By Dr. K. Javed Nayeem, MD

There are so many memories of my travels by train that it is a very difficult task to decide which ones to talk about and which ones to leave out. But here are a couple of them which my readers might find interesting.

As it happens in the lives of most boys, I too passed through a stage when I dreamt of being a railway engine driver, a dream, that thankfully did not materialise. This urge was perhaps a little stronger in my case because I had the occasion to travel a lot by trains right from the days of my early childhood, as I have said earlier.

It was reinforced greatly, maybe because I had a music teacher, Dorothy Fernandez, in the Good Shepherd Convent, whose husband, Edward Fernandez was a loco-pilot, who used to do the Mysore-Arsikere stint regularly, all through his working life. Since some of my friends and I used to visit their house which was very close to our school, we would get to spend much time with Eddie Uncle who was a great storyteller.

Although his forte was ghost stories that would scare my friends a great deal, while leaving me completely unfazed and unafraid, his elaborate explanations of how the railway signalling system and the locomotives worked, were what mesmerised me most, strengthening my bond with trains. Much later, for a very brief period of just one year, I happened to be a student of the Karnataka Science College, Dharwad, where I did my pre-medical course in the year 1972-73.

While Dharwad was then a small and quiet town which was just an educational centre, the neighbouring city of Hubli was a crowded business hub where most of the trade and commerce, not only of the district but also the entire region took place. That was the time when in addition to dozens of regular buses, a set of two steam engine hauled shuttle trains used to run all day long between Dharwad and Hubli, which were just twelve miles apart. I used to then stay with two of my cousins, in a small house, very close to the railway station.

A stone’s throw away from our house was located the circular rotating platform where at the end of each lap of the Hubli-Dharwad journey, the engines of the shuttle trains would be turned around to face the opposite direction. This would be done by the engine driver and the fireman, assisted by two more people, by parking the engine on the circular platform and turning it around on a huge central pivot.

Although this was accomplished with surprising ease, it took some amount of effort, which the many boys playing in the adjacent grounds would be happy to supplement.

And, on Sundays and holidays when I would spend a good deal of my time near the station, watching trains going and coming, while sitting under a tree with a book, I would also become an engine turner with the other boys. Sometimes, when they were building up steam before chugging into the station, the driver and his mate used to even allow some of us to get onto the engine and shovel coal into the blazing furnace, an opportunity that would excite us greatly.

And having done this, we would be allowed to pull the wire dangling overhead to sound the whistle and ride on the engine till it chugged into the station. That opportunity helped me to some extent in reliving rather late, my dream of being a rail engine driver! Talking of shovelling coal, I am reminded of the time in my childhood when a great part of the joy of rail travel lay in watching the bursts of sparks from the engine exhaust, flying past the train windows at night.

The funny thing was that although this happened both by day and by night but because this spectacle was visible only at night, my maternal grandmother, whom we all called Ammaji, who was my guardian angel, would always warn me, before every train journey, not to sit too close to the windows at night, without lowering the glasses!

She was one of the kindest and noblest souls I have ever known, who would oblige my every whim and fancy, always with a smile. Never once in her life, did she speak one harsh or unkind word to anyone, young or old. May her soul rest in peace.

At the end of this write up, I would now like to narrate a very unusual and interesting incident that happened more than fifty years ago, when I was aspiring to enter medical college, to embark on my journey of becoming a doctor. In those days, securing a seat at the Kasturba Medical College (KMC) in Manipal, was considered to be the highest accomplishment for any aspirant like me.

As a starting point, one had to first write an entrance examination that would be held in different centres across the state, which I had opted to take at Bangalore. After clearing this first step, the short-listed candidates had to attend an interview at the KMC in Manipal. Two days before the date of the interview, my dad and I decided to drive to Manipal, to familiarise ourselves with the layout of the place and the college. My dad had a very close friend, U.D. Pai, there in Manipal, who held a very senior position in the head office of the Syndicate Bank there, who had asked us to first come and see him immediately upon reaching the place.

We knew him well because he had for a very long time been the Manager of the Chikmagalur branch of the bank, where we had all our accounts and financial transactions. He had booked a room for the two of us at the newly started Valley View Hotel that overlooked Manipal, which in those days was a very small hamlet unlike the busy city it has become now.

After my preliminary interview was over, for the final selection, I was asked to meet Dr. H. Shantaram who was the head of its Pre Professional Course (PPC) section. I did exceedingly well in my interaction with him, mainly because after looking at my marks at the prelims, he asked me what the difference was between Paediaogenesis and Parthenogenesis. That was the only technical question when I answered which, perhaps to his satisfaction, his next question was what my hobbies were.

When I said that photography was one of them, our entire interaction turned to and stayed put at optics, cameras, lenses, focal lengths and their effect on image size and perspective, which was my favourite playing field! After about fifteen minutes of an interaction, which I enjoyed immensely and which gave me much reassurance that I would qualify in the race, I left his room with a triumphant air.

What happened after this with my quest for a medical seat, is another story altogether which I’ll perhaps narrate at some other time. After my interview, upon the advice of my father’s friend, we accompanied him to pay our respects to Mr. T.M.A. Pai, the doyen and grand old man, who was the visionary architect, who had put the once unknown village of Manipal on the world map. At his simple, single storied house, we found him sitting on his cot, dressed in a pristine white kurta and lungi and dangling his feet, which stayed off the floor, because he was a small built man. With a disarming smile, he motioned us wordlessly, to take our seats, because he was listening intently to what an elderly lady was telling him.

After we were seated, he introduced the lady as doctor from the Calicut Medical College who had been on a visit to the KMC, Manipal, as an examiner in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, for the final year medical students. And what the lady was telling him turned out to be a most interesting story. It appears she was travelling by a night train from Calicut to Mangalore, the previous day, when she requested a young boy seated in her cabin, to help her lift her suitcase onto the luggage rack overhead.

The boy glared at her and said, arrogantly, “Madam, you are asking me to lift your suitcase. You should know that I am a doctor” and he turned his head away. Even as the lady apologised profusely, another passenger who was there, was kind enough to lift her suitcase with a smile and placed it where she wanted it to be. She thought the matter had ended there but the next day as the candidates were called, one by one for the viva-voce examination, she was shocked to find that same boy appearing before her as an examinee.

Naturally, his shock turned out to be much greater than hers and he stood dazed for a moment before falling at her feet and apologising profusely for his rude behaviour the previous night. The most forgiving lady, who had all the magnanimity and wisdom that comes from education, calmly reassured the embarrassed boy that she would not hold any grudge against him and on the contrary, she would be extra considerate to him in the examination if only he promised that he would change into a better person.

After we had all listened to her, the grand old man turned to me and with his signature smile said, “Young man, this should be your first lesson as a medical student!” And, it indeed was!

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