Train Stories - Some anecdotes - Part 4/n
I was fortunate to have been
born in a railway family and my father made it that much more memorable. A lot
of what I am today in terms of my
professional life I have learnt from my father and more than once it has saved
my life so to speak. I share below some anecdotes and funny moments.
Studying in a hostel meant coming
home to a small town for vacation and with no friends a teenager can quickly
get bored out of his mind. So often my father took me out on his inspection
visits and made me do work which was actually a training ground.
Quite often he returned home
with a huge box called “Tappal box” (Tappal in kannada/ telegu referred to post) which
contained official files and then spent the evening going through each of them
writing comments, approving/disapproving, signing them off etc. As he finished with each he threw them on to
the floor and my job was to collect them and arrange them neatly and put them
back in the Tappal box. On occasions he would give me a file and ask me to suggest
what to write as comments/reply on the issue raised. He would then debate and explain
why I was right/wrong in my thought process and comments. Then it was a chore. Today I realise the huge
learning experience I had.
Thanks to his enthusiasm he
was often made the secretary of the Railway officers club. He arranged games,
events and such and there were many an exciting moment. While in the end everyone
did applaud him, there used to be a united groan when he announced an event
since it was invariably a “crazy” idea. One must remember that the officer
fraternity consisted of young, middle aged and older folks and as happens in
government departments a bunch of junior staff/helpers were around to
assist. So any embarrassing moment
became public gossip soon while the audience roared with laughter. Some of the events he arranged for sports
events for the officers were as follows.
1) Slow walking race – here the
person who walks the slowest and finishes last without stopping wins the race.
2) Snake race – here the
participant had to run in a snake like shape and the left/right turns were quite
sharp. More than one officer used to trip over themselves and fall sometimes
clutching at the next contestant if he happened to be passing by.
3) Backward race – here you ran
backwards as fast as you can and yes people tripped and fell and somersaulted
landing in a heap.
4) Couples race – Here the wife
had to walk/run over a foolscap piece of paper without putting her foot on the
ground and the husbands job was to keep switching the paper from rear to front
with each step. As you can guess this meant the husband was literally hopping
sideways in a sitting position. When ladies wore saris, as most did those days the
husband was often blinded by the swish of the sari and the lady would step
outside the paper and get disqualified. At
other times the paper would tear as the lady was slow in lifting her foot. Sometimes she stepped on his hand with a stomp as he howled in pain. The furore
after these events can only be imagined with arguments digressing into dress
styles, fitness, size and what not. With those who enjoyed, he was popular, with others, well not exactly popular.
The club was a place where
some played shuttle badminton, others table tennis and some dignified prim and
proper gentlemen, cards be it bridge or rummy though no gambling was allowed. One
member I remember was a Dr. Gangadhar, a doctor who was serious and almost absent minded
when playing cards. One April fool day
the members knew that “Gopalakrishna would do something today” but nobody knew
what since he hadn’t spoken to anyone in the club. So no info leaked out on
what he was planning. As members settled
down the staff served coffee, fried bondas and a sweet halwa well packed in
butter paper. Members were wary, sniffed the coffee, bonda but reluctant to eat
it since god and Gopalakrishna knew what mischief was afoot. So most plates
remained untouched. The air was thick with expectation. Till Dr. Gangadhar even while focussing on
the cards in hand opened the halwa and popped it into his mouth. It was
actually grease sourced from the local diesel loco shed and packed well. No wonder
nobody knew since a civil engineering department engineer had enlisted the help
of the mechanical engineering department staff for carrying out this elaborate
April fool hoax.
Whenever he went on his
surprise inspections to sites he had his van/jeep topped up and then left for
his destination. Known to be a short tempered person his anger was legendary
and many a people literally shivered at his wrath. They also loved him because
he was never vindictive or unfair and always helpful but his anger was fearful.
Once he left on one such surprise inspection with me in tow and since it was
summer (in Andhra Pradesh) decided to leave early before it got too hot. Arriving
at the destination at around 10 AM he found the person incharge there sitting without a shirt, relaxing under
the fan almost sleeping. The office incharge got his head and butt chewed off,
the entire office reverberated with my fathers voice and the man was literally in
tears. When my father finally paused to take a breath the man literally
pleading said “Sir, I was told that the surprise inspection is at 11 AM”. The next day his staff caught the wrong end
of the stick and after that he never told anyone where he was going including
his driver. Once the van/jeep was filled with petrol he would then instruct
where to go.
The Indian Railways in those
days used to publish an Annual magazine and I have just one issue published in
1961 which has many interesting tit bits but a lady Mrs. I. Wilson has shared
some funny moments at work in the magazine one of which I share below.
Red tape is
one of the most exasperating things you have to cut through before you are able
to get things done in the office. On one occasion the question of an item of
expenditure on insecticides arose. This had given rise to such a prolonged
correspondence back and forth that the frantic matron of the hospital wrote to
the medical inspector and said – “Following telephone information from your office
that you were unable to issue carbon di-sulphide for the use in this hospital
for ant control, request was made to quarter master. We were informed by
quarter master that they could only issue such preparation if the ant was in
the building. If it was outside the building the issuance of preparation was to
come from the engineering section. It is difficult to determine the intentions
of the ants we are after. Some live inside, it seems and wander outside for
food, while some ostensibly living outside forage inside for food. It is a
difficult problem to determine which ant comes from without and is an
engineering ant, and which ant comes from within and is a quarter master ant. Some
of our ants appear to be going in circles and others apparently wandering at
random. Such ant tactics are very confusing and could result in a quarter master
ant being exterminated by engineering poison or an engineering ant by a quarter
master poison which could be contrary to regulations and would probably lead to
extensive investigations and lengthy letters of explanation. In view of the
fact that quarter master poison has been known to kill an ant just as dead as engineering
poison and vice versa, request is made that your office draw identical poisons
for the issue of this office, from both engineering and quarter master and mix
the same so that there will be no way of knowing which poison killed the ant”
Another one I heard though I don’t
recollect the officers involved was when a new railway station was being built.
The local contractor and engineer had put up boards against every room like “Station
Masters Room”, “Asst Station Masters Room”, “Electrical foremans Room” and so on. The staff was instructed that
putting the word Room against every name was useless since everyone knew it was
a room. Later another station was getting ready and the same officer went to
inspect it. As he walked along the platform he suddenly started running and
everybody followed him. He ran into a room and asked “Where are they?”. Everybody
was confused and didn’t know what to say till he stepped out and pointed to the
board which said “Ladies Waiting”. They had not put the word room as instructed
earlier.
My father was very loved by stenographers since his dictation ability was legendary. They found that very few corrections were made later and so retyping was less. He also walked rather fast. He also tagged his stenographer on important visits, dictated instructions at site and before he left, letters typed, signed, issued on the spot. Once he had a Anglo Indian lady as his steno and this lady wore high heels to work. We had a driver called Ramanathan, a talkative chap and though scared of my father, would take liberties in talking. One day he told my mother in tamil, that my father walked fast, and in many cases would dictate instructions as he walked, and this poor lady wearing high heels literally had to run to keep up with him and the whole set of people were just waiting for her to trip and fall. My mother made him stop this practice and the next thing she heard was - the lady steno transferred and a male steno posted.
This driver Ramanathan was such a enthusiastic chap that he constantly told me that I needed to become a IAS officer, the highest aspiration in those days. He said that his dream was that he would become my driver as on officer. He said that I needed to learn driving and as a 12 year old, he secretly taught me driving in the Jeep till one day my father accidentally learnt of it. What happened to both of us is best left unshared.
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