Dhaka-Kolkata rail link to bring the past back to life

Maswood Alam Khan

Dhaka-Kolkata passenger train service, ready to be commissioned anytime later this year, will resume after a lapse of 42 years a sentimentally popular rail journey that snapped off during the Indo-Pak war in 1965. This regular train service will undoubtedly enlarge people-to-people contacts between two capitals of once-undivided Bengal ushering in a new era of camaraderie and bilateral business relationship between Bangladesh and India, in keeping with the SAARC spirit.
   We hope, issues related to introduction of security fencing along the route near the border on the Indian side to check smuggling and unauthorised travelling on train rooftops and nitty-gritty of immigration formalities will soon be sorted out before the maiden journey of the express train service takes place sometime in September next.
   As Indian authorities are concerned about miscreants' attempts to smuggle goods through trains Bangladesh authorities should also sound their concerns about HIV patients' attempts to infiltrate into our side to spread AIDS in our country given that the deadly disease is much more endemic in India than in Bangladesh. HIV-free medical certificates of passengers from both sides may be made compulsory while issuing visas to intending travellers.
   With newly imported carriages from Indonesia, the passenger train "Moitree Express" (Friendship Express) with a capacity of 380 passengers has already been assembled and decoratively painted at Saidpur Railway workshop with her nice livery: red stripes on grey and green background. The train will run on the new route without any break at an average speed of 50 kilometres an hour between Dhaka and Kolkata via Darshana.
   A huge number of Bengalese living on either side of the border dividing the old Bengal are eagerly awaiting their chances to relish their long-treasured journey by train to Dhaka or to Kolkata once they themselves enjoyed or heard about from their elderly folks. To a lady, for example, who is now 75 years old and who after her marriage boarded at Fulbaria or Khulna Railway Station a train along with her newlywed husband and journeyed all the way to Sialdah Railway Station to start her nuptial life in Calcutta the news of the new train service must carry a nostalgic flavour. She, her husband, or her children can't wait to buy Kolkata-Dhaka return tickets, whatever the price, if only the train journey could bring back to them a semblance of what she had felt, seen and smelt during her maiden journey on the same route 60 years back.
   Evoking nostalgic sentiment of humans is the job of tourism as well as movie industries. We humans cannot arrest the flow of time and tide; but we try to freeze time by capturing fleeting moments in our memory shelves and also in frames of photographs and movies. We relish browsing our old photographs in our photo albums as we enjoy strolling down our memory lanes. Knowing full well the sentimentality of human yearnings for revisiting old days moviemakers and tourism industrialists design their products to magnetise their clients who are thirsty to smell their times of yore.
   
   Darshana-Jagati route
   Bangladesh Railway was mostly inherited from the British-established Assam Bengal railway system after the partition of India in 1947. People in this part first saw railroad when 53.11-kilometer broad gauge rail line between Darshana and Jagati was inaugurated on 15 November 1862. Sustained efforts for about 145 years have helped build a railway network of approximately 2855 route kilometers, of which 923 kilometers are of Broad Gauge (1676 millimeter) tracks mostly in the western region while the remaining railroads are of Meter Gauge (1000 millimeter) tracks mostly in the central and eastern regions connecting more than 450 railway stations. The gauge problem is now being tackled by adding third rails to the most important broad and narrow gauge routes, so that they become dual gauge.
   Thanks to their long heritage and wide networks, Bangladesh Railway can easily offer an attractive avenue for tourists if our government undertakes a comprehensive plan to make journeys by trains in our country extraordinarily hospitable. We can annex additional tracks to extend and detour the normal routes only for tourists to make brief stopovers at places of interests like the mansion of Bhawal Raja at Gazipur and the museum at Sonargaon. We can make topiary gardens, erect monuments and make forests enlivened by wild animals that can greet passengers from across the fences along the routes. We can decoratively redesign and upholster our bogies and carriages. We can create a special police force dedicated for tourists only. Railway buses may be introduced only for tourists to see sights. In addition, we must train all the railway operators, right from stationmasters and ticket examiners down to bartenders and attending guards. To make the trains truly tourist friendly railway personnel need to be trained, if necessary, in five-star hotels for weeks or months to learn, for instance, mannerisms like 'how to smile sincerely'.
   All over the world, historically important train routes maintain their classical services keeping traditions and heritages intact. Old dresses and badges, impeccably imitated from the original designs, are still worn in the same traditional styles by the railway personnel to give passengers the warmth of tradition. The pointsman still offers his glees while greeting the passengers of the train passing the track he shifted by his tumbler gear. Such train services, some are pulled by steam engines for leisurely journeys, have all the modern amenities like dining and sleeping cars.
   Our next-door neighbour India is also earning tons of foreign exchange from hordes of tourists--lowbrow, middlebrow and highbrow tourists, travellers and backpackers--offering regal hospitality in their refurbished railway services made compatible with international standard.
   
   Tourists' requirement
   Tourists, especially backpackers, always prefer public transports like trains and buses to planes and cars in consideration of safety, security and economy traveling. To ensure ease and comforts of tourists train services offer packages that include fares for affiliated buses that wait in the railway stations to pick designated train passengers for their sightseeing and commuting to destinations. Some ascetic tourists schedule their itineraries in such a way that they can sleep inside trains during their night time travelling and move around in affiliated buses during their daytime sightseeing to save money on account of boarding in hotels. Train services also synchronise their schedules suiting the travellers having not much money in their wallets.
   Compared to buses, trains can offer a variety of services for different age and income groups. Young backpackers don't mind journeying in less decorated carriages and sleeping even on luggage racks if only the toilets are clean; they of course demand clean windowpanes so that photographs of panorama taken by their cameras are not blurred by the sticky slimes on the glass.
   
