Corona or Covid 19, I think no
one would have heard of term ever but will remember it till their life time
now, thanks to the current pandemic situation globally due to this virus.
Thousands of people have lost their lives globally and the numbers are just increasing
daily. I just hope together we are able to defeat this virus globally by being
self-quarantined.
During the initial stages of this
outbreak I was at my hometown, that time I wasn’t much aware of the situation
because numbers of cases were negligible and situation was under control then.
Since my work at home town was not completed I decided to extend my stay by 5
more days. Those 5 five days were very crucial as by then Corona was termed as
pandemic by WHO and travel restriction were enforced by the government.
Due to some unavoidable
circumstances, I had to travel back to Bengaluru and for the first time I was
in the dilemma, whether to travel or not? The situation was more intriguing on
the day of travel, till I reached station, I was just waiting for a reason to
cancel my travel.
But the moment I reached station,
I felt I was in safe hands, they was Covid 19 medical desk at the entrance of
station and place was being cleaned by disinfected at regular interval and
safety instructions were being announced through speakers. The station had
deserted look with bare minimum passengers at the platform and all of them were
either masked or had covered their face with handkerchief, first soothing
experience.
After sometime train arrived and I
board it, to my utter surprise there were hardly any passengers in the coach, including
me 10 passengers I believe. I went to my berth and settled my luggage, coach
was little different today, as curtains and blankets were removed from AC
coaches. All I was offered was a pair of bed sheet and pillow but the temperate
was moderated, so it didn’t bother me, so it took some time to get the feel of
AC.
I realized that janitor of the coach
was making periodic rounds of coach at regular interval, initially it was scary
initially but later I got used to it. Then the ticket checker came asked my seat
number and glanced over my Id card and went back. He was in mask and gloves, I
have never seen them with these additional gears as they are mostly in black
coat with white trouser, so was little surprised.
By 8 pm onwards rounds of janitor
was intensified and they were accompanied by ticket checkers as I could hear their
footsteps till 12.00 am, after that I slept. Morning when I woke up I realized that the
whole drill of periodic rounds by janitor and ticket collector was done to
safeguard our interest as we passenger were less in number and were scattered
in our seating arrangements. So staffs of Indian Railways made regular rounds, in
order to prevent us from any towards incident as we were prone to them in this
Corona time.
I would like to my express my
heart felt gratitude to all staffs of Indian Railways for thinking so much
about us passenger even in this pandemic situation. Thank you and keep up the
good work
