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Hope, despair arrive together
on relief train

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

As the Sealdah Rajdhani Express carrying ninety-three survivors of Monday night's derailment of Howrah-Delhi Rajdhani Express rolls onto platform number one at the New Delhi railway station, all hell breaks loose.

It's 3 am on Wednesday. For those waiting for news about friends and family, it's been a nerve-wracking wait for 30 hours. Patience has given way to frustrations and plain anger.

Mediamen, policemen, doctors and railway officials have their own priorities. They all want access to the two coaches carrying the survivors.

Photographers, television cameramen win the battle. They are trained to deal with such situations. Push, shove, trample...there are deadlines to be met.

The second in the race are railways officials, policemen, boy scouts and doctors -- uniforms have their own advantages.

Relatives of the survivors -- weak after the long vigil, traumatised by television images of mangled bogies and injured passengers -- wait. Women sob quietly into their dupattas, men console them murmuring prayers.

Pargat Singh, former captain of the Indian hockey team returned from Germany around 11.30 on Tuesday night after watching the Champions Trophy hockey tournament when he learnt that his brother-in-law, Ajmer Singh, was on the derailed train.

Ajmer Singh was among the survivors on the train and he brought with him stories of Monday night's horror.

"I came out first and then helped all others in our AS-6 compartment. We have not eaten anything so far. I am lucky that I came out in one piece, but I feel sad for those who were not so lucky and either died in the accident or were badly injured," he says.

Resident of Mota Singh Nagar in Jalandhar, Ajmer Singh is a farmer. He had gone to Kolkata a week back on business.

"Do you need a pain killer?" a doctor asks. "Yes, I have pain in my right palm," he replies and joins his relatives.

Fifty-plus Anita Chatterjee thanks Goddess Durga for giving her a new lease of life.

"Our coach was hanging in the air. I prayed to Goddess Durga. Suddenly, there was a big jerk and the lights went out. Then all sorts of things started falling on me. I could feel blood on my body. I closed my eyes and prayed again. I shouted for help and soon felt hands reaching out to me...there were voices," she recounts.

Anita has been in a daze since Monday night. It was at the Delhi station a relative pointed out to her that she had two different slippers on her feet.

Sandhya Sarkar had left for the accident site on Tuesday afternoon in a special train. Her husband S P Sarkar (50) and daughter Sampa Sarkar (20) were on the derailed train. She had herself suffered a fracture in the leg sometimes back and had a leg in plaster. But that did not deter her.

"I did not go all the way...I found my husband and daughter in the relief train at Allahabad and I came back with them. My daughter told me that her father had a mild stroke after the accident. They have been taken to a railway hospital for treatment. My daughter is in shock," she says.

It's an emotional reunion as Gaganjit Kaur Bedi hugs her father S K S Bedi, an advocate practicing in Chandigarh. Bedi was badly hurt in the mishap. With a leg in plaster, he was provided a wheel-chair at the station.

"I was lying injured in my seat for over eleven hours before I was rescued by local people who did a commendable job. But for their help and assistance many of us would not have come back alive," Bedi says.

Several of his relatives have travelled from Chandigarh to Delhi to be with him. "My aunt had managed to speak to my father from Allahabad and all that he said was that he was okay," Gaganjit had told this correspondent minutes before the Sealdah Rajdhani Express arrived at the station.

But not everyone's so lucky. Dhiraj, a native of Haryana, has no news about his friends.

"My friends -- Deepak, Pooja, Dharmendra, Preeti, Sunny and Vicky -- were on the train. I have just been told that two of them figure in the list of dead," Dhiraj says. Just minutes back he had threatened to break the camera of a woman photographer when she tried to click him.

"What do you think is happening here? Just get out of here before I break your camera," he had screamed.

Divisional Railways Manager (New Delhi) Vinay Aggarwal is also upset with media teams for making it difficult for doctors to attend to the injured. "I wish you people realise that more then your photographs what they need is medical attention," he says.

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