Wit Wisdom and Whoop

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...

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 ...

It was sometime in early sixties and we were then living in a place called Hospet in Karnataka. I was too young to remember much but was maybe 5 years old at best. My father was working on a project near a place called Kariganur near Hospet which was for a railway line to carry Iron Ore from the mines in Bellary. The line traveled all the way to Hospet and it had to cross what was known as the Tungabhadra power canal which was very close to our house. The railway lines had been laid upto either end of the canal but the canal itself did not have a railway line. The girder was however in place as can be seen below. Now for those who dont know Railways there is a practice called loose shunting which I am unsure is practiced today. What they did was that when they were to shift the coaches, wagons between lines the engine driver sometimes decoupled the lot the moment they are on the right line. These bogies then continued moving due to their initial momentum and stop by themselves a...

These are a collection of fairly random pictures but still some special occasion. My memory is a bit hazy and so while actual details can be slightly wrong, the names missing they still give a glimpse about what Indian Railways is all about. Today with internet, social media and Google at our finger tips, literally, we comment and complain about various aspect of Railways. These while understandable the bigger tragedy is that whatever exists today is due to the unknown, unnamed, forgotten officers, labourers who literally created something called Railways out of nothing. In those days the engineers and officers, the contractors and labourers did not equipment, safety, labour laws, environmental activists and they built the edifice over which many of us sit and pontificate.  My father retired in 1988 and died in 2000 and a lot of what he said, commented must be seen in the context of those days. My father often said, in jest and frustration - if everyone in our days were ...

Only those who have grown in a Indian Railway family will understand the deep bonds that the organisation forges with not just the employee but the whole family.  While I am not privy to what the life is like now, till not very long ago what I said held true. The Indian Railways is the lifeblood of travel in India integrating the country like no other,  one of the largest networks in the world and if I am not mistaken carries the maximum passengers in a day which is unmatched by any country or transport system globally. It is also one of the few organisations in the country where the top man, the Chairman of the Railway Board rises from the bottom of the food chain with no lateral entries. Thus even the  Chairman would have been there, done that  getting his hands down and dirty and would know the intricate working and systems so well that rarely if anybody can “bullshit” to him and get away. For long and probably even now when me and others like me talk...