For five hours, Srichandra Kumar, an 18-year-old from Gorakhpur district, Uttar Pradesh, has been confined to a cramped space in the passage near the toilet of the general-class unreserved coach on the 12841 Coromandel Express (Shalimar-Chennai Central).
On June 13, the train chugs in at Balasore Railway Station. Now, Srichandra is to endure another 12 hours in the same uncomfortable position until he reaches Visakhapatnam, where he earns a living installing sliding aluminium glass windows.
Images of the tragic train accident involving the Coromandel Express, which claimed the lives of 288 people at Bahanaga Bazar Railway Station, may well have been haunting his mind, but the determined migrant labourer Srichandra would have banished the lingering fear to the back of his mind as he boarded the train from Shalimar station in Kolkata.
His arduous journey actually began 30 hours ago when he boarded the Bagh Express from Basti Station in Gorakhpur district even without a proper seat, in order to catch the Coromandel Express from Shalimar.
In the same coach on the Coromandel, Sumitra Singh (45) and seven members of her family have managed to grab two seats in Kharagpur. The other six find themselves squeezed into the nearly non-existent space in the aisle. Hailing from Narayangarh village in West Bengal’s Paschim Medinipur district, the Singh family is heading to Visakhapatnam where they are to spend the next ten months doing menial work on a poultry farm
They are not alone. Chennai-bound Prafulla Majhi, a welder from Jharkhand’s East Singhbhum, has remainedstanding in the general coach for nearly two hours, awaiting his turn to sit on the floor after his companion is done with his nap.
Two general coaches of Coromandel Express were jam-packed on June 13, leaving little space for additional passengers boarding the train at Balasore, Bhadrak, Jajpur-Keonjhar Road, Cuttack and Bhubaneswar railway stations. A head-count performed in one of the coaches at Bhadrak station revealed it was carrying 225 passengers as against its seating capacity of 100.
It is hard to imagine that the general coaches of Coromandel, which were worst-hit in the devastating train accident on June 2, would be flocked by people just 11 days later. The Coromandel Express, one of the country’s most sought-after trains, which runs at a speed of over 100 km speed for most of its journey, transports people from the northern and eastern States down south. The speed alleviates the ordeal of travelling in cramped positions to a large extent.
The Coromandel Express’ 1,659-km-long route, which passes through West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, is travelled by the train in less than 26 hours. ₹400 is the fare for unreserved general coaches, but a sizeable number of passengers travel without ticket. The Travelling Ticket Examiners (TTEs) often shrink from the arduous task of venturing into the coaches and checking each traveller’s ticket. On June 13, the TTE was nowhere to be seen.
Asked if they were afraid of travelling in a train that had just been involved in a tragedy that shook the nation, Srichandra has his resigned answer at the ready: “Do we have any option?” There is a stark difference between wages paid in States such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha and those earned in southern States such as Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The migrant labourer from Gorakhpur gets ₹8,000 per month, excluding food and accommodation. He manages to send home ₹6,000 every month, whereas it was struggle to get regular work in Gorakhpur.
As the Coromandel picks up speed and the night falls, hammocks begin to spring up — floating beds fashioned with thick bed-sheets stretching across the aisle provide additional resting options in the general coaches. One passenger slips under one of the low seats meant for stowing luggage.
Despite the sweltering heat, Sumitra takes care not to drink too much water and deplete the precious resource or have to answer nature’s call. Accessing the toilet at the end of an aisle stuffed with passengers involves a tough trek for anyone. For a woman, it can be a Herculean task.
Meanwhile, on his way to Visakhapatnam, Rejabul Hussain, a veteran carpenter from Purba Medinipur district, aged 27, has fit himself into the nook near the exit door that is overflowing with passengers. “During festival time when migrant labourers return home, the toilets are packed with passengers despite [the stench],” Rejabul narrates.
Mahatab Alam (32), an authorised food vendor working in Coromandel Express for the past nine years who has learnt the art of jostling through crowded general coaches, says, “Packaged food during dinner and lunch sell like hotcakes in general bogies. No person would run the risk of losing his space for the sake of collecting food from outside.” Alam had lost two friends, Arman and Saddham, water-bottle vendors, in the accident.
The journey of Pradip Haldar (50) from West Bengal’s Nadia district will not end in Chennai. He is headed further south to Kerala. Nowhere but in this State would Pradip get ₹1,050 per day for his masonry work.
Amit Kumar from Karsaut village in Bihar’s Siwan district says the Gangakaveri Express from Chhapra station, which runs on Monday and Saturday, takes people directly from Bihar to Tamil Nadu, but only the luckiest ones would get their toeholds in that train. Amit finds Coromandel Express easier to access.
It is not the Coromandel alone that is ferrying hordes of migrant labourers from the north and the east to southern States. Almost all general coaches of south-bound trains are packed with migrant labourers while short-distance travellers comprise a much segment. The 200-km journey from Balasore to Bhubaneswar leaves an imprint in the mind about the human capacity to ramp up endurance levels in search of livelihood.
The message, ‘Please offer seat to persons in need’, pasted on a gold-tinted plate at the entrance of the general coach, suddenly strikes one as utterly superfluous in the circumstances.
