Keya Sarkar: Railways' dirty linen

Early last month, an Egyptian artist friend of ours arrived in Santiniketan to spend a few days with us. As we chatted about what she had been up to since we last met, and, of course, the political situation in Egypt, we also had a look at some of her recent works. She had just returned from Varanasi so a lot of her sketches were of the city in general and the ghats in particular. She told us in passing that she had been to Varanasi about 30 times! And it struck me then that despite it being an overnight train journey from Santiniketan, neither my partner nor I had ever visited Varanasi.

We decided, therefore, to visit this ancient city and bought ourselves return train tickets to Varanasi.

Since the General Strike – “general” only in West Bengal – was scheduled on the day we were supposed to leave, we had to cancel our train tickets to Varanasi and take the flight instead the next day. Our cheap bharat-dekho trip, thus, started on a rather expensive note with an early morning cab ride to the Kolkata airport. Nevertheless, we still had our tickets back to Santiniketan booked on the train.

After four frenetic days of soaking up Varanasi, it was time for us to head back. Now that my partner and I are in our fifties and older, we make it a point to arrive at airports and railway stations way in advance and sure enough we were at the Varanasi station much before our train’s scheduled arrival. As we sat waiting at the platform, a long-distance train drew in and halted. Varanasi Junction was obviously the last stop for this train. To our surprise, very soon a swarm of men arrived from nowhere and started pulling out blankets and sheets from each of the train’s compartment. To our horror, they began to throw all the blankets directly onto the dirty platform, creating a cloud of dust thick enough to choke unsuspecting commuters.

As more men appeared to help tie these blankets into huge “potlis”, we realised that these were being taken to be washed! (No doubt the blankets needed cleaning thanks to this unique laundry service.) Once the blankets were done, the same ritual was followed with the sheets, pillow cases and towels. These, too, were chucked on the platform, trampled on by shoes, only to be tied into huge mountains of linen — which were then taken away on the ubiquitous railway trolleys for washing.

As we sat watching this mammoth operation, I wondered if Ms Banerjee and her party would look into this rather ungainly system of washing railway laundry and think of a better way. Of course, with the Railways’ finances in a poor state, an expensive international logistics company cannot be an option. But surely if the dabbawallas can come up with such an ingenious system to deliver lunch boxes in Mumbai, the Railways can find a solution to dealing with its dirty linen with a little more finesse.

Soon after, our train arrived; we boarded it, looked for our berths and settled down. And what greeted our eyes? The neatly stacked bedlinen packed in fresh brown-paper packets. We opened them with some trepidation. But to our relief, and surprise, it was clean.