Few days back I was travelling in
train along Tamil Nadu -the temperature was hovering at +40degrees. The pantry
car in the train was preparing lunch and the temperature could be easily 50degrees
as the metal coaches chugged through heat wave. The contrast was acute as I moved
from ac coach to pantry, and felt quite dizzy as the temperate rocketed by 30odd
degrees in an instant. That human beings are exposed to these miserable conditions is beyond
me. It is also quite unhygienic (I don’t blame these half naked men stirring
the boiling pot, they are trying their best in the limited sweaty space with
limited resources, and to prepare decent food for hundreds of people in running
train is no mean task. I quite admire them).
What is the need to prepare food
in running train? Why cannot they do like Shatabdi trains and get food delivered
from railway stations -they can even order from grassroot level organizations
like Kudumbashree (women run community kitchen-hotels, an initiative started by
Communist govt in Kerala 25years back, a success story in empowering women so
much so they are being elected into democratic institutions. A Grassroot level
empowerment that needs to be studied and emulated). It’s amazing that when
human beings are put into horrendous situation, and are displayed in hundreds
of trains crisscrossing through hot terrain as the temperature skyrockets, nobody
seems to be bothered. What will it take them to realize that something is seriously
amiss and that there are human beings who are facing hell like situation. Or is it
a lesson on fate and blessing?
