About a Train Journey, Again!

I seem to enjoy a special relationship with the trains of the Indian Railways, for most of my train journeys always yield a memorable result—at times very amusing and at times dearly painful. Over the decades I must’ve spent quite a few sleepless nights on various railway station platforms thanks to the delayed schedules or freak/serious mishaps on various tracks or my missing a train or the connecting trains, not to mention other sleepless nights I spent on board looking to get a reservation on the way that never came my way! I meet various interesting people on most of the journeys that make my journeys delightful or rather irritating depending on their quality, and most importantly most of those precious guys end up becoming my characters in my short or mini stories (most of which you can find in my various published collections of short stories. A few remain here too!)! Now, I invite you on board a train for a brief journey I undertook recently which actually doesn’t qualify for a memorable one by any of its revealed elements, but it does have an interesting angle that is somewhat unique to my varied experiences.As I mentioned the journey that started around noontime and was to reach the destination early next morning was in no way extraordinary and it didn’t present my wife and I with any difficulty or bad company as we got our good confirmed seats in the same compartment and except for a government officer who was shifting to a new posting there was no other people there for quite some time. And yes, the officer was very nice and immensely companionable. Obviously he had considerable luggage, but he adjusted efficiently not to inconvenience us.  

We spent several enjoyable hours together having our teas and the delicious meals offered by the Indian Railways pantry cars on some of its frontline express trains. After lunch the officer retired to his upper berth and accordingly as there was no other seating passenger my wife spread the bedsheets on her lower berth to have good afternoon nap. I occupied the other lower berth opposite to hers and I was spending the time looking out of the glass window—a pleasure I often indulge in whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Maybe by early evening I dozed off, for a commotion jerked me out of my drowsiness. It was not actually a commotion, the train only halted at a station and a new passenger was boarding. He was a young man of maybe twenty-something age and medium height, however, his small head housing the face was almost invisible amid the unnaturally huge bulk his body carried downward. He’s extremely overweight, I pondered, but it looks abnormal and there must be a clinical reason for his literally bloated fat-laden physique. It reminded me of the Sholay-famed veteran actor Amjad Khan who suffered from a disease of unnatural fat and eventually succumbed to it at his prime.

I was immediately responsive to the young man and sat up on the berth creating enough space for him to sit down. He thanked me, and asked his attendant to put his backpack on the berth above me. Then he prepared to ascend the upper berth, perhaps he wanted some rest.

The process was extremely painful to behold. The young man was unable to find the right foothold to ascend even as the attendant tried his best, and obviously he was not able enough to possibly lift the immense torso up. The officer at the opposite berth woke up in the meantime and noticed the mechanics of the ascent. He advised the young man to come in-between the berths and use his arms to push himself up resting his feet at the edge of my wife’s lower berth. I watched on even as the young man finally succeeded in lifting his body up flexing his both arms, and then suddenly I got very scared.

The stainless steel chains creaked at both the joints holding the upper berth as he slowly pushed himself up, and sitting down at the lower berth I watched in horror. The upper berth visibly curved downward and moaned like the hoofs of the oxen under tremendous pressure as the young man was finally able to place himself on it. I shot a quick glance at the officer who too was looking up and down concerned at the proceedings, trying to disguise my terror with an amused grin. Involuntarily, I started sliding to the inner fibre wall of my berth tilting up my knees so that should the upper berth crash down it’d catch my legs first rather than the precious head.

However, I was sure the Railways would never allow that kind of a freak accident and all the upper berths must’ve been firmly and powerfully chained up testing all kinds of weights on them beforehand. And lo! I was safe, nothing untoward happened!

But we are all ordinary mortals and the scares would never really disappear permanently. Therefore, the berth-crashing scares came back two more times that night: by late evening when the young man went for a leak break and ascended; and then ascended for the third time after having a late dinner at some other passenger’s seat perhaps. I held to my defending leg-positions on both the occasions, and thanks to the Railways nothing untoward happened. We also took up a conversation with the young man inquiring after his well-being and if he’d taken dinner or not.

