The Goods Train

Trains come in all shapes, sizes and lengths. Not to mention colours. But there is one particular type that signifies the railroad, the engineers who work them and the people behind the scenes. This is the goods train. Those long, brooding, grumbling brown wagons of endless length, of wizened drivers and of sleeping guards. This is the goods train, almost like the unwanted son of the railway. A song without its chorus if you may.

The goods train is awfully boring to watch to the ordinary man, so often it gets cursed for its snail like speed and it’s almost snake like appearance, it gives many a motorist the nightmare of an ever closed railway gate. But to me, a rail fanatic, the goods train is the epitome of the railway. The dust, grime and glory all combine to make the running of the long goods train the most emphatic sound, sight, smell, taste and feel of the railway.

Winding its way slowly over the undulating terrain of the single line section, where the blades of grass are as lazy as the shepherd that walks over them, is a long goods train bound for the city of Bangalore. About an hour from its final destination, the train’s drivers and guard should be looking forward to time off and a meal at home. But instead they’re lazing around in their respective cabins, discussing the latest political potboiler of the Indian government and the latest Bollywood belle, sans her clothes. Why do goods trains and women without clothes go together you ask? Well the train is not a woman, it is a man…and men will always figure out a way to find women in the most unthinkable of times. What say?

Anyway, the grubby drivers, tired from their long shifts on the snail train, chew gutkha and spit it out of the engine window, without a care in the world. Thankfully for them, there’s no excited young child with his head stuck between carriage window bars that gets this full in his face. Instead, the stain is pasted for eternity onto the sides of the cabin, and like devil and daughter, they are now together for life. The drivers lazily pull out a magazine and begin to scan the contents, one with his finger up his nose searching for lost gold, the other with one hand adjusting the ever adjustable Indian VIP underwear and the other hand stretched out the window, perpendicular to the train, as if it was some left over thing that no one needs. The throttle is yanked forward, at full steam, the twin diesels roar into overdrive as they thud along the long steel rails with their load behind them. Working inside, the pistons fire like the insides of a volcano, spewing forth power and a surge which ultimately drives these wheels of steel.

The guard is in the caboose, at the very end of the line of wagons, with a lonely, brown and locked snake of life between him and his nearest human companions, 58 wagons away. All he has for company is last week’s newspaper that both serves as toilet paper and reading material. On the cover page, torn of any shred of dignity, is the belle in question, with her body spread far and wide at every angle possible, the way only a much touched, read and re-read newspaper can. Quietly, he scans once again the possibilities of the failure of the print media to recreate a wardrobe malfunction, and just as quietly resigns himself to the fact that his fat, ugly and disobedient wife will welcome him home shortly.

Nonchalantly, he garbles into the walkie-talkie, talking to the drivers in local dialect and enquiring, more absent mindedly that with any intent, how far away they are from the next station. Just as incomprehensible and illogical is the reply although the next station can’t be more than a few kilometers away.

No one wants to leave the serenity of the goods train, clanking its way noisily across the barren lands, snaking its way through the many curves and twists the line has to offer. The trees, boulders and winding roads all seem to will the train along, egging it one just one more mile, back to civilization.

Suddenly, with a great show of smoke, sound and sight, the train grinds to a halt. The brake dust settles over the belle on the newspaper, now covering her tattered saree in a fine film of silvery powder and she herself settles on the solitary commode that at the end of the train. A cursory glance out of his cabin tells the guard that they’re at a wayside station, on a loop line, undoubtedly waiting for a crossing. The crossing – that fatigued, wearied event that could happen just about anywhere, anytime and anyhow on a single line stretch is a welcome break for the weary drivers and their heavy bladders. Quickly settling the throbbing diesels into a hushed sleep, they jump off the locomotive and head to the nearest bush to spray it with the urine of distance. The urine has seen so much, been through so many places, if only it could talk.

In the far distance, midway through the loop line, on a platform the size of vegetable shop, the sleepy station master is just about trying to get across the goods train and onto the other side to wave off the crossing train with the flags in his hand. No help here, this is a one man station, a one man army. Even the dogs at this station are fast asleep, the thunder of the steel giants do not trouble their ecstatic dreams one bit. The only living things awake appear to be the monkeys up in the trees, but soon their enthusiasm of finding food on this train takes a nose dive, for a goods train is that hollow, empty bringer of nothing for them. Resigned to their fate, they take to a more lucrative past time…making babies.

The guard stifles a yawn as his wax filled ears distinctly pick out the whistle of an approaching train at full speed. It will be a few minutes before that powerhouse of diesel, dust and smoke comes roaring up the main line, making for its next stop without a care for the machinery beneath its skin. Moments of boredom pass, he walks up to the railing of the caboose, puts one leg up on the railing, lifts the tip of his trouser a little and proceeds to eloquently scratch the tardy, broken skin of his leg. This activity completed, his hand moves to his crotch, quietly first cradling his manhood and then scratching it in all its glory. He barely has enough time to wake up from this dream when the monster train on the main line is almost upon him like some angry, snarling beast of smoke, belching fury with every step and honking furiously looking for the flags that signify a successful pass. He pops the flag out, almost into the face of the driver of the passing train, who himself is half out of the engine with his hair covered tight in a shiny bandana. With an orchestrated honking of a million horns, the diesel passes on, with its mass of humanity all packed tightly into its carriages, with the lucky few in air conditioned coaches, into the unknown, the smell of the passing train lingers for many an hour.

Up ahead, the drivers wipe the mists of sleep from their eyes, sip water from their flasks and pray fervently for the “proceed” signal instead of yet another crossing or an overtake. Thankfully, the rail gods oblige and the goods train rumbles on, on its own journey, with no apparent destination with two short blasts of its horns, the locomotive rumbles to life, strains at its leashes to power away from this restraining load behind it, but makes its peace with man and machine, and majestically waltzes out into the mainline, with the goods train tearing at its chains and groaning under the weight happily, lazily and never endingly beginning that journey.