A CUP OF TEA

The vast expanse of bushes in a tea garden

Some like it hot, some like it cold, some with milk and sugar and some just plain black. Some have it with a dash of nimbu (lemon) and some with a pinch of salt. But all of us go for a cup of tea when we are tired or thirsty or just bored with life thinking a cup of tea will cheer us up. Masala tea really peps us up when we are travel weary, as well as on wintry cold days.

Tea is a universal drink. People do love a good cup of tea any time of the day .Each and every tea drinker has her or his own way of making that cup of tea. The English people were (I am talking about those good old days – I do not know about these days) very particular about making their tea. First wash the teapot with hot water, measure three –four (as need be) cups of water to boil, put three or four (again as need be) spoons of tea - that is one spoon for each cup and one for the pot, add the water once it starts boiling to the tea in the pot and allow it to brew for three minutes. I myself have made many cups of tea this way. I have to mention here in those days tea leaves were prepared in a different way. Today tea is manufactured in the C.T.C. manner. C.T.C. means cutting, tearing and curling.

Good tea is the product of good leaf. Good leaf depends on the age of the tea bush and regular pruning of these bushes. Plucking of the tea leaf (two leaves and a bud) starts in early morning and goes on till late afternoon. I understand that the leaf plucked in the morning makes the best end product.
Women carrying the plucked tea to the factory

Every plucker has to pluck the stipulated amount fixed for each day. Plucking more means the plucker gets more wages and less means less. Once the plucked tea leaf is weighed and noted for record each day, it is transported to the factory where the processing is done.
Workers readying the tea for the withering trough

The withering trough

Black tea processing is done in three stages - withering, rolling and fermentation. The first stage is removing the moisture; that takes 16 to 20 hours. This also determines the quality of the tea produced and also the aroma. The second stage is rolling which breaks the leaf and stalk into small pieces. The last stage is fermentation which is done by laying the rolled leaf in thin layers in sifted portions in a plain room conditioned with humidity and a fixed temperature.

The CTC roller

A heap of CTC tea - all sorted and ready to go into the bag

Retail tea is a blend of different grades by mixing the product of a variety of tea gardens and sometimes from more than one country of origin. Blending of tea is done by expert tea tasters.

While having that cup of tea I wonder how many of us think or bother to know how much effort is put in to bring that tea to one’s table. Personally speaking, I never bothered about it because we never had tea at our home unless we had guests or visitors who were tea drinkers. We were sworn coffee addicts. All this changed when our youngest daughter got married to a tea planter some twenty odd years ago. We were introduced to garden fresh tea and it tasted nothing like the marketed tea we had back home. It was wonderful. tea with a full flavor and fresh-smelling. There is no after taste in a cup of real good black tea. Nowadays I start my day with a cup of lemon tea. I have now turned into a tea addict.

Tea laid out for tasting

Having spent a good deal of my life in the last ten and odd years in the tea garden with my daughter and her family I have realised that it takes a lot of work, effort and responsibilities for the tea planter to bring that cup of tea to the table. The tea gardens are either owned by individuals or belong to incorporated companies, based in Calcutta. Every tea garden is under a manager. He has with him four or five assistants to help run the garden and also the usual clerical staff. The manager is responsible for the smooth running of the garden and the factory in each garden that turns the fresh leaves plucked daily into ready to pack products. He is answerable to the higher authorities in Calcutta not only for matters connected with the smooth running of the garden and the factory but also for damages caused in the garden because of natural calamities like unseasonal rains, hail storms, drought or excessive rains.

Almost all the tea gardens in the Dooars area are surrounded by forests. Hence there is always the danger of wild beasts like elephants, leopards and wild bison entering the Tea gardens. The elephants are the most feared ones. They come in hordes of fifteen and twenty and are capable of causing too much damage. They usually enter the labour lines at dusk attracted by the smell of cooking. These animals also go to the vegetable gardens of the bungalows in search of corn and fruits. They pull down the houses of the labourers, sometimes even attacking humans. There are times when these elephants kill people if they are not in good mood. Uprooting trees and tea bushes are mere child’s play for the elephants. But this is always a source of headache for the manager. This is all because humans have entered into animal territory and the animals are kind of showing their protests. This is only my reasoning.

