Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 13, 2006
Introduction: Workers laboured through the
night to get Mumbai on track
Five hours after Tuesday's carnage came to
an end, under a bright full moon, the ill-fated 5.48 slow local from Churchgate
to Borivli stood still on an empty track between Khar Road and Santa Cruz
stations. The blast that had taken place at 6.24 pm near the Khar Subway had
been devastatingly huge.
But at midnight, everything was quiet. Just
a gang of 30 or so Western Railway labourers were at work, carefully taking
apart remains of the first-class carriage that the bomb had ripped apart.
"Quickly," urged a foreman as the
workers carefully sawed through bent metal, and pulled at one of the familiar
padded dark-green seats, now warped and burnt. "We need to be on time
for restoration."
Others who were not directly affected by the
blast may have found themselves paralysed by the shock of what had happened.
But the railway workers did their job carefully yet quickly.
Mumbai's perpetual imperative to get on with
work even in the aftermath of a tragedy can sometimes seem callous, but here
it was quiet heroism at work.
On a regular day WR runs 1,030 trains. On
Wednesday only 175 were cancelled; a full restoration of service is promised
by Thursday.
Watched only by a clutch of police constables
(higher ranking officers left by 11.30 pm) and a few stray locals, the railway
staff worked dedicatedly for hours to ensure that the line would be up and
running as normal by the morning.
The first train from Churchgate to Borivli
on Wednesday ran on schedule at 5.35 am and the first train in the other direction
was on time at 4.35.
Amid the images of the day, there was the
destroyed carriage, with its walls twisted outwards into a hole.
A strip of metal on which the 'first class'
sign was painted dangled helplessly. But there were also the worker ants of
the railway, who put the accent of the night on "restoration", and
made sure that the spine of the city's transport network jumped back into
business.