During our dinner time when the young man was not there the officer confided to me in a hushed tone, “Good God! I was really worried the berth was going to crash down!” I gave him a reassuring smile.  

I had good night’s sleep despite the huge weight rolling and tossing around in the berth above, for the weight on my mind got considerably reduced by the display of the strength of the Indian Railways!

SBI: Structural Rigidities That Refuse to Leave the System?

The State Bank of India (SBI) has always been an active ingredient in our generational bloodstream—like in that of almost all of India’s state and central government employees and their families who have either salary accounts or pension accounts or deposit accounts or investment accounts or all the beneficiary accounts required by the governments to enjoy the benefits of various schemes. No doubt, the pressure on the bank has always been immense across the nooks and corners of the country, impacting the performances of the various branches. But the bank has been marching well with the digital developments over the years and for many of us the branch visits have been reduced to the minimum. Besides, the SBI’s net-banking site which is indeed a very secure and user-friendly, and the YONO App have done their bits to ease the hassles of the accountholders. However, despite the tremendous advancement of banking a few rickety old rules or diktats that we’d refer to as ‘structural rigidities’ still haunt the system and dilute many users’ otherwise seamless experience. As a loyal accountholder with SBI since the days of my father I’ve had my share of some nasty experiences that I intend to dwell upon here.

Quite a few years back my wife and I had applied for a home loan. Thanks to our branch along with the loan-sanctioning RACPC office of that metro city the process had been very friendly and hurdles-free. The loan being sanctioned the EMIs began to be deducted from my salary/savings account every month. The lady bank executive concerned also took pains to explain to us that the initial EMIs would be much higher and then from a year or so later it’d be reduced and stabilized. Of course, the ‘systemic’ text messages/emails/even phone calls came to every month urging me to pay on time as if the bank were blissfully unaware of the automatic deductions!

One fateful morning, after about three years of paying the EMIs, I found that the deduction for that month didn’t happen. It was perplexing, for there was absolutely no intimation to that effect. Instead of phoning the branch immediately I decided to wait for the bank’s intimations which I was sure would come sooner than later. One text message did come a few days later; but that only managed to worsen my confusion.

The text message stated that about a hundred bucks was pending in my home loan outstanding which needed to be paid immediately, else it was going to adversely affect my credit score. So, I logged in to my net-banking page and tried to transfer the paltry amount to the home loan account. To my horror the payment was not accepted. I tried again and again for days with the same adamant result. I phoned up my branch and after a seeming eternity of endless ringing one employee told me that the branch had no information about that and asked me to contact the RACPC office. I couldn’t do that because I had no telephone number of the concerned officer there. As I was out of town during that period I asked a friend of mine to go there and inquire. The friend obliged me, but said that no officer or clerk there could give him the required update.

So, the text messages kept on coming month after month and I kept on failing to transfer that hundred bucks. I was at my wit’s end. I wondered why the largest bank of India would thus go on crying for that hundred bucks instead of simply deducting it from my linked savings account or allowing me to transfer! Finally, not knowing what was the best course to resort to, I decided to courier a cheque of that fateful hundred bucks addressed to the RACPC to my friend asking him to personally hand over that at the office. He obliged me again, but informed me that the bank clerk refused to accept that cheque too.

Feeling sorry for my predicament which was absolutely for no fault of mine, the friend decided to tap all his sources in the bank and finally, someone asked him to go to a particular officer hidden at a desk somewhere in the labyrinth of the RACPC complex. That officer gave the monumental verdict we waited so desperately for: the said home loan account had stopped functioning because the concerned builder failed to complete the construction for the next phase and therefore the funds to be paid to him had been withheld, and that we needed to close the said account if we thought there was no hope of the housing project progressing further.

I was astounded. Why was this simple information not conveyed to me? Why were my transfers/payments not accepted? Why was that meagre amount not deducted from my linked savings account? And indeed, the supposed non-payment of the ‘EMIs’ (read 100 rupees) over the months did reduce my credit score substantially! The credit score page still reflects those ‘lapses’ to the SBI home loan! It’s another matter that eventually I went to the RACPC office along with my wife and friend and closed the account permanently, and finally, the ‘debt’ of hundred bucks was cleared! It’s also altogether a different matter that we lost our hard-earned money to the builder who had no inclination to compensate! But the questions for SBI remain! If these are not the rickety ancient rules or structural rigidities that refuse to leave the digitalized system alone then what are they?