   Highbrow travellers
   On the other hand, old and highbrow tourists do not mind paying extra dollars for extra cushions in their beds and pillows made of soft and warm silk floss or buckwheat that can absorb sweat. They should also be provided with electric outlets for their laptops and battery chargers. They also need decorative curtains on their double-layered windows fitted with tainted glasses to dim daylight and protect them from ultraviolet rays. All these amenities are of normal creature comforts meant for VIP passengers in luxury train coaches.
   Steam locomotives have already been replaced by diesel locomotives in most of the countries including Bangladesh. Even diesel locomotives are now poised to enter pages of history books as cost-efficient electric and magnetic trains and levitated bullet trains are fast replacing the trains being pulled by comparatively slow moving diesel locomotives.
   Our country cannot afford to offer tourists rides on modern bullet trains. Nevertheless, we can easily introduce vintage trains with carriages and bogies made like old classical ones with decorative wood panels pulled by obsolescent steam or diesel locomotives. Such vintage trains would attract tourists who, like antique collectors, are fed up with modernity of life; they prefer leisurely travels in slow moving vehicles pulled by horses or steam locomotives; they long for a machine that can ride them to their golden past.
   
   Nostalgic journey
   Such a vintage train pulled, for instance, by a fabulous 1940's steam engine will offer us a refined and nostalgic journey reminiscent of the bygone steam age when our ancestors used to sit back and enjoy the sights, smells and sounds of the golden age of train travel. The gentle and rhythmic swaying and rocking of carriages, lullaby like clicking and clacking sounds of piston-driven wheels clattering and rattling over steel tracks must create an ambiance to induce our sleep while journeying by the vintage train the way we as infants used to sink into slumbers on cradles--mothers singing lullabies for us.
   Like me, when I was a kindergartener, I am sure many of us in our childhood used to mimic the chugging sounds of steam engine with our mouths and were admirers of those trains which gave us rides, as if, to heaven! How can we forget those glimpses in early 60s of green carriages of "Green Arrow" train pulled by a newly imported diesel engine or a freight train driven by a colossal Beyer-Peacock steam locomotive, spewing swirling smoke and whistling and weaving her ways through the greenery of our rural landscape, village women pausing momentarily their chores to watch their 'favorite daughter' go by and kids and dogs chasing her? There were days when me and my friends used to envy the Engine Driver in his immaculate navy blue woolen jacket standing on the footplate and handling those gleaming brass fittings of his steam locomotive at Gandaria Railway Station and I so fervently wished I could occupy the footplate one day and blow the piercing whistle to herald that my steam locomotive is about to pull dozens of carriages with hundreds of passengers to their cherished destinations.
   Travel takes us to people, carriages, newspapers, paperback novels, a cup of hot coffee, mobile phones ringing in vexing tones or a tea-boy shouldering a big flask chanting the same monotone: "Chaa Garaam". We bump in our journey into someone, a fellow passenger who becomes so chummy in a short time, a mellow lady who looks at you approvingly from a corner of her eyes and then smiles, a child chuckling unnecessarily. With the journey over all these encounters gradually fade away leaving in us a thread of memory that may flick on again in a similar journey--but with a different experience.

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Holiday Desk

The World Bank (WB) has approved a US$16 million credit for Bangladesh from the International Development Association (IDA), the Bank's concessionary arm, to support the Government's efforts to minimize the threat and risk of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), according to a press release issued by the WB.
   This Avian Influenza Preparedness and Response Project is designed to control such infections in domestic poultry, and prepare for controlling and responding to possible human infections, especially an influenza epidemic and related emergencies. This will be achieved through three types of interventions: prevention, preparedness and planning, and response and containment.
   Describing Bangladesh 'as a high-risk country for HPAI' the press release points out that about 50 per cent of the national poultry flock of 185 million is backyard poultry, with minimal bio-security. It also has a large duck population of 37 million. Besides, the country is visited annually in the winter months by 21 species of migratory birds that can carry the virus. In fact, Bangladesh has continued to experience outbreaks of the H5N1 virus since February 2007.
   "Now that outbreaks have taken place, steps need to be taken urgently to prepare for more such outbreaks in the future," said Mohamed Toure, World Bank Acting Country Director for Bangladesh. "This project will not only help curb the threat of avian flu but also contribute to the control of other types of infectious diseases, in terms of building overall response capacity in the country."
   The project focuses on three broad areas: animal health, public awareness and information, and implementation support and monitoring and evaluation. "Communication is extremely important to minimise negative consequences of HPAI on poultry production, consumption, and human health and has to be well adapted to the Bangladeshi conditions," said Mohinder Mudahar, consultant to the World Bank and co-project team leader.
   The project supports the Government's National Avian Influenza and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan, which provides a strategic national framework to control and contain any HPAI outbreak.
   "Immediate action in areas such as improved national surveillance and diagnosis and stock piling of emergency supplies is needed, but there is also a long-term agenda," said Mr. Mudahar. "Given systemic shortcomings in veterinary services, we need to focus on staff training and improvements in surveillance, diagnostic and curative facilities."

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