The New Nation - Internet Edition

Maswood Alam Khan

I am perhaps one of very few among my friends and colleagues who enjoy journeying the whole night away by train spending double the amount of time needed on road. My friends may guess I eschew bus journey in favour of a cushy chair by Sundarban Express train to save money---which is not true. At times I spend a substantial amount of money for a sleeping berth in a single air-conditioned coup of the train that leaves Dhaka Cantonment Railway Station at 7 in the evening for a 10 hour journey to reach Khulna before break of dawn.

The other day, the only accommodation in the sleeper of 'Sundarban Express Nishitha' I could get was Upper Berth No 4 in a non-air-conditioned first class compartment on my way to Dhaka. This train leaving Khulna in the evening is very old and shabby compared to the new train that leaves Dhaka in the evening: both of Sundarban Express Nishitha service running in opposite directions.

The train left Khulna around 8 in the evening. Sitting on the yet-to-be-occupied lower berth number 1 I was scanning the whole compartment accommodating six berths: three lower and three upper, each not more than 3 feet wide. Lower berth no 2 was occupied by a young officer of Bangladesh Navy who was leading a big group of coastguards boarding the same train to Dhaka in preparation of ceremonial march for our Independence Day on March 26, the lower berth no 3 by an officer from BDR who was also leading about 200 BDR jawans in the same train on way to their new place of posting at Chittagong Hill Tracts, and the upper berth no 6 by an employee from Bangladesh Railway. Both the lower berth no 1 and upper berth no 5 are still vacant which are soon to be occupied by passengers from the next Jessore railway station. I was helplessly looking at the upper berth no 4 fated for me and was wondering how I could climb up to the bed without any ladder visible.

From Jessore railway station a newly married couple entered our compartment to occupy their berth numbers 1 & 5, one atop the other, and I immediately stood up to leave their berth and to start my odyssey on my upper berth no 4. I have had marvellous experiences abroad of travelling on sleeping berths, both lower and upper, in long distance trains. But this is my first experience of climbing onto the fixed upper berth of a train in Bangladesh---a sleepless whole-night journey on a precarious bed I am not going to forget in the rest of my life!

Primarily for the purpose of making nighttime travel restful sleepers are provided by passenger trains and many businessmen and executives who don't like to waste their daytime on travelling appreciate the time-saving advantages of comfortable overnight travels sleeping on berths. Moreover, sleeping accommodation offers an ascetic traveller the possibility of obviating one or two nights of boarding at a hotel.

Trains in America or even in India offer a wide range of choice as to sleeping berths which are basically two seats---one facing forward and the other backward---converted at nighttime into the combination of an upper and a lower berth, each berth consisting of quite a specious bed screened from the aisle by a heavy curtain to ensure travellers' privacy. Those berths are dismantled at daytime by some release gears to turn them into settees. Lest a sleeping traveller slides and falls down from his berth, heavy-duty 'bed guardrails' with locking devices are affixed protecting the entire length of the berth, especially of the upper one.

Measures on privacy and safety are meticulously ensured in sleeping booths of overnight trains as I found in Singapore and North America. Oh no, not in the upper berth number 4 of Sundarban Express I was clambering on exerting all my hands and feet, stepping on a side rest of the lower berth, grabbing the handrail on the wall and breast walking the torn out cushion of my upper berth---an athletic feat impossible to achieve on the part of a man or a woman heftier or older than me.

All the five pairs of eyes in the compartment perhaps enjoyed with some sadistic pleasure my struggles for safety and comfort in my loft. I didn't mind at all their ogling at my acrobatic movements; but what really pained me was a chuckle of delight the young lady---the only female passenger with us---gave me when I missed to catch the blanket that fell on the floor from my berth.

