Relief and apprehension among the homebound
Today, I am relieved that I am going back home. But I am also apprehensive as Covid-19 is spreading fast and I am travelling on a train with hundreds of other passengers.
PB VERMA, a passenger
NEWDELHI: There was huge relief and some apprehension among passengers who boarded the special trains that the government resumed on Tuesday after a gap of 51 days.
Railways carried over 8,000 passengers to different destinations across the country, bringing the stations that resumed operations back to life, albeit momentarily.
“With offices opening, I have no alternative but to return,” said Dhiraj Kumar Jaiswal, a supervisor at a private company in Ghaziabad. He was travelling back to Delhi from Patna’s Rajendra Nagar with six members of his family including his wife, two children and two relatives.
Jaiswal, 38, who has a master’s degree in business administration, had been stranded in Patna since he came home midMarch. Passenger train services have been suspended since March 22, three days before India imposed a national lockdown. “It was a tough period,” Jaiswal said.
He said he did not even know if his company paid him for March and April as his mobile phone was not working.
PB Verma, 80, and his 75-year-old wife, Prema Verma, came to visit their son Umesh, a senior employee in a nationalised bank, in Kolkata for the Holi festival in the second week of March. They had been stranded since.
On Tuesday, the elderly couple boarded a train from Howrah to Delhi. “We have a house at Allahabad and had come here to stay with our son during Holi. We were supposed to leave in the last week of April. But we got stuck. Today, I am relieved that
I am going back home. But I am also apprehensive as Covid-19 is spreading fast and I am travelling on a train with hundreds of other passengers,” said PB Verma.
The railways is running 15 pairs of special trains across the country. Bookings began on Monday, and the railways said on Tuesday over 80,000 passengers bought online tickets worth over Rs 16 crore. Authorities are allowing bookings of up to seven days in advance.
Before the suspension of services, railways ran over 13,000 passenger trains daily with over than 20 million travellers.
Nafees Mohammed, 55, was travelling from Mumbai to New Delhi. The construction site worker travelled from Khopoli in Maharashtra with four co-passengers to the station. “I have come along with people who used to work with me. We have been stuck for 50 days. There are limited sources available in Khopoli, and I can’t wait to reach Delhi and meet my children. We suffered a lot for 50 days and had little money to commute,” Nafees said.
Twenty-five passengers were not allowed to board a Delhibound train from the Sabarmati railway station in Ahmedabad as they were found to have high temperature during screening at the main gate of the station, officials said.
“Some of them were accompanied by family members who did not wish to go alone, so around 40 persons with confirmed reservations did not board the train,” an official said.
Many of the passengers who boarded the train had been stuck in Gujarat due to the lockdown. Among them was Delhi’s Arun Kumar, who was visiting Ahmedabad to meet a friend.
“I had planned to stay here for only two days but got stranded. I felt I had become a burden on my friend and his family. My parents back home could not sleep well all these days. Today, I am so much relieved,” he said.
Ronak Pancholi, a trader from Rajasthan, had come to place an order. “I never thought I will have to spend so many days in a small hotel room. I even ran out of money and there was no one in this city who I could call for help,” he said.
Shivani Chaube, a civil services aspirant staying in Mukherjee Nagar in Delhi, said she was apprehensive about her train journey to Bilaspur due to the coronavirus. “I was finding it difficult to study in Delhi and am going back home. I am concerned about the safety precautions during the train journey with the epidemic raging in Delhi,” she said.
Railways officials said all precautions have been taken to ensure that passengers had a safe journey. “The air conditioning units in the coaches have been modified to maximise fresh air. Screening of all passengers is being done and floor markings for social distancing at the platforms and entire passenger area have been done,” said a senior railway official.