My father – the Railwayman (SADHNA SHANKER)

My father – the Railwayman (SADHNA SHANKER) One evening, in late November this year, I received a message from a friend in Mumbai. “Is the Mr. Gauri Shanker acknowledged in the series ‘The Railwaymen’ on Netflix your father?” I had not seen the series and did not know the context. When she elaborated that the series was based on the Bhopal Gas tragedy of 1984, I suddenly felt goosebumps all over. “Yes, Yes! That is my father. He was there that night.” ‘Hey, in all these years you never told me. What a heroic thing to do!’ Her awestruck response brought back a host of memories, which had been long forgotten and buried in the passage of time. I had just passed out of college in 1984 and was enrolled in LLB. Papa was posted in Mumbai as General Manager, Central Railway and I was staying in hostel in New Delhi. To be honest, I don’t recollect precisely when he told me about that night in Bhopal, but I remember him telling me about it. He had said that he was on an inspection tour and had crossed Bhopal, and was on his way, when he was informed about the gas leak in Bhopal. He had decided to return to Bhopal in his GM Inspection saloon to oversee and guide relief operations. They had returned to Bhopal the same night the gas had leaked. While ensuring that no trains stopped at Bhopal that night, he also coordinated the arrival of necessary railway medical facilities from the vicinity stations into Bhopal. To minimize loss of life, he with his coworkers spent the night coordinating relief and rescue work. My mother had accompanied him on the inspection, and she was shuttered inside the saloon with doors and windows sealed. The two of them spent that fateful night at Bhopal station. My recollection of my father’s narration ends there for me. Yet the impact of that night spent by them at Bhopal station was felt by our family for years. My father had been a man of robust health, boundless energy and enthusiasm. However, he developed heart problems within sometime after that night at Bhopal station. He underwent stent implanting twice and an eventual bypass surgery in 1997. My mother developed lifelong breathing problems after that night spent in a closed-up saloon on Bhopal Station. Their health took a nosedive post that December night in 1984. She died in 2004 at a mere 68 years of age, while our father passed away three years later in 2007 at 73. My parents never got confirmation that their health issues were an outcome of being exposed to the gas, but it was their and our (my sister and me) belief that it was the cause. Maybe it was their ensuing health issues, but I did not muster the courage to see the show on Netflix. Despite the fact that every day I was getting glowing messages from people, including friends of my father, all railwaymen, who had watched it. Then last week, I asked my husband to sit down with me to watch it. And we watched the series in two sittings. All my life I knew my father as a man of vision, of courage and someone who took decisions and implemented them. This was his trait in life and in work. His indomitable spirit often brought out the rebel in me, and consequently we fought often. Something I felt awful about for a long time after his death. I understood him better as I grew older, seeing, at times, many streaks and sparks of him emanating from me! But I had never realized that my father was a hero. Someone who put his life on the line for what he considered was his duty to his workforce, and the passengers who he had undertaken to manage. How had he taken that fateful decision to reverse his saloon towards Bhopal? Despite knowing that there was a poisonous and lethal gas shrouding the city. Where did he find that reservoir of strength and sense of doing the right thing within him? It was incredible. He was from a small village in Western UP, and self-made. In that dark foreboding night as the saloon had trundled back towards Bhopal what had he thought about? Did he wonder about his wife huddled with him in that space or his two daughters in different cities? The railways and his work had been his passion since he joined in 1954 as a civil engineer. Did he, even for a moment, doubt his decision to go? As he stopped onto Bhopal station, which must have been foreboding and eerie, did he feel a stab of fear? And my mother. A graduate from Lucknow university, she was a strong willed and resilient woman, with her own views and opinions. What had she thought when she had been told about the U-turn that the saloon was taking? Had she tried to dissuade my father? Did she think about disembarking at some station in the middle for her own safety? And finally, when she made the decision to go along with him all the way, did she fear for herself? What had been her thoughts as she had sat alone, shuttered up in the saloon that fateful night? But the young me, busy trying to find my own path in life, did not ask any of these questions at that time. Nor thereafter. I had never even thought about them. For me it had been a decision they had taken, which I remember believing shortened their lives. All along, being their child, the import of that decision, and the heroic nature of it never struck me. It never dawned on me what that heroic action had meant for the railways as an institution, and for the railway workers and passengers. My sister too never saw the event in this light. Sometimes you need something as external and neutral as a dramatization of events in a series on an OTT platform to realize what your parents stood for. How in the stroke of one decision the canvas of many lives changed for the better. I picture my father on the platform, guiding relief and rescue, and wonder how motivated and enthused all those working at the station must have felt. The senior most officer of their railway was with them, on the ground, to oversee the work, at great peril to himself and his wife. And I feel a lump rise in my throat. It is not a feeling of grief, but a deep and abiding sense of pride that moistens my eyes. That night my father gave hope to everyone – his family, the railways, and all those who were saved.