or hid them behind their back, waved away the smoke from their face, stood up as the duo passed. Jayaram remarked something about this kind of respect being worth more than any wealth.

I sometimes wonder what he would have done in 2015 since the last 15 + years since his death have been even more “interesting”  in terms of corruption, ethics, honesty and even killing. I have so many more memories but I guess one has to stop somewhere.

If I do get inspired to post and share more pictures and railway stories from the past I will do so.

For those who wish to read the entire 5 part blog, here is the link.

Train Blog - Part 1