A Journey By Indian Train Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

My God, the night is dark,
Where am I going,
Whether o.k. or something wrong,
Am I in the right train or not,
Where will it take to,
Where is it going to,
My God?

Will all the passengers alight
From the local train
In the mid-way stations,
The daily commuters,
I in suspense,
On marking them alighting,
Getting down?

When the train left for,
There had been many passengers
And I for getting a seat,
Sat in the train
Without knowing the things,
Going for a long distance,
But as the night descending,
People are alighting?

All the passengers alighted they,
Got down from
And I left all alone
With a few ragged men siting,
Perhaps the pick-pockets
As their activities otherwise,
Taking the name of God,
An escape, a save.

The train rushing down
Oblivious of the fears lurking in,
But the security staff not,
The bogies appearing manless
And the light too burning dimly
And I too marking all that
Trying to befriend the awkward fellows
As for safety.

The halts lonely in between the stations,
The masters closing the counters
After the ticket sell,
The lights too fainter,
The vagabonds, drunks and abnormals
Moving on
Or without them.

Even the platforms without good toilets,
Full of pick-pockets, goons and thugs,
No place to sit on
And to rest,
The crowds seem to be swapping,
Changing places
And waiting to enter in.

The without tickets on the seats
Sitting not,
But sleeping and acquiring them,
Unwilling to leave or get up
And again trying to go up
And to sit on the high bench
And apart from people jostling
And pushing in the bogey sometimes.

Many in the morning wanting to push coal bags
From the colliery region
Behind the seats,
Some wanting to place the vegetable bags
Into the toilet side,
Some knapsacks placed near the toilet gates
And the toilets stinking.

It seems that a hundred dead rats
Stinking in the toilet,
Giving out the stench,
Smelling foul,
Petrifying and rotting smell,
Making to feel vomit
With nothing to wash the hands.

Indian trains and their situations
Telling of the poor and over loads
Of the trains
Which keep chugging and whistling,
Entering and exiting,
Always overcrowded and in rush,
The loads lessening it not.

he trains packed with passengers
Increasing, lessening i not,
Telling of the crores of unmanageable people,
Overbearing and reproducing,
The overcrowded trains and hanging onto passengers
Telling of the population explosion,
No birth control,
God the Almighty is giving
And you fathering more,
The mother turning into a skeleton.