My recent visit to India was exhilarating and entertaining and had flown by very fast. It was full of fun and frolics. As they say no fun is full without a tragedy. The tragedy was the demise of one of my cousins. She was too young to die. This one was a big hiccup to live with all through the wedding ceremony.
Ammulu, she was just 18 years old and had been married for four months (lets talk about early marriages in another writing). One fine morning she met with an unceremonious accident, a bright sun shine brought darkness in her life and eventually our lives. She had been living with her husband in Pune for two months, where she used to assist him in his business. On that day, they were waiting at the railway station to catch a train to get to work. They started to walk to aerobridge to get to the other side of the platform as they realized change in platform numbers. While in a hurry to catch the train she didn’t realize the speed of oncoming superfast train which passed by her creating a force which pushed her into the air making her to fly and a take a leap of 10-15Ft, before hitting the a pile of unused gravel. The moment she hit the rocks her head got split open and blood rushed out and she died on her way to hospital.
This is not new to railway department in India. On average, every year 4000 people die on the tracks of Mumbai railway only. These deaths comprise of suicides, homicides, accidents like electrocuted by overhead power lines or killed as they lean on one foot in a jam-packed carriage. Every day six million people commute on Mumbai railway and amazingly at peak hours they carry 550 people in each carriage of capacity 200. Getting back home in one piece is always a luck factor. People hang from the coaches or sit on the top of the roofs just to get to home. In the process, some people fall to death and some people dragged under the wheels from the platform in the tussle to get in. It’s like a struggle for existence everyday.
As I dug deep into details, I realized that railway department allocates a small percentage of its annual budget for these deaths on the tracks by spending money on the white blankets. Every station has a stock of white blankets to cover the corpse, but not to control the deaths. Instead what I suggest is, to form a small group of professionals to come up with a method with which can lower the number of deaths. Every problem has a solution, it just needs to be addressed and investigated thoroughly.
4000 people on average every year and on the top it just the number of deaths in Mumbai, imagine the number all over India. The number is almost equal to the deaths in WTC tragedy. And amazingly this is not the result of any terrorist attack.
Anyway, my cousin, who was innocent and young and who crossed the village border for first time had never come back in one piece. Like her, hundreds of the innocent/ignorant people travel across the city just to end up falling prey to these unremarkable lapses. The only remedy to these mishaps is when government comes up with a method with which a naïve can gain knowledge of these common, typical catastrophes. Of course this is all possible if we are ready to lend a helping hand.
Ammulu, she was just 18 years old and had been married for four months (lets talk about early marriages in another writing). One fine morning she met with an unceremonious accident, a bright sun shine brought darkness in her life and eventually our lives. She had been living with her husband in Pune for two months, where she used to assist him in his business. On that day, they were waiting at the railway station to catch a train to get to work. They started to walk to aerobridge to get to the other side of the platform as they realized change in platform numbers. While in a hurry to catch the train she didn’t realize the speed of oncoming superfast train which passed by her creating a force which pushed her into the air making her to fly and a take a leap of 10-15Ft, before hitting the a pile of unused gravel. The moment she hit the rocks her head got split open and blood rushed out and she died on her way to hospital.
This is not new to railway department in India. On average, every year 4000 people die on the tracks of Mumbai railway only. These deaths comprise of suicides, homicides, accidents like electrocuted by overhead power lines or killed as they lean on one foot in a jam-packed carriage. Every day six million people commute on Mumbai railway and amazingly at peak hours they carry 550 people in each carriage of capacity 200. Getting back home in one piece is always a luck factor. People hang from the coaches or sit on the top of the roofs just to get to home. In the process, some people fall to death and some people dragged under the wheels from the platform in the tussle to get in. It’s like a struggle for existence everyday.
As I dug deep into details, I realized that railway department allocates a small percentage of its annual budget for these deaths on the tracks by spending money on the white blankets. Every station has a stock of white blankets to cover the corpse, but not to control the deaths. Instead what I suggest is, to form a small group of professionals to come up with a method with which can lower the number of deaths. Every problem has a solution, it just needs to be addressed and investigated thoroughly.
4000 people on average every year and on the top it just the number of deaths in Mumbai, imagine the number all over India. The number is almost equal to the deaths in WTC tragedy. And amazingly this is not the result of any terrorist attack.
Anyway, my cousin, who was innocent and young and who crossed the village border for first time had never come back in one piece. Like her, hundreds of the innocent/ignorant people travel across the city just to end up falling prey to these unremarkable lapses. The only remedy to these mishaps is when government comes up with a method with which a naïve can gain knowledge of these common, typical catastrophes. Of course this is all possible if we are ready to lend a helping hand.
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