The English were in power in India when tea cultivation started in this country. They were very clever in settling down comfortably in the colonies occupied by them. Likewise in the tea gardens too they made life easy and comfortable by building big airy bungalows for themselves. (These types of bungalows are seen all over India even today in the district head headquarters. In those days these bungalows were meant for the District Collectors and Inspectors of Police) The tea culture and the life for the people working in tea gardens were styled by the English planters equal to the life style they had left behind in their home towns. Every garden has the manager’s bungalow on this style and smaller ones for the assistants and the doctor. The doctor in each garden who is in charge of the hospital is available twenty four hours to the needy labourers as well as the managerial staff and their families.

The ‘Labour lines’ are where the workers in the tea garden have their houses. Each Garden has some thousand to thousand five hundred workers some permanent and some temporary. They are given free houses - two roomed with a kitchen and bathroom. They are provided with heavily subsidised rations, free firewood and free water supply and free medical care. They keep their homes in good shape – I am told - some of them with good furniture. Most of them own TV sets too. I have seen the small plot of yard in front of some of these houses, they are well kept with many flowering plants. There is a crèche to take care of young kids while the parents are working. Education is free up to Middle school. Even with all these facilities given to the workers they are never satisfied. They are always making new demands for more wages or increased bonus which they get annually during the Puja season. The worker’s demands are instigated by different party and union leaders. To pacify the union leaders and the workers and bring a settlement between the workers and the Head Office in Calcutta is the manager’s responsibility.

All said and done, the manager’s life is not a peaceful one. It is there with him all the twenty four hours. Some times his family has also to bear the brunt of it. With all these handicaps if he produces that good cup of tea I enjoy, I salute him. LONG LIVE HIS ILK.

HOW I SHOCKED A POLICEMAN

While in Delhi for more than forty years of my married life, I always enjoyed the winter months - though we did not then have most of the modern gadgets like washing machine and grinders, or running hot water. The reason being one never felt tired however much housework one did. And sitting in the sun, knitting or reading was the ultimate luxury for me.

Come November, it would be time to take out the woollens and inspect them, whether the children’s school sweaters and coats could be managed for one more winter or new ones had to be ordered or knitted, and sending my husband’s suits to be dry-cleaned. Then all our cottons had to be aired and packed up till the next summer. That was the time for all our cotton\summer clothes also to have their annual rest.

Come the month of March, it was time to pack up all the winter clothes and get ready for the summer. This time a lot of physical work was to be put in. All the sweaters had to be hand-washed (all pure-wool knitted—as acrylic was not on the scene yet) one by one for fear of running colours that might spoil the knitteds, and then dried flat on a Turkish towel in the shade. It used to at least take two days for the sweaters to dry - so just imagine how many days it would take for the sweaters of two or three adults and three or four children’s to be washed, dried and have them packed in boxes till the next winter. It was the same routine for all housewives.

There was a break in this routine one March in 1974. My husband’s and my children’s sweaters were washed and ready to be boxed. That day it was my sweaters turn. There were about five or six new cardigans, all acrylic and gifts from my daughter on her return from Manchester after a two year stay there. They were drying in the back yard and as usual I was babysitting them . I was alone in the house, so when the phone rang I went inside to answer. It was a wrong number. It took about five minutes for me to return to the backyard. What I saw there I could not believe; the old couple of sweaters were there alright – the new ones had disappeared. I was lost for a few minutes. I did not know what to do. Then I rallied myself and got in touch with my husband and told him what had happened with tears running down my cheeks.
Can you imagine what he told me? “Forget the whole thing”. I got so wild that I asked him to use his position and report to the police about the theft .He flatly refused. I knew he was right in a way so I did not force him also. When our children back from school, I told them about the incident, and they were annoyed about the whole thing. Our second daughter was the one who was most affected —I still remember how she ran all over the lanes and by lanes in our colony to find out if some body was hiding somewhere with the loot, but it was of no use. For a week she was always on the lookout for any suspicious characters wandering about inside our colony.

Well, as days passed, I gradually learnt to accept the fact that I had lost my new sweaters for ever.

One evening in late May there was somebody at the door wanting to see the man of the house. My husband was not at home so I went to the veranda to greet him and to find out the reason for his wanting to meet my husband. He introduced himself as police Inspector X and wanted to know whether any theft had taken place at our place a few months back. Honestly, I had forgotten the loss of my sweaters, and having answered him in the negative wanted to know the reason for his asking that question, and why he was interested.

