The traumatic impact of a train accident stays on, even after 42 years

Three trains collided with each other near Balasore in Odisha on June 3, killing over 237 people and injuring more than 900.

Almost 12 hours of journey time covered, another three hours or so to go for reaching my destination. I was counting every hour as the train whizzed past every station at full speed as it had limited scheduled stoppages.

It was around 6pm when the train suddenly came to a screeching halt, with jerks; environment outside engulfed with dust, as if a dust storm had hit the area. As I regained my composure, stepped out of the Chair Car Coach to see that the engine and the five coaches ahead of us weren’t there. It was the detached coach on which I was travelling that was now leading the train that had derailed. As the coach was leading the remaining coaches, it had all the time to stop on its own. This was also a reason for no casualties in this coach.

This was the first impression on looking forward. As I turned my eyes to the back, I found that the other Chair Car Coach was partly resting on top of our coach in inclined position and the one behind it had capsized. Most casualties were in these two coaches.

I entered the coach to share the information with other passengers. This image of the train coaches has been imprinted in my mind for years and I have drawn it on paper numerous times, particularly in the wake of a train accident.

Even as screams for help could be heard from the coaches railway staff, including pantry employees, were rushing to help, extricating people - dead or alive.

Most passengers, even from unaffected coaches, had got off the train within minutes, walked to the affected coaches to see injured being pulled out. There was sadness all around at what we were witnessing. This was the first time when a train accident one had often read about in the newspapers was being witnessed live in front of our eyes.

Well, this account isn’t of yesterday’s train collision in Orissa. This had happened on August 31, 1981, 42 years ago. The train involved was Tamil Nadu Express plying on Chennai, then known as Madras, to Delhi via Nagpur; accident site - about 20 km before Sirpur/ Kagaznagar, in then Andhra Pradesh. I have relived the harrowing experience every time a train tragedy has taken place. Yesterday was  no different. Even three hours after I had switched off the TV news the disturbing thoughts kept crossing my mind in the night.

As the train accident happened in an era when mobiles weren’t there rumours travelled thick and fast. And the information, as told to me by the rescue team, was that several hundred passengers were speculated to have been killed in the mishap. Being present at the accident site I knew this figure was highly exaggerated. The English News on Doordarshan in that era was telecast at 9.45pm and when Coal India Regional Manager in Chennai saw it on DD and knowing that I was on board he alerted the headquarters at Nagpur.

My colleagues were wondering how to convey the news of my being on the accident-hit train to my wife - I had been married then for a little over two and a half years and had a 15-month-old son. They finally mustered courage and conveyed the news with additional information that a team had been rushed to the accident site from Coal mines in Chandrapur area on one side and Singareni Coal mines (not a part of Coal India) from the other side as the accident site was somewhere in between.

Accident Site

At the accident site, railway officials kept briefing passengers that a train was on its way to take us to Sirpur/Kagaznagar, the nearest railway station. Even as we saw railway officials noting down names of injured or killed, a train finally arrived around 9pm and we reached Kagaznagar station in about 30 minutes.

Sirpur Paper Mills had marshalled its employees to assist traumatised arriving passengers along with railways staff. I contacted the head of the team, introduced myself, and he sent me to his house to get over the accident-effect. I am not sure whether I was singled out for this preferential treatment because I worked for Coal India and Sirpur Paper Mill was a coal consumer?

I had hardly been at the house for ten minutes when the booked lightening call materialised and I could convey to my wife that I was safe. She could convey that Coal India team was on its way. Before I could say anything else the call was terminated because the limited facility then available was needed for others wanting to call their families.

Armed with the knowledge that a team from Coal India was on its way, I became restless. Even though the distance to be covered by Coal India team deputed to look for me was more than two hours, I decided to return to the station and sat down on the steps of the entrance. More than an hour later two Jeep-loads of coal miners with head lamps reached and on finding me safe and sound heaved a sigh of relief.

They were dreading the worst while enroute to the station which they were visiting essentially to  check location of accident site. The head lamps were to be used to search for me in the night hours.

I left in one of the Jeeps while the staff travelling in the other Jeep decided to call Coal India office to inform them that I was fine. I reached the residence of Chandrapur Area General Manager, GC Mrig, in the dead of night, slept for a few hours and left by car for Nagpur, 3-1/2 hours away, to meet up with family and neighbours who were all worried.

The advantages of working for a monolith organisation were apparent from the pace at which the resources could be mobilised to bring me to a safe environment.

It wasn’t, however, the end of experiencing an accident. Every time I travelled by train to the coalfields in Madhya  Pradesh and Vidarbha in Maharashtra from Nagpur, the train travel disturbed me.

When the advertisement of Air India was published in newspapers for the position of Chief Public Relations Manager, I was debating whether to apply or not. I had had a very satisfying tenure in Coal India - allowed to go on deputation to Asian Games Special Organising Committee for conducting the IX Asian Games in New Delhi, which got me the Presidential Award, opportunity to travel extensively by air Coal India’s own aircraft to coal companies headquarters in Asansol, Dhanbad, Ranchi, Singrauli, etc.  with Chairman, Coal India, M S Gujral, himself a former Railway Board Chairman; and then to UK for a crash management programme. As I had also done extremely well in climbing the management hierarchy, there was no reason to leave Coal India.

But the traumatic effect of railway accident kept crossing my mind as I had come to dread the sound of the rail coaches clanging down the tracks. Working with Air India would put an end to travel by train. It eventually became a clincher for the decision. I applied, got selected and the perquisite of air travel while working for airline did provide an alternative to train travel.

Forty two years is no short time but the traumatic effect lingers on. Every train accident with extensive coverage on television only revives the memory, which otherwise one would like to forget.

Jitender Bhargava is former executive director of Air India and author of ‘The Descent of Air India’.