Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs

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ASAD 10^th Anniversary Celebrations – 16
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Discussion of Railway related matters-1
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There are songs that bring back memories. Then there are songs that trigger emotions. The song under discussion is one such song. This song causes so many different kinds of emotions that one hopes that these emotions would occur in slow motion so that one could understand them. Unfortunately such ultra slow motion technology has not yet been invented and so one needs to deal with them in the usual old fashioned way- viz. by taking a breather, collecting oneself and then trying to understand and analyse the things that run through one’s mind when one listens to this song.

So many different kinds of emotional stuff have been packaged in the three stanzas of this song that one is amazed at the ability of the lyricist to express such complex feelings in so few words.

This song was created in 1957, more that sixty years ago. The country was devoid of any development after systematic loot of her resources by the foreign rulers. People were moving to various places all over India in search of new abodes (for people uprooted as a result of partition) as well as employment (lots of new establishments were coming up, many in remote locations). Train was the only option to reach to far off places.

Going away from one’s native place often meant leaving one’s near and dear one’s behind. In other words, hopes and aspirations of a better future were tempered by the feelings of separation and missing the beloved. Those who are left behind by the train traveller would have no way of knowing the whereabout of the train traveller and vice versa.

hey kaisa ghazab ye dhaaye more raama
sajni se saajan chhudaaye liye jaaye
hoy dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye

bairan gaadi udti jaaye
man ko chain na aaye
saajan ke man ko chain na aaye
hai apne piyaa se door sajaniyaa
chham chham neer bahaaye
sajaniya chham chham neer bahaaye
arre ho o o o
nainan ka kajra
haathan ka gazraa
sab kuchh ye bairan churaaye liye jaaye
ho
sab kuchh ye bairan churaaye liye jaaye

A train contained hundreds of passengers. Each one of them was going somewhere and each one of them had some urgent business to attend to. Just imagine, hundreds of people, all strangers travelling together for different destinations in the same train. Staying together for a few hours and sometimes longer, people from different backgrounds would get introduced to each other and they would strike friendship. They would soon start discussing issues of common interest with each other.

Trains, by carrying people to far off places from their original places of residence, would not just relocate them geographically, it would also help in the development of the nation by bringing in skilled personnel to less developed places. These people, migrants to new places far off from their original places would need to undergo enormous changes in their earlier habits and attitudes in order to get used to their new environments. It would involve, among other things, learning an entirely new language, which, after initial struggle, would be achieved by people with aplomb. That is how erstwhile small towns in India have grown to become larger and more prosperous cities, by attracting skilled people from various other places.

Interaction with people coming from different backgrounds and geographical locations enabled cross pollination of ideas, viz food habits, dressing habits, attitudes etc. When I went to Madras in 1989, I was pleasantly surprised to find Lassi(an out and out Punjabi drink) being sold in Madras Railway station by a native shop owner and doing a roaring business among the local customers in that hot weather.

People travelled in trains not just for their careers. People travelled on it to meet their relatives located in far off areas. Children boarding a train with their parents to meet their grandparents would be a great occasion for the children as well as the grandparents. Also think of those who received telegrams (telegrams were dreaded, as they often meant some bad news like someone passing away) and as a result had to urgently rush back to their native places, without any time for prepatations including booking their tickets, which was a tough proposition in pre internet days.

Like most people in India, I too have been exposed to Indian Railways from childhood. I in fact was a born Railwayman because my father was a Railway employee. 🙂 So I saw Railway right from the time I was a child.

I stayed in Railway colony of Ranchi, not far from Ranchi Railway station. I studied in two schools and later one college in Ranchi. All of them were located on the other side of the Railway line. So it was mandatory to cross the railway line while commuting between home and school/ college. Even otherwise I would often go to the Railway station and observe how trains operated. Ranchi had broadguage lines going towards Howrah as well as Patna, and there were only two express trains daily- one for Howrah and one for Patna. Present day Ranchi inhabitants may be amused by this account but that is how it was during 1960s and 1970s.