More recently, I accepted the SBI’s offer of a pre-approved personal loan to tide over a temporary crisis. Everything was done on my net-banking page—the amount, the tenure, the immediate disbursement, the EMIs and the automatic deductions every month. I was really happy with the convenience of the process and tried to forget the previous unsavoury experience! I think I had read all the terms and conditions associated with the loan properly and thus I was sure I couldn’t find the clause that ‘partial pre-payment of the personal loan not allowed’, unlike most private banks.

Therefore, one fateful morning when I found that I had some surplus funds, I decided to pre-pay a substantial part of the total outstanding so that I’d enjoy a reduced burden of repayment for the remaining period. I realized my mistake right after the transaction which was seamlessly accepted, unlike the peculiar previous instance of the hundred bucks refused again and again and again.

Absolutely nothing happened to the EMIs, although the outstanding amount got reduced considerably with the tenure remaining the same! The same amount continued to be deducted from my linked account as before. And as I feared the obvious scenario emerged eventually.

The day came when the EMI amount became bigger than the outstanding amount! Therefore, the monthly deductions stopped! This time the text message said that the remaining amount needed to be paid immediately for which a branch visit was mandatory.

This time I got plain angry! Why force a senior citizen to visit the branch after all the bank’s efforts to minimize it and the sit-at-home comfort offered through their YONO App, and that everything about the said loan account was done online? There was another matter that also contributed to my indignation. A modified fixed deposit account I opened long back got reduced to less than ten thousand and therefore I put my maturity instructions clearly online to close that account; but despite that the branch decided to extend the account for two more years.

My anger made me call up one higher SBI officer I knew for a long time and let him know of the issues. The higher officer must’ve issued some instructions to the branch manager; but instead of helping me out the manager put a freeze on that modified deposit account which made me realize the obvious! So, when I finally had to visit the branch to accomplish the pending hassles I noticed a palpable stiffness in the manager’s attitude while attending to me.

I think a revamp of the SBI’s digital banking system to rid it of the archaic rules would help the accountholders immensely. Thanks to the rigidities I incurred personal losses on at least two counts: first, the erosion in my credit score; and second, the apparent loss in my long good standing with the bank branch which would result obviously in debarring me from the bank’s periodic beneficial offers relevant for me. For absolutely no fault of mine!

Ashish Warang: A Shocking Untimely Loss!

It's really heartbreaking that a powerful character actor should pass away at the age of just 55 while in prime as far the career goes or the huge promise of a lot more to come. Ashish Warang, an actor of Bollywood and the Marathi film industry, had suddenly passed away on Friday, the 5th of September, 2025. There was a total lack of clarity about his demise initially; only today his friends have come out with a statement that he had not been well for some time. First he had jaundice and although he'd recovered from the disease more complications followed in the next few months, finally leading to a cardiac arrest that proved fatal for the sturdy actor. 

Ashish Warang acted with most of the leading Bollywood stars in supporting roles--almost always as a cop. I immensely liked his performances; however, those were very brief roles which didn't linger on in my mind enough to enable me to associate his name with the roles. His face has been very familiar to me, but unfortunately, not his name. While I must take the blame for not doing enough research about him the media must also share the same for not highlighting performances of so many brilliant character artistes doing mostly cameos that still leave a palpable impact in the films concerned and always hyping only the superstars. 

He also did a few hilarious ads for a PhonePe campaign with the megastars Aamir Khan and Alia Bhatt about five years back, again as a cop. In fact, I loved those ads even more than the cameos Ashish played in quite a few Bollywood hits with Ajay Devgn Akshay Kumar, Rani Mukherjee, Ranveer Singh and more. I used to remember those ads often, and yet not the name of the face I so loved. This increases my pain for the sudden void at this moment. We mourn his demise and pray to God to rest his soul in eternal bliss. We share the grief with his family, friends and kin. Om Shanti!