“This boy here tells me that he had stolen a few sweaters from this house two months back,” and pointed to a teenager, poor, and dressed in shabby clothes standing by his side, carrying a small tattered suitcase in his hand. I remembered like a flash how my sweaters suddenly disappeared from the backyard. I told the policeman that in fact we lost a few sweaters round about that time and we had no hope of ever getting them back. Mr. X ordered the boy to open the suitcase .Inside were a few sweaters - some of them my given-up-for-lost ones. There were about eight or nine sweaters. Having looked through them I pointed out which were mine and told him that two of mine were not there. I was told that the boy had sold one of them for a mere Rs 2 to buy a cinema ticket and another for a meal. After confirming the theft the police Inspector asked me whether we had reported the theft to the police. “ No, my husband did not want to do that”

“Why?” was his next question and he wanted to know where my husband was working.

When told he was a government servant he started saying how the people working in the ministries have a very poor impression and opinion of the police, whereas they think too much of themselves and so on. He went on in this strain for a few minutes which really raised my hackles. I stopped him in mid-sentence and said, “Please get out of my house if this is the way you talk about my husband and you take those sweaters also with you. I don’t want them back”

That shut him up .He was at a loss and did not know what to say. He never expected that from me. After a few seconds he asked me in a timid voice, “In which ministry is sahib working?” Home ministry was my answer in a clipped tone.

“What is his designation?”

“Director, Police”

How I wished I had a camera in my hand to capture all the expressions and emotions that passed through his face on hearing my answer. Gulping and stammering he said, “Sorry Sir, I mean, Madam, please never tell sahib what I said. I am sorry I said that, Sir, I mean Madam, please. Madam, you may come to the S.N Police Station tomorrow, put your signature on the identification paper (or some such paper—I don’t remember now) and collect your sweaters, Madam.” I simply waved him off from my home after a very curt thank you. Also I told him there was no question of my going to any police station or anywhere to get back those sweaters

Every single word was repeated to my husband later that night after dinner. He was equally shocked to hear that I had asked the policeman to get out of my house.

I did not know what happened the next day in his office - like who met him or talked to him about the policeman’s visit to our house. All I was told by my husband was there was a note of apology from the police Inspector. The sweaters were sent home later the same evening. I was reluctant to touch them at first. Any way we had them dry cleaned and those sweaters served me well for a long time.

GLAUCOMA - AND COPING WITH IT

Glaucoma is one word I had not heard of till I fell prey to it some twenty years back. I was in Singapore in 1991—staying with my son –a sport journalist.
I had lost my husband four years earlier and was a total wreck. Raja – my son –was the one who helped me regain my sanity – infusing so much confidence in myself, helping me back to have a busy life in this new country. He encouraged me to do things on my own—like going to the British Council library to get books to read, going to the shops on my own to buy whatever I needed for myself or for the house, and most important- to go for walks.

It was during one of these walks I felt something was wrong with my vision. While waiting for the traffic signals to change to cross the road, I was not able to see the cars coming from my left side till they were right in front of me. I thought I was getting cataract as I was above 60 at that time. So I decided to go to Bombay to stay with my daughter Viji who at that time was working with an NGO helping cancer patients. She had contact with many doctors. With her help I saw an optician who, after listening to my problem suggested that I consult a glaucoma expert and sent me to one.

This specialist, checked my eyes and did a field test, and advised me that it was a seriously advanced case of glaucoma. He said I should have surgery as soon as possible, within two days if possible to save the vision – whatever that was left of it -- in my left eye. He advised me to go to Sankara Netralaya in Chennai where I could get the best treatment. So off I flew to Chennai to my eldest daughter Raji who, in the meantime, managed to get an appointment with the chief of that institution for the next day itself.

Thus my treatment started. I was put in the care of Dr L Vijaya who appeared to be very efficient at the same time kind and considerate. I was under her care for the next eight-nine years. During this period I underwent three surgeries, in both my eyes, for glaucoma as well as for cataract which, by this time, had set in and was ripe for surgery, done by Dr Vijaya herself.

Glaucoma is caused when pressure is built up in the eyes. This pressure then starts crushing the optical nerves, which get damaged and start affecting ones vision. And that is when one becomes aware of it, only after this damage is done. That is why glaucoma is referred as a thief disease.