Ranchi also had a narrow guage line upto Lohardaga. Passenger trains would ply between Ranchi-Lohardaga, but the main traffic in this narrow guage line was goods traffic. Bauxite (ore of Aluminium) would be brought by narrow guage goods train. This narrow gauge train would be taken to an elevated line. Under that line, there would be Broad guage line and empty broadguage wagons would be kept just under the narrow guage wagons. valves of NG wagons (called hopper wagons) would open and their Bauxite ore content would fall down from their bottom discharge opening into the open broad guage wagons. It all looked very elegant. I as a child would stop there and watch how the bauxite ore got transferred from NG wagons into BG wagons within minutes. After that, the BG goods wagons would be taken to the Hindalco Aluminium factories for further processing.

Those were the days of steam locomotives. Ranchi Railway station had a steam loco shed. Steam locomotive pistons used to have piston rings outside them. These piston rings were replaced in the steam shed during their repair and old piston rings were discarded. These discarded piston rings, when welded at the gap made excellent hoop that kids so loved to drive.

Kids whose fathers were in loco department (viz locomotive drivers) would get their fathers to get such hoops for them. I was not so privileged as my father was in Engineering department, so I only had hoops made of rods bent into a circle. I would request my privileged friends to let me drive their piston ring hoop. After driving my hoop, driving that piston ring hoop seemed like one was driving a Ferrari or Rolls Royce. 🙂

Later, when I myself joined Railways, I found myself undergoing training, among other things, in steam locomotives at Jamalpur. What enormous sized parts a steam locomotive contained ! People who maintained steam locomotives and people who drove them needed to be extremely strong and rough and tough. It was not for people who were weak in body and mind.

One needed to pass in practicals as well as Interview. Interviews were conducted by the head of the Workshop (now called Chief Workshop Manager, then called Additional Chief Mechanical Engineer). A book “steam loco guide” by H C Ratta was a much sought after book for passing the interview. It appears that only one edition of this book was published in 1958 despite its enormous popularity. Only a few copies of the book were available and those who had them would guard their copies with their lives and would allow them to be shared to others only on hourly basis. 🙂

Very few people would be able to give satisfactory replies in the interview. Thankfully, the additional Chief Mechanical Engineer, who himself might have been in the shoes of the interviewees some two to three decades ago would take a sympathetic view towards them. 🙂

When I joined Railway service after managing to scrape through various examinations and interviews etc, I was hoping that I would not have to deal with steam locomotives much. I was initially posted in a MG Diesel locomotive shed so I felt safe. But my next posting was in a MG steam loco shed in a place called Purna in Maharashtra and that too as the incharge. 🙂 I somehow managed, all the while hoping that the steam locomotives would soon get phased out and thankfully that is what happened.

Sometime later, I was posted in Hubli, and guess what ! That place too had a MG steam loco shed ! Thankfully, the entire division, which was MG when I joined, became BG within four months of my joining there and so that steam loco shed got phased out too.

A few years later, I was transferred to N F Railways and posted at Lumding. A few months later,a new General Manager joined who was a steam locomotive romantic (even though ignorant about technical matters of steam locomotives), ordered that one of the several condemned MG steam locomotives lying at Badarpur (near Bangladesh Border) must be revived. As incharge of mechanical engineering activities, this task was entrusted on me. Despite lacking infrastructure for steam locomotives, one steam locomotive was revived and it was used to haul a few coaches in MG section between Lower Haflong and Maibong in may 2001, with BBC TV crew on board. BBC shot the steam train running and later telecast it on their world service TV. Taking inspiration from this, other zones too then revived a few steam locomotives lying in their territories and ran them, mainly for the benefit of camera opportunity.