What however really filled me with dread was a prospect of my falling out of the loft and hitting my head on the floor in the absence of any effective guardrail. Upper berths are supposed to be guarded with detachable guardrails made of tubular frames covering its full length to keep a passenger's mind safe and secure so that he won't be tumbling onto the floor during the night when the speeding train would be swaying and rocking. The so-called guardrail attached with my berth end, instead the middle, covered only one-fifth of its length and the rickety guardrail, devoid of any locking device, swung freely back and forth. Instead of standing perpendicular the rail rests at a slanted position, like the back of an easy chair, giving a psychological illusion that the guardrail has already been bent by wear and tear and is about to give way under a pressure.

But what truly surprised me was the aplomb with which the Railway guy jumped to and from his upper berth number 6. I could not figure out how he with a slight tap of his toe on the slender edge of a side rest of the lower berth could negotiate the vertical climb effortlessly whisking his hefty body onto the upper berth without even holding the handrail. And what more burned my heart was the composure of his body language and the cool with which he wrapped his body with a blanket and sank immediately into a deep slumber on a berth similar to mine.

In case I tumble down, I imagined, I should not allow my head to fall first. So, on the side where the slanted guardrail is affixed I set my pillow whereon I rested my fatigued head. To avoid the glare of the ceiling light I rolled sidewise facing the wall of the compartment and made some futile attempts to sleep while a procession of wayward thoughts was creeping into my mind amid the roaring but rhythmic sounds of the wheels clattering on rail tracks and the locomotive driver whistling the powerful horn while speeding his engine at full throttle.

A loud ouch from a female voice suddenly perplexed me! As I turned around I found the new husband massaging the ankle of his wife. She was hurt somehow. I advised the husband to switch the light off with a view to allowing them a semblance of privacy and myself a chance to sleep in the dark. The young boy in his late twenties and his wife in her early twenties looked and sounded a happy couple. The boy seemed a very caring husband. I was pretty sure the husband would climb up to sleep on the upper berth number 5 facing mine and would advise his wife to enjoy a trouble-free sleep on the lower one. Surprisingly they decided that she would climb up and he would lie down, maybe on some privacy consideration. Obviously I was eager to see her athleticism compared to mine as she was preparing for her climb. But it was disturbing to see her husband's excessive care to help her ascend by a push from backward the way a basketball player carefully pushes the ball onto the rim.

It was already a quarter past one at night and I could not sleep even one iota. The BDR guy sleeping on the lower berth just beneath me woke up after about an hour to go out of the compartment perhaps for smoking. He was investing his full strength to pull the handle of the sliding door by his right hand, but the door was too jammed and needed further force to be opened. He had to brace himself against something solid to gather higher strength. So while pulling the sliding door by his right hand his left hand reached for the side of the upper berth number 5 to push in the opposite direction; but his left hand involuntarily slipped onto the free-swinging guardrail that slammed on the forehead of the young lady in deep sleep.

The compartment reverberated with another loud ouch from a female voice. God saved it was not fatal. The caring husband razed like a bristled lion. Had the BDR guy not been in his uniform a cantankerous quarrel would have ensued. The BDR officer humbled himself so much by begging him for an apology that the husband's raze melted away in no time. I wondered why railway engineers did not solidly weld the guardrails as permanently fixed if adjustable rails with locking device were really costlier.

If such was the situation of a railroad sleeping car in North America stars of many passengers would have been in the ascendant. A lawyer would have rushed to this lady with an affidavit for her signing only with no obligation to pay any legal expense. The lawyer himself would have presented her after a few weeks a fat cheque of a few hundred thousand dollars extracted from the railroad authority as compensation on filing a damage suit against improper safety measures.

"Safety first" and "Quality, uncompromising" are two catchphrases that are boldly declared by posters pasted on walls of factories and other workplaces in a developed country. Germany would not have risen as a developed nation if Germans compromised with quality in their workmanship.

Efficient guardrails of a sleeping berth may sound like a requirement of low priority in our country when scores are dying from road crashes due to our violation of laws. But unless we can imbue every Bangladeshi with a sense to ensure total safety and quality everywhere and at every stage---no matter it is securing a shaft to an engine or repairing an electric circuit---a small negligence on the part of a petty handyman may cause a giant system collapse.