I was told I had lost 85% of my vision in my left eye. The first stage of treatment was laser surgery, done to relieve the pressure on the optical nerves by drilling minute holes in my eyeball. After this I was asked to apply eyedrops – Pilocar, four times a day, and Timolol, three times a day -- till two further surgeries were performed.



After a year or two of stumbling steps, I learnt to take this drawback in my stride and have continued with my life without much problem for the last so many years. I am doing everything I was doing before I was affected by this: knitting, reading, cooking whenever I feel like it, and am now typing this blog on my netbook, too. (as in the picture)But I have stopped going for walks on my own --- I am not allowed to do that by my children wherever I am, so I have to do with walking inside the compound or on the terrace.

Another disadvantage, with practically no vision in one eye, is I am not able to gauge the depth of things. This has led to minor inconveniences. Going down the stairs is a problem. I need the help of another person or I have to cling on to the banisters. Also, when I want to put a glass on a table, I find it difficult to gauge the distance between them. In unfamiliar situations, I let go of the glass an inch above the table as a result of which I spill things, or worse, break glasses. Then when hanging out clothes to dry, it is very difficult for me to locate the clothesline; it is always a few inches this way or that way from where I see them.

The main reason why I am writing all this is that at the very beginning itself Dr Vijaya alerted me that this glaucoma is hereditary and so my children should have periodical eye checkups. I remember my mother telling us that her grandmother lost her vision in her old age. Could she have had glaucoma? Who knows?

Anyway, it is proved now that glaucoma IS hereditary because my daughter Viji has been affected by it. She discovered she had it only four months ago but Dr Vijaya, whom also she consulted, is of the opinion it must have started at least a year back because my daughter’s right eye is badly affected.

I request all my family members and all who read this not to ignore any discomfort you feel in your eyes. Please have an eye checkup at the earliest and save your sight. Some symptoms are a dull but heavy feeling ache in your eyeballs which I used to feel in the early days. Also powerful lights trouble the eyes, giving a lot of glare. Light beams reaching one’s eyes are broken: the stars one sees seem like a comet. Actually I have not seen a single star without a tail for the last so many years, not that I am able to spot any.

Please don’t think glaucoma affects only grownups. It could attack anyone at any age Even babies are affected by this. NO, I am not alarming anybody, just trying my best to make one aware of this. All I want to say is be on your alert and don’t ignore your eyes.

A slightly different version of this was published in the May issue of a Chennai publication, 'Eve's Touch'.

TV ADS

There was a Book Fair in New Delhi from Jan 30th to Feb 8th. My son, with whom I am staying now in Delhi, was working in a friend’s stall there. So for that period of time I was left to myself from 9am to 9pm as my son lives alone, a confirmed bachelor. To have some kind of noise in the house I turned to the TV, or rather, switched on the TV.

I rarely watch TV. If at all I do, it is only Malayalam movies or very old Tamil ones. Even there I am very choosy and selective about what I watch. But during the ten days I was by myself I was exposed to the world of television commercials. So much so, I started seeing commercial in my dreams.

Personally I feel these commercials are frustrating. It is ages since one has watched a programme on the TV without these ads butting in. They are there in the 30 minutes allotted for the news even. Whenever a cricket match is televised one gets only glimpses of the matches in between commercials. It may sound funny but it is the truth.

There was a time when one could watch TV programmes without any commercial breaks. In those days there was no round the clock programme or so many channels or so many varieties of goods available in the market. The pleasure of watching a movie at a stretch without any break in your own home was really great. One had to pay a tax of Rs 50 per year to have a TV licence. No one had to suffer these jingles and jargon.
I vividly remember the viewers’ reactions when commercial breaks were introduced for the first time. Housewives running to the kitchen to give finishing touches to the cooking, feeding the school-going kids, and the kids themselves rushing to finish their homework, get their uniforms and books ready for the next day during this break. The novelty soon died as the commercial breaks increased with proportion to the increase in the channels and advertisements increased by leaps and bounds.
Still I liked viewing TV programmes without anybody thrusting ideas like using a certain brand of soap could makes one’s skin soft and spotless if a particular jingle is sung when having a bath. If you use another brand of soap you not only become clean but within a few days become beautiful too, so beautiful to win beauty contests.

The fruity fragrance of another brand of soap as it assails another model makes her forget where she is. She, being in a hurry to use that soap, starts peeling off her clothes one by one all the while rushing home. By the time she reaches home she is ready to jump into the shower. You believe it?