Thankfully, that was my last tryst with Steam locomotives. Subsequently I had to deal only with Diesel locomotives. Diesel locomotives are maintained in Diesel loco sheds. The incharge of Diesel loco shed is called Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineer (Diesel), or Sr DME (D) in short. I have the unique distinction of being Sr DME (D) in diesel sheds of all the three guages, viz Broad guage, Meter Guage and Narrow Guage. My guess is that I am the only such officer in the entire 165 year old history of Indian Railways. 🙂 The fact that I have been transferred a lot all over India helped me achieve this feat. 🙂

I have worked in all wings of mechanical department that a zonal Railway can have. I have worked in Steam and Diesel (as mentioned above), power (which meant being incharge of Diesel locomotive drivers), Zonal HQ and also Railway Workshop.

I had joined Jabalpur one week before it became the headquarters of newly formed West Central Railway on 1 april 2003. So I was one of the founders of WCRly. It was while I was at Jabalpur that this blog was started on 19 july 2008.

As for train travels, I have obviously travelled a lot on Indian Railways. There are a few travels that stand out in memory. One was a train travel from Nagpur to Secunderabad in june 1998. I, my wife and our three months old daughter were travelling. We had got just one berth in AC2 and that too upper berth. My wife and daughter occupied the upper berth. It was extremely cold at the upper berth and the daughter, who was travelling by train for the first time was naturally quite uncomfortable and she cried a lot. My wife got mad at me for my inability to arrange for a lower berth. I looked around and found that a lower berth would get vacant after several hours, and the person (a collegue of mine) who was allotted that berth on vacation agreed to exchange that lower berth with our upper berth when he got that berth. Meanwhile my wife had managed to calm the daughter and had managed to make her fall asleep. Today, 20 years later, whenever I think of that train journey, I still shudder how our three months daughter , on her first train journey had had a harrowing time. And I still feel extremely grateful to my colleage, called Piyush Mathur (now posted in Jabalpur) who agreed to offer his side lower berth in exchange of inside upper berth.

Then there was another train travel between Jamalpur to Jabalpur that I undertook in january 2010. I had got a lower berth through EQ (emergency quota). As soon as I occupied by berth, all the passengers with upper berths began eyeing my lower berth and tried to exchange their upper berth with my lower berth. A mother and her grown up daughter had got the upper berth, the berth above me. The man on the opposite lower berth had his alibi ready. He had every physical ailments known to mankind so no one dare ask him to exchange his lower berth.

The two ladies tried all the tricks in the book and outside the book and I finally relented and exchanged my lower berth with their upper berth. As soon as I occupied the upper berth, the two ladies as well as the gentleman on the opposite lower berth made me a persona non grata and began to treat me as an unwanted intruder. “keep your purse in my custody, I will take care of them”, the gentleman would tell the ladies, indicating that the fellow on the upper berth was not to be trusted. Needless to say that I was not allowed to sit in the lower berth which was actually mine. I kept fuming throughout the journey. By the time the train arrived in WCR and the TTE of WCR joined the train, I told him my story and he fully empathised with me. “In future, never exchange your liower berth with anyone, whether it is a lady or a child or a saint”- he advised. “Yes, I will never do that again.” -I vowed. From that time onwards, I never exchange my lower berth with any passenger. and in case they look like people who do not deserve to be helped then I become uncharacteristically aggressive as well and tell them that I have suffered in the past for my generosity which was regarded as my foolishness and I will not allow myself to be taken for a ride again. The only exception to this rule is of course when I find a lady with a young child needing a lower berth, which was the case with me 20 years ago.

When I look back to my association with Railways, I have lots and lots of tales to tell. Some of our regulars are quite interested in matters related to Railways and I, during my interactions with them had said that I would discuss some railway related matters from an insider’s point of view in the blog. This article could be treated as the first article in that series. 🙂

More than the first article in my series of Railway related discussion, this article is about ten years of this blog. I have mentioned it many a times that the journey of this blog can be likened to a train journey and so a train related song is quite a suitable song for an occasion like this.

I had discovered this song may years ago and I was floored by this song. I had decided to use this song on some very special occasion. Lots of special occasions have arrived in the blog but somehow I felt the need to still hang on to this song. I think that this song is just the perfect song for the occasion.

