Indian Railways and Shakespeare, the bard on board with sixty phrases

Sudhanshu Mani

Indian Railways (IR) was once a glorious marvel of professional excellence. Ok, not quite!! While it never had a 'spotless reputation’, it certainly has ‘seen better days’. Now, it seems to have degenerated into a Shakespearean comedy, brimming with twists, turns, and a cast of characters that make the bard's works pale in comparison.

 

A bit of a background first. IR’s daily escapades can make your ‘hair stand on end’. From overcrowded trains, surprise platform changes to last-minute train rerouting, passengers are often left with ‘bated breath’, wondering where they would end up next. ‘All of a sudden’, the loud whistle blows, and the train lurches forward, leaving those who had hoped to ‘sleep one wink’ out of luck. It’s enough to make even the most seasoned traveller cry out, "For goodness’ sake, what’s next?"

 

The journey on IR is truly an adventure leading you ‘up and down’. One minute, you're chatting with your seatmate and the next, you're holding on for dear life as the train zooms ‘out of the jaws of death’ on a tight curve. At times, ‘in stitches’ from the antics of fellow passengers trying to navigate the chaos, you find it funnily ‘Greek to you’. But ‘come what may’, you would always be back for more, even if it is just to ‘lie low’ in the corner seat and enjoy the show. Because in the end, there is no denying that IR has the ‘be all and end all’ of train travel experiences!

 

Junk the romance and the legacy, ‘something wicked this way comes’. Was it 'too much of a good thing', not meant to last? At every station, the drama unfolds. Despite initiatives like Vande Bharat and Amrit Bharat, the trains themselves appear to be ‘breathing their last’, creaking along the tracks like tragic actors past their prime. Common lower-class passengers, brave enough to board, find themselves ‘in a pickle’, their seats more a test of endurance than comfort. "What the Dickens?" they exclaim as they realize they may need to ‘catch a cold’ to distract themselves from the rattling of the coaches. Meanwhile, repeated announcements about improvements ‘vanish into thin air’ like Lady Macbeth’s ambitions. As trains delay, the common traveller is often caught in a loop of rescheduling, their journey resembling a ‘knock-knock’ joke with no punchline. Like ‘the clothes make the man’, the outlook on general dabba of IR is what counts. Meanwhile, even as IR does ‘set their teeth on edge’, the hapless passengers, with their ‘hearts on their sleeves’ and their hopes in their pockets, journey on, though their plight doesn't seem to ‘break the ice’ with IR at all.

 

In the freight domain, IR acts as though it is a dispenser of favors and its modal share keeps shrinking, like Hamlet's patience. Gati Shakti and NRP notwithstanding, we find it hard to continue to believe that ‘How poor are they that have not patience!’ or that, ‘to climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first’. For us diehard railway men, ‘better three hours too soon than a minute too late’ and ‘will this wound heal but by degrees?’. The freight managers' ‘hearts of gold’ are overshadowed by their ‘green-eyed monster’ of envy towards road transport's ever-growing traffic, but ‘action is not eloquence’, eloquence continues to be action.

 

The new-fangled Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS), a ‘beacon of hope’ at one time, has turned into ‘a wild goose chase’. Its executives, supposedly bringing a ‘brave new world’, seem ‘faint-hearted’ in the face of narrow departmentalism. ‘What’s done is done’, they say, as the wheels of bureaucracy grind on, leaving the poor IR in a ‘sorry sight’.

 

The political leadership, ever ready to play both ‘fair play’ and ‘foul play’, seems to regard railway executives as, at best, ‘so so’, worthy of disdainful ‘short shrift’. "Off with his head!" they might declare if things do not improve soon. ‘Good riddance!’ echoes through the halls as another railway executive is ‘sent packing’ in ‘one fell swoop’.

 

‘In a nutshell’, IR today is ‘neither here nor there’, stuck in a rut arguably worse than ‘here’, where it previously was. One may or may not quibble that its old feudal and bombastic ways render it 'dead as a doornail', the ‘naked truth’ is that it is well on its way to becoming a national ‘laughing stock’. Conventional wisdom may prompt us to think that ‘the game is up’, but we love railways and since ‘love is blind’, we hope, in our ‘heart of hearts’, albeit ‘without rhyme or reason’, that there is a ‘method in this madness’. Let us ‘give the devil its due’ for old times’ sake and hope that all railway men will rise to 'fight fire with fire' and IR would regain its ‘salad days’.

 

Things may seem to have come ‘full circle’, but nothing is ever a ‘forgone conclusion’. All would still be well if (and when) it ends well. Amen!

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