Bikaner-Guwahati Express - Train Accident - Indian Railways Must Enhance Safety Of Travelers Poem by Bernedita Rosinha Pinto

And just as public transport enhances
the convenience and conveyance of people,
it also offers inhumanity when fatal accidents occur;
the tracks of life run parallel to one another just as
joys and sorrows co-exist side by side of each other;
a thousand passengers had boarded that fatal train
out of which many got injured and some just died;

and as this accident was a high velocity incident
where the speed of the train exceeded its limits,
in those iron boxes called bogies,
how badly those passengers must have not got mangled
as when that express train got derailed
and jumped off the tracks, five bogies got overturned
just like a building apartment coming crushing
on to the ground floor without any retention;

and my heart weeps to hear of it
as many who travel by that train are so pitiable
as they travel to their homes or workplaces,
some travel for pilgrimages and family visits
to make their relatives happy;
and with a hope of getting across their dreams and love
to their family and abide by their commitments,
they board the trains without any fear or instinctiveness;

but this fatal night and route was upholding danger
to their lives as they boarded the Bikaner- Guwahati Express train from the platform none sensed that it could be
the last journey for some or the last time someone
would be able to walk on his limbs
or have no injury that was not serious;

and as those bogies fell off the tracks like a heap of paper
flung out of a window and thrown into thin air;
imagine the horror, the terror, the anguish and the pain
the travelers must have encountered and suffered
as they kept falling asunder, getting hurt and wounded;
how much they must have screamed for help
and how painfully they must have let go off their last breath;

was it worth the time they lived on this earth
just to perish like this or get mutilated in an accident
due to the error of speed initiated by human force
where there is no checking or supervision
as those trains keep over-speeding
thro those mountains and hills, thro those lonely fields
and over those rivers and bridges which are desolate
where no one can see or visualize the parameters
of danger as travel and journey becomes the essence
of every passengers who risks his life to get
to his destination never guessing he may never make it
or that he may be permanently disabled
by a high speeding train accident
that as one dies or survives remains a handicap
and a little compensation gets offered to such victims
by a government for the dead or the injured family member
which does not take away the pain of losing a breadwinner;

yet life will go on, the next journey will commence,
the tracks will replaced, the damaged bogies will get substituted
and the dilemma of a similar accident in another route
will be anticipated for the same reason
yet no one will ever be alert or cautious
until another derailment gets repeated
and the loss of lives and injured victims gets listed
with other names for another mishap
but the meagre lifestyle of people can ask for nothing
safe or luxurious as that is their fate and misfortune
which they silently accept and it makes my eyes to truly weep.