Coming to toothpastes, there are so many available nowadays. Take any brand there are different varieties. Unless you know which type you want you are at a loss when you go shopping. Add to that the ads for tooth paste really confuse you. Have you ever heard two schoolboys discussing toothpaste? Of all things, toothpaste? Which one will prevent tooth decay? Which is the best? So on and so on. A young girl with a doll is more interested in seeing her doll having good perfect teeth by using a certain type of toothpaste. Could one believe all this?

As it is, children of today are very precocious and very intelligent. They, in some cases, are more knowledgeable than their previous generation. They know about the why and how of things, how such and such gadget works. Why bring them into commercials to air their knowledge and belittle their parents to the viewer like a small boy telling his mother what commonsense is? I belong to a very old generation. I find all this a little too hard to swallow.

I find a few ads really good and interesting and educative. They give you the freedom of choice, they don’t give the public false hopes. One should know what soap or shampoo or hair oil or face cream suits him or her best and go for that.
I have just expressed a few of my thoughts I do not know how it may sound to others Everyone is entitled to have a viewpoint, These are mine, right or wrong.

IN - LAWS!

It was with great interest I read my cousin’s blog, Inlaws and Outlaws . I have always thought that women themselves are their worst enemies A mother- in- law and her daughter- in-law fighting for and trying to hold onto the son’s/husband’s affections are the worst type. As my cousin has rightly said this in-law fight has been going on for ages and will go on for ever.

Even at this time and age in educated families many arranged marriages take place in which the boy and the girl are given the freedom only to nod yes to what the elders say. A few years or months hence ,the girls in-laws particularly the mother would not be able to digest the fact that the couple are happy with each other and are getting to love one another. The mother has this fear that her son‘s love for her would be lost for ever But it is ridiculous when one thinks about it in a dispassionate way. The mother should always remember that she has reached where she is now by walking down the same road. If this woman had a tough time with her mother-in-law in her time all the more reason why she should be kind and considerate and caring towards her son’s wife and treat her like her own daughter --- not as her enemy.

In some families, this theory does not work. This seems to have a reverse effect as in the case of Sethu and Janani. Sethu and myself came to Delhi as young brides at the same time, in the 1940s. Sethu and her husband started their married life staying with his parents while my husband and myself were on our own. Sethu had a very tough time with her mother-in-law. She had no freedom in anything in the house. She could not even talk with her husband in the presence of her mother-in-law. Could not even buy what she wanted, could not eat what she liked. As days passed her mother-in-law started choosing sarees for her, which according to Sethu, were not at all to her liking. She was not allowed to go out either for shopping or for walks like we did. When a son was born to Sethu, it was again her mother-in-law who decided how the baby was to be brought up or how to be fed and how to be dressed. She was not able to oppose her mother-in-law because her husband did not find anything wrong in this.

Poor Sethu. Whenever we met she used to cry on our shoulders, promising that she the way she would treat her daughter-in-law would be very different. Yes, things worked out differently for her when her son got married. Janani, a working girl, was so different from what she expected. Of course, she was very well mannered with Sethu but she drew the line for her mother-in-law, a Lakshman Rekha, which Sethu was not supposed to cross. Janani having her own ideas of how to run her house and her married life was very independent with her views. She never allowed her mother-in-law or her father-in-law to interfere with her style of running the house. She redecorated the house to her likes and had her own way of cooking also. Why she went to that extent that she chose the sarees Sethu had to wear, saying only such colours would suit her. Poor Sethu was caught in the web. Now she had to dance to her daughter-in-law’s tune and again needed our old shoulders to support her.

YES, there was a generation of women who in the beginning had to give in to the upper hand of their mothers-in-law and later on in life to dance to the tunes of the daughters-in-law if there was to be peace in the house.

In the olden days it was an unwritten law that a woman in her young days had to obey her father (see not her parent, here also the mother had no voice); later on, her husband with his favourite all-time words -- you don’t know anything; and, in her old age, her son. So when her son got married and brought home his bride, the mother-in-law found an easy target to vent her anger and frustrations; treating her like a slave, all the time finding fault with whatever she did. She had no kind word or not even a single word of praise for the poor girl however hard she tried to please her mother-in-law.

