Colors of Life-3. A Memorable train
Journey.
It was the summer of
1963. I had appeared for my M.Com. Final and my friend Sudhanshu for his MSc.
Final. We belonged to the same town and were doing our PG from Saharanpur from
different colleges. We always travelled together to and from our town. Both of
us had packed our meager belongings and books in our trunks and were returning
to our town Kotdwara, by train.
The train reached
laksar. So engrossed were we in our talks and future plans that we did not
realize the train was moving in the opposite direction. Upon enquiry we were
told that the train was going to Dehradun, meaning thereby we were supposed to
change our connecting train at laksar which we had forgotten. We deboarded the
train at first stop with our heavy trunks and bags. We were told there was no
train till evening. There was a goods train standing at the platform and we
explained our predicament to the guard who very kindly agreed to give us a lift
back to Laksar from where we could take another train to our town.
At laksar we took a
train at about 4 in the afternoon and were sure of catching the last train from
Najibabad to our town at 6 p. m. We were greatly relieved when we found the
train placed at the platform when we reached Najibabad. We put our trunks and
bags in the last compartment of the train and got down to have a cup of tea,
tired as we were. At the tea stall we ordered our tea and again went to our
dream talks. We were sipping tea totally unaware of when the guard whistled and
when the train left. It was I who first noticed it and cried “Sudhanshu, our
train!!!” We could see the tail lamp of the going train at the last signal post.
We went to the
station master and explained our situation. He promised to wire to the next
station and ask the station master to request the guard to take charge of our
belongings and handover to the post master at the destination. He advised us to
take am bus and claim our baggage from the station master at destination.
Thankfully we
reached the destination well in time and claimed our baggage fro the station
master.
Such are the
adventure of youth hood or may be follies.
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