It at
once awakened the child in me. For, there is something evocative about the
trains: it conjures up our childhood visions of waiting for the train on the
platform, the powerful echo of a train on the tracks resonating in the quiet
station, which announces its arrival long before the black beast chugs in; the
sudden commotion on the platform as the passenger train anchors; the coffee
vendor’s deep baritone voice airing “coffee-coffee-coffee” without pausing for
breath; in a frenzy, everyone boarding the train, our fighting for the window
seat to watch the endless stretches of lush green beetle vine orchards of
Angalakuduru and hutments behind the palm-groves of Sangamjagarlamudi village
that pass by the window … peeping out of the window to watch the steam engine
backing-up towards our train to haul us to our destiny… Aamma pleading with me to pull back my craned neck and to sit quietly….
Oh, what not!
And,
as we graduated to adulthood, these experiences took a new colour. In the
pursuit of education, as we all, having gone to different institutions such as
AU, BHU, Sagar University, Agriculture College, Engineering College of different
towns, etc., come summer, used to land in Tenali one by one for holidays.
In most of those evenings of summers past, we used to assemble at the park abutting the tank, talking
about all sundry into late evenings. … In between, me, Sridhar and YSR in some
evenings used to go to the railway station just to walk along platform No.1
from south cabin side to north cabin and back till the GT arrived … just to
vicariously enjoy the sense of adventure in the comings and goings of exciting
passengers.
This ambling in the railway
station and waiting for the arrival of GT remained firmly etched in my mind as
a sweet memory. For, the lovely lore associated with the whistling steam
engines and passing trains, their choo-choos, chug-chugs, the rhythmic clickety-clack
of the wheels of the long goods train that passed through the loop line … involuntarily
counting the number of wagons tucked between the engine and the guard cabin as
they slide before our eyes … everything of them heard and seen even at that age
of life had such an allure that how one can forget all those unique experiences
and maze of memories ….
The most inquisitive part of this whole ritual … the ritual of visiting the railway station was: our hanging up in front of Higginbotham stall—a habit that I perhaps picked up watching my brother in the late 50s when I would go to station to see him off as he boarded Howrah mail. Secondly, hanging out before that iconic stall would perhaps appear then as an intellectual demeanor—though, looking back I feel so stupid of it!
We used to spend quite some time before it staring
at the titles displayed on the racks. Prominently displayed were the mystery
books of James Hadley Chase. This British writer, who wrote more than 90 mystery
books, was perceived as the greatest thriller writer of all time. But somehow
for reasons unknown, I could never get enthused by Chase mysteries, though read
his popular title A Coffin from Hong Kong.
Rather it was the novels of Perry Mason,
written by that Californian lawyer-cum-writer, Erle Stanley Gardner, stacked in
the top row of the stall that sucked me in for reasons galore: Once accepted a
case, Mason was known to juggle the evidence using unusual tactics to mislead
police but to locate the real culprit; his private investigator, Paul Drake helping
him out by gathering information that he wanted much ahead of the police; his
unacknowledged romantic interest for that cute secretary, Della Street, who was
always ready to put his calls through even at late hours with a smile but of
course, tauntingly, besides supplying him mugs of hot coffee; his
cross-examining the accused and as well as the cops with alacrity and finally pinning
down the criminal to the surprise of everybody makes anyone love to read all of
his novels. The first and last novel of his that I remembered to have ever purchased
from this stall was The Case of Long Legged Models. And, how hungry I was to read them all!
There were a few other rows of
novels, prominent among them were novels of Albert Moravia, Jane Austen, Peral
Buck, Somerset Maugham, Dickens, Agatha Christie, Alistair MacLean, Ian
Fleming, Graham Greene, Daphne du Maurier, RK Narayan, etc. Also on display were
the texts published by ELBS (English Language Book Society) such as Teach Yourself Statistics (though purchased, no attempt ever made to
learn out of it), etc., that were made available at reduced prices. These
visits kept me informed of the popular titles/authors/new arrivals, etc. That
aside, thanks to the stall-boy, I was so lucky to enjoy the benefit of reading
the blurbs on the covers of various books besides peeping at a few pages here
and there. And that pleasure and the pleasing thoughts of those beauteous
evenings gave “life and food for future years”.
Right in front of the stall
were the magazines and newspapers—Illustrated
Weekly, Mirror, Imprint, Filmfare, Femina, Baburao Patel’s Mother India, Pillai’s satirical Shanker’s
Weekly, Span, Karanjia’s Blitz,
Hindu, Indian Express, Screen, Cine
Advance and few Telugu weeklies and dailies—that were spread on a
waist-high desk. I used to read the headlines silently… And once noticed the
creeping unpleasantness on the face of the owner, I used to pick up Bhavan’s Journal, the only magazine that
I could afford to buy in those days (its price was one-quarter of a rupee)
hoping that it would please the owner and walk away to catch up with the
incoming GT.
At 19.15 hrs, as the GT chugged
in, platform No. 1 at once gets electrified: the moving panoramas through the
windows of the cooped-up inmates… boys, girls, lungi-clad middle-aged men of bureaucracy
and their accompanying sari-clad women with glistering ear studs … all getting
up and stretching hands with yawns… some youngsters trying to rush out of the
compartment with pots/aluminium cans to fetch water from the taps on the
platform … trademark cries—“Vadai vadaai… coffee coffeeee”—of vendors on the platform, the
bonhomie of the alighting passengers… the saddened faces of the boarding-passengers
… all those interesting scenarios … all those vicarious pleasures remained fascinating
to recall even today.
As the GT chuffed out of the station
with a long wail, everything turned quiet—an eerie stillness creeped in. And as
we climbed the footbridge in that overwhelming silence to walk out of the
station the hissing sound of the leaking steam from an engine in the loco-shed
near the north cabin had only furthered our melancholic sentience…
**
Do we still have these Higginbotham stalls on platforms? It used to be the habit of many of us,your contemporaries, in our ' younger days' . to browse books and magazines on the railway platforms. In the years1966-68 on my travel to and from NDL to Vijayawada I too used to get down at some big stations like Nagpur and browse magazines/ books. Occasionally bought a book or two. Thank you for sharing interesting episodes of yesterears. Hope these stalls are still in existence.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dr Ramachandra for the visit … I think Higginbotham stalls are no longer in existence on railway platforms. This chain of bookstalls was confined to the then-Southern Railway stations only…The bookstall that you visited in Nagpur must be that of AH Wheeler & Co (Wheeler’s), the chain of railway book stalls that began its journey from Allahabad Railway station, which was confined to stations in Northern states. I think this chain is still functioning…
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