Rail Diaries#1 - The Blue Malabar Wagons
7:00
pm, Sunday, 24th June, Onboard Aleppey Express: I am on the first of many many Chennai trips to
come, my office being at Mahindra city (a planet far far away from Chennai ;) ). Having
recuperated from a small bike accident for a week at home, I am going to be
back at work tomorrow morning.
I find train journeys reasonably boring.
At Palghat station, I got down for a cup of tea and to take a stroll. Blowing
in to my cup of tea, I looked across and there is parked, the all too familiar
blue wagons of Malabar Cements Ltd (MCL) and it got me thinking.
A quick flash back to our engineering
days; the reason being a couple of my close friends had done their final year engineering
project at MCL. Out of sheer curiosity, I had set out on a journey to MCL with them
when they went to collect their certificates from there. Seated on the
concrete slabs, I remember staring at these wagons back then from the very same
platform. I distinctly remember us collectively fretting about placements. But
we were moderately confident and hopeful. Later on, some of us joined some IT
firms and the rest including me set out to Bombay in search of a job. Luckily,
all of us landed jobs and is now spread across India.
After
a year at Bombay, I resigned from RIL and came to do MBA and thus began the
train journeys to and from ASB, Coimbatore. Boy, those were fun! Even then I remember
noticing these blue wagons. I used to give some gyaan to anyone who cared to
listen as to how they belong to MCL and how it might be on lease from railways and
so on, usually that person being Vivek. Many a time when I repeated the same
gyaan (which was more often than not) he shut me up too J
.Even then, we used to wonder where we will be after the course ends. I guess
the blue wagons just manifest themselves whenever I am in search of a job.
And now, again on a Sunday night, I see
the blue wagon J, enroute my office. I hope it’s
not an omen of an impending search for a job! Given the market situations, you
never know J. But being the wanna be optimist I
am , I look at it as a sign of luck and as something which is going to bring me seasons of good times to be cherished.
Arun Babu.
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