As women started getting educated, the situation began changing. Some girls, when they got married, were smart enough to make their mothers-in-law realize that it would benefit both of them if they had separate establishments. Others, taking education as a weapon, fought against everyone in her husband’s family asking questions as to the why and how of things for which She herself was not able to give the correct answers. But with her attitude she was able to make everyone in her family miserable.

The menfolk -- I mean the newly-married ones -- are also to be blamed. I remember as I am writing this a friend of ours. He, as a bachelor, was staying in one of the chummeries of Lodhi Colony, enjoying the meals cooked by either by one Raman Nair or one Krishnan Kutty without any complaint however average or unpalatable their fares were. After five-six years of this kind of life, he got married and brought his bride to Delhi. This young girl tried her best to please her man by trying to cook to his taste. Our friend started comparing her cooking to his mother’s, which he never even thought of while eating at Raman Nair’s or at Krishnan Kutty’s. This put off the young bride and all her anger turned towards her mother-in-law who was living hundreds of miles away from Delhi

In a joint family, one word of praise from the man of the house about the new daughter-in-law’s cooking is enough to upset the mother-in-law causing a rift between them. After all a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law are also human beings. What they should remember is that a man’s feelings for his mother are very different from his love for his wife.

A woman may know how to rule the country. But that rule may not extend to their daughters- in-law. Think of Queen Elizabeth and princess Diana or nearer home take our own Indira Gandhi and Maneka Gandhi. It is the same story.

NOW AND THEN. . . .

I was very much taken by surprise when we entered our compartment (AC first class) at half past eight in the evening at Kathgodam railway station for our trip back to Delhi. My four grandchildren, my son and myself were on a holiday to Almora. The grandchildren had left for Delhi earlier. We were the last to leave the camp. I was naturally tired after a four to five days stay in the resort, walking up and down to the lounge, the dining room and a few steps this way and that way. A four to five hour drive in the mountain road in a taxi and a much needed Masala dosai in the Udipi hotel close to the railway station was all that was needed for one to look forward to the welcoming bed we had reserved on the Delhi bound train.

Our compartment was a four berther. Two of them were occupied by a couple who had already retired for the night. Our beds were there ready for us to lie down and go to sleep which I did immediately. Well this is the last word in luxury one could avail of in the railways of India today. We had travelled to Kathgodam from old Delhi by the same train. This train was supposed to start at 10.30.pm but it was delayed by two hours. Walking through a densely crowded platform and waiting there for such a long time made us all immune - to note and appreciate - the ready-made bed and other facilities. While waiting for the train to arrive at the platform, it was my five year old great grand daughter who set us an example by her good behaviour.

So what is new one may ask. This is how all AC first-class passengers are treated every day every route in the Indian Railways Well, I beg to differ We (again my son and myself) had a different and difficult experience two years back when we boarded the night train from Delhi to Chennai.

We had booked our berths early enough asking for two lower berths which we got confirmed too. As we entered our coach we were surprised to see that the two lower berths given to us were occupied by two persons who just refused to listen to what my son had to say, who just remained adamant and refused to vacate the seats. The TT was called who asked these two men to vacate the seats they had wrongly occupied - unnecessary hassle, trouble and waste of our time and energy. We had to wait for some time till fresh sheets and blankets were produced by an (even more exasperated than we were) attendant for us to settle for the night.

Then, on another journey with my son, from Madras Egmore to Thanjavur, my son had to give up his lower berth to a person who had just undergone by-pass surgery. He had been discharged from hospital that very day and was travelling back home all alone. The funny side was this patient was very eager to show me his surgery scar. I thanked him saying I was not interested.

Travelling for me was very different some sixty years back when India was under the British regime. Of course there were the three classes then - first, second and third (today there is no third class). But there were no air-conditioned coaches The upper-classes even in those days were not affordable for the common man. There were no reservations. And the seating arrangements in the third class were horrible ---- just four long wooden benches not very wide , two on both sides of the compartment, two in the middle with their backs touching each other.

In 1946 I had travelled in one of those third class compartment s with my six month-old baby, from Madras (Chennai) to Delhi sitting throughout night and day for more than fifty six hours. With me was my sister with her three month- old baby. We had as our escorts my sister’s mother-in-law and two brothers-in-law. The compartment was tightly packed with all sorts of women , men, children, with their various steel trunks, hold-alls -- a must for all railway journeys in those days -- and tiffin-carriers big enough to contain food to last for three days Not to forget the suraais for water which were very prompt in tilting and spilling their contents at the least provocation.

