Deeply personal loss

Something about the Balasore incident hits very hard:

Being ardent rail fans growing up, we always yearned for long distance trips. These two trains were definitely in the "most favorite" list of ours - the MAS-HWH superfast coromandel express was much older and ruled the coromandel coast in the 90's and early 00s... the YPR-HWH superfast, duronto, etc came much later but quickly climbed up to the top of of the list owing to their long distance coverage, super fast and convenient timings and good quality coaches. The joy and anticipation when we held the confirmed ticket from the reservation counter or when CNFRM was displayed on the iRCTC screen was unparalleled!

Studying in KGP meant more frequent use of the SER mainline route and I was definitely not complaining. Even today, when I recollect hostel memories - there is always some reverberations of mighty coromandel king express chugging along towards Hijli picking up pace after leaving KGP, its blaring hoot enough to cause a sense of exhilaration during hectic study days....Traversing around 2000kms in ~36 hours, playing games while traveling with family/friends, writing down names of the stations in my travel dairy, standing at the door of the coach and watching the small stations pass by in a flash at over 100kmph, staying up after everyone else in the coach had slept in anticipation of a big station coming up (usually Vishakapatnam used to be at 11pm for the morning coromandel from Chennai), sleeping in the perfectly dimmed coaches and being woken up by sounds of "garam chai/coffee "vendors at dawn, contemplating life's deepest questions while sitting at the window seat and crossing the big rivers of the deccan- each of these is a memory that has been etched in memory strongly. inspite of not traveling on a IR long distance train for more than a decade now, these experiences still feel so fresh!

One of the best part of these journeys was people- sharing space with absolute strangers, getting to know their life stories, their aspirations and struggles - every journey was a discovery. Although the interactions did reduce with mobiles and high speed internet, there was always some interesting thing I learnt just by traveling together with ~500 others in the same train. An emotional connect just by virtue of shared destinations, albeit for a short while - a feeling that cannot be explained but has to be only experienced. I so wish to travel again on these trains, hopefully with my next gen people - son, nieces nephews, god-children and whoever else is willing to join and hear my stories!

Something about this tragedy feels deeply personal. I remember some of the bright and enthusiastic people on my train journeys and their dreams to make a future for themselves, their indigenous solutions to some of the problems faced by the country, dedicating themselves to the service of the nation. To see more than 250 of such precious lives lost is very sad. My heart goes out to the people that have lost their loved ones, the injured and their kin. I pray for peace of lost souls and really hope that serious actions will be taken in the afermath. To hear about such horrific incident, involving such flagship trains, is a "faith shaking" moment and nothing short of a betrayal for all the people who place their trust on the railways. It takes time to rebuild it and the actions taken now would contribute a lot in the trust regaining process. I sincerely hope that we can upgrade the technological infrastructure on the railways to make sure such incidents never happen again. #odishatrainaccident #coromandelexpress