So here is this song from “Naya Zamaana”(1957). This movie was directed by Lekhraj Bhakri for Link Films, Bombay. The movie had Pradeep Kumar, Mala Sinha, Veena, Kammo, Leela Mishra, Badri Prasad, Gope, Shukla, Poonam Kapoor, Shakuntala, Brahmdatt, Daizy Irani, Baby Naaz, Al Nasir etc in it. Pradeep Kumar and Al Nasir were guest artists in this movie.

The movie had ten songs in it. One song was covered in the blog in the past.

This song, the second from the movie, is sung by Rafi and chorus. Prem Dhawan is the lyricist. Music is composed by Kanu Ghosh.

Video of the first song covered from the movie was available. But only the audio of this rail song seems to be available. I request our knowledgeable readers to throw light on the picturisation of this song.

The blog has completed ten years of its existence. It appears as if this blog was started just a few months ago. I can barely believe that ten years have passed. But indeed that is the case. My daughter was just ten years old and in school at that time. Now she is an young adult and she is studying in a medical college. The youngest contributor of this blog eight years ago is now in show business. 🙂 We have people from various walks in like- Banking, Rocket science, film industry, government sector, private sector etc etc as our regular contributors and visitors. Just like people from all walks of lives used Railways to travel and enrich the nation, people of various walks have used the online media available to us to enrich the blog. When one looks at the variety that has been served in the form of guest articles in the run up to this event, one can only be amazed at the power of online collaboration. This blog is an example of what can be achieved when about a score of like minded individuals decide to collaborate on a topic of their choice. We never collaborated with the aim that we had to last for a certain period of time say ten years. We collaborated because we enjoyed what we were doing. When one enjoys doing something and works with a missionary zeal, one can keep doing it for long periods without feeling fatigued or disillusioned. The musical bandwagon had hardly lost any steam. In fact, I feel that we can pick up speed again. We still have lots and lots more of great music still left to be covered. So let us take a fresh guard again and let us star afresh once more. Here is hoping that this bandwagon will keep rolling on and on for the foreseeable future.

I take this opportunity to thank one and all. Without the support of encouragement, this labour of love could not have seen this day. The fact that we have seen this day shows how much goodwill the blog has received from music lovers. I request more on the same. Let us fasten our seat belts and move on. We still have a long way to go.

Song-Aaj iss nagri kal us nagri dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye (Nayaa Zamaanaa) (1957) Singer-Rafi, Lyrics-Prem Dhawan, MD-Kanu Ghosh
All chorus
Male chorus

Lyrics

Aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
hey kaisa ghazab ye dhaaye more raama
sajni se saajan chhudaaye liye jaaye
hoy dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
(ho raama ho raama
ho raama ho raama)
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye

bairan gaadi udti jaaye
man ko chain na aaye
sajan ke man ko chain na aaye
hai apne piyaa se door sajaniyaa
chham chham neer bahaaye
sajaniya chham chham neer bahaaye
arre ho o o o
nainan ka kajra
haathan ka gazraa
sab kuchh ye bairan churaaye liye jaaye
ho
sab kuchh ye bairan churaaye liye jaaye
(ho raama ho raama
ho raama ho raama)
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye

phir kab milihen
raam hi jaane
aaj ke bichhde saathi
ho raama
aaj ke bichhde saathi
he
kab lag yaad
piyaa ki nit din rahegi man tadpaati
ho raama
rahegi man tadpaati
arre ho o o o o
kitne hi aansoon kitni hi aahen
dhuyen mein zaalim chhupaaye liye jaaye
ho
dhuyen mein zaalim chhupaaye liye jaaye
(ho raama ho raama
ho raama ho raama)
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
he kaisa ghazab
ye dhaaye more raama
sajni se saajan chhudaaye liye jaaye
ho dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
(ho raama ho raama
ho raama ho raama)
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye
aaj is nagri kal us nagri
dhuyen ki gaadi udaaye liye jaaye