Once a person got up from the seat to go the loo that seat was sure to be occupied by one of the standing passengers. This meant the first person would have to stand till another person got up. Well, it was a bad experience for us, our first and last of that miserable kind. In those days there were no upper berths. There used to be racks where the boxes and bags were placed.

When India came under self- rule, travelling by trains also improved gradually. By 1960-1965 there were many compartments with upper- berths, I remember the journey I took with my children back in 1962 from Madras to New Delhi by the GT Express. We were travelling first-class and we were given a compartment with two lower berths and two upper ones There was a wash-basin in between the two lower berths and an attached bathroom. We had a very comfortable journey -- very relaxed.

Air-conditioned chair-cars were also tried and tested to suit the need of increased number of passengers to Delhi and Bombay (Mumbai now). More and more people started travelling as tourists too. AC chair-cars were first introduced in the Delhi- Madras line. My parents, my eldest sister, and myself with my two younger children travelled from Madras to Delhi to attend my niece’s wedding in Delhi. It was in-mid-summer. We felt the AC coaches were really a boon. We were too quick to judge. On our return journey once we reached Agra the air-conditioner failed and with no fresh air inside the coach we all had a difficult time, particularly my father who was well beyond seventy. Thank God, the mistake was soon corrected and we reached Madras without any more mishaps.

AC chair cars were a huge success in the Bombay-Delhi line. for It was only a 24-hour journey and it was running for quite some years Once the two- tier and three- tier A.C sleepers were introduced the chair cars became redundant.

In the 1940s and 1950s there was only the Grand-Trunk Express to and fro from Madras and Delhi. In the 1940s this train used to run only three days a week. Now the number of trains on each and every line has increased to meet the demands of the ever increasing travelers. Any train you board on any route, one finds not even a single empty seat. Rich or poor people are always on the move always on the go. The waiting list is sometimes longer than the trains. The trains are very long now. Most of the platforms are not long enough for these trains

I wonder what the future holds for the Indians travelling by trains.

Talking about trains brings to mind a joke my husband told me on my first train trip with him. Even if you’ve heard it before, please bear with me and laugh.

Once the Prince of Wales was travelling by train and in his compartment were two society ladies. As the journey wore on, they did their best to outdo each other in their attempts to impress His Highness, who was not at all amused. When the train passed through a tunnel, the Prince put the back of his hand to his mouth and made a kissing sound. Then he got off at the next station, saying, “To which of you delightful ladies do I owe that unexpected pleasure!” It left two very sore ladies in the compartment.

CHILDREN OF DESTINY

In today's Statesman ( October 20) I came across a news item, "Great Escape". The story is how a toddler -- not even two years old -- is safe and well even though he fell down from an open window of his third storey apartment. He landed on some concrete and rocks.He escaped with a cut in his abdomen, a bruised lung and a bump on his head. This happened in California.

It reminds me of another news item that came in one of last week's newspapers. A pregnant woman travelling by train had a miraculous escape. She visited the toilet and while there delivered her baby.The baby fell through the hole on to the tracks. The woman came from the toilet and jumped out of the running train without a second thought.

Other travellers in the compartment seeing her jumping pulled the chain and stopped the train.When the railway officials with some of the passengers walked back some distance they found the woman sitting with the baby in her arms on the side of the tracks. Amazingly both were not hurt and are doing well.

These two incidents remind me of the old saying that there is a time and place for everything and everyone. It also goes the moment a child is born it is written on his forehead (FATE) the time of his death. So may be these three above mentioned have long life. Otherwise things would have been different.

The other day Raja showed me a video clip on his laptop which pictured an incident that happened somewhere in Australia. It showed how a baby in a pram had a miraculous escape after being hit by an oncoming train in a station.




The baby's mother waiting on the platform had lost her grip on the pram which rolled on to the track. The moving train had pushed the pram away from the track where the woman found her baby safe inside pram itself. So it looks like this baby also has good fate.

But not everyone is this lucky. The famous guitarist Eric Clapton lost his three year old son in 1991 when he fell from an open window of a high rise building. Imagine a baby coming to such a tragic end in the saftey of his own home.

So it all depends on one's luck or shall I say Fate.