Picture https://pixabay.com/photos/train-busy-crowd-people-transport-3991306/
(slow or fast.
Have you ever wished that time went by more slowly, or faster? When and why?)
It was a very scary incident that I had gone to a very dry place about 2000 kilometres away from my personal work. The train was the only mean to reach this place.
The journey from my home to that place was about 35 hours by train. While going, there were no obstacles in the journey, the journey was completed very comfortably and I had reached my destination.
After reaching there, I completed my work in a week. The weather in this place was very hot; the temperature was 47 degrees Celsius.
After facing the constant heat and humidity, I completed my stay, and in the meantime, when I wanted to reserve a return ticket on the train to return, it was not available, so I had to travel back in a normal class coupe.
I had mentally prepared myself to face this dire situation. At the time of arrival, my reservation was for an air-conditioned coupe, in which there was a seating arrangement for a very limited number of people, and along with the reserved ticket in this coupe, food, bed and water, were also arranged.
On the contrary, any passenger can travel in an unreserved class coupe and they are not provided food items, bedding, etc.
Since I had come travelling in reserved class while coming, I did not even bring any bedding, etc. with me, as I was expecting that I would get a reservation in a high-class air-conditioned coupe returning also. But maybe I had bad luck that day and it was about to go worse.
On the date of my return journey, I bought a general class ticket for the train, and when I reached the normal class coupe, I found that there were 2 times more passengers in the coupe than the capacity of the coupe.
Somehow, by making space between them, I was able to reach inside the coupe. There was no place available to sit anywhere. Due to the rush of passengers and the extreme heat, the atmosphere in the coupe was very bad. The passengers were drenched in sweat and had difficulty breathing.
I was very scared from the inside just by imagining such a long journey. But even more problems were about to come on the journey ahead, which no one expected.
Somehow I adjusted myself in this fiercely crowded environment, and then the journey started.
When our train was passing through a very rugged, deserted, and sandy place after a journey of about 5 hours, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, the brakes of the train were applied.
When a curious passenger went outside the train and found out, it came to know that the track of the train ahead was damaged and it would take many hours to repair it.
Due to the stoppage of the train in such hot weather, the situation became very serious. Some air was also getting into the moving train, so that too stopped. Panic started spreading among the passengers; children started crying; women and men also started getting upset.
In a short time, the stock of drinking water was also exhausted, so people started drinking the water available in the toilet as well. Within no time, the condition of all the normal class passengers on the train started deteriorating.
There was panic, and children, old people, and women started getting sick due to lack of water.
Then a man said there that he see a pond somewhere far away. On hearing this, many male travellers took the bottles and utensils available with them and ran towards that pond.
I also went with them. The place was far away from the train. After reaching there in such heat, everyone's condition got worse. I went there and saw that there was some water in that pond, but it was very dirty and very hot.
picture https://pixabay.com/photos/lake-aerial-view-fields-meadows-2755907/
But at that time, everyone wanted to save their lives. so I also soaked my handkerchief and applied some drops to my lips and filled some dirty water in my bottle.
I reached back to the train with a very great effort and began praying to God to please speed up time so that our troubles end soon.
After about three to four hours, the train proceeded from there and all the helpless passengers breathed a sigh of relief.
Whenever I remember this incident, my body gets goosebumps.