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A
monsoon romance on wheels
British film-maker
Gerry Troyna recently premiered his latest docu-feature ‘Monsoon
Railway’ in Kolkata. TWF correspondent Aparajita Gupta
talks to the man through whose private eyes life on rails
came to life
Three frames - a train snaking through the dreamy shadowy
tracks of Dibang Valley ensconsed in rough mountains and forests,
an express chugging out of the world’s longest railway
platform at Kharagpur and a local pouring out a swarm of people
on the populous
Howrah station – capture the human face of Indian Railway
in Gerry Troyna’s feature ‘Monsoon Railway’.
Produced for BBC and National Geographic, British filmmaker
Gerry Troyna’s documentary on Indian Railways traces
the life on wheels in the times of monsoon. The film tracks
the monsoon through the eyes of three railway workers - Steve
d'Cruz, a train guard from Kharagpur, Tapas Bagchi, a trouble-shooting
traffic inspector from Howrah; and Subhash Kumar Rai, a young
wannabe rock star and assistant driver in the wilds of Rangiya
(Assam).
“I tried to portray a human face of one of the world’s
biggest railway networks” Gerry Troyna says.
He has encapsulated three railway networks of India –
Eastern Railway, South-Eastern Railway and North Frontier
Railways in the film.
Gerry captured nature at its very extremes--- serene and
drowsy drenched in monsoon in Kharagpur and Kolkata and destructive
and enticing as Brahmaputra swelled washing away the embankments
and the tracks in its spate. And amid all this is captured
the livelihood of the people whose lives revolve round the
railways.
An outsider's eye into the film was distinct when he called
Kharagpur a piece of British history so much like an English
village; Kolkata, the old imperial capital of British Raj,
was compared to Paris only much more populous, dirty and hot
and Rangiya, Assam, a land of forest, hills, Bhrahmaputra
and freedom fighters.
The trains come to life in his film. It becomes a metaphor
for the people whose lives are so closely related to it. The
engine does not only help the locomotive to gather speed it
also brings speed in people’s lives.
Excitement lights up his face as Gerry talks about the film.
''It traces the stories of a few of the people who work for
the world's greatest railway. For the last 150 years the railways
in India has brought social and economic development in the
country and it is a railway on which the population of India--more
than a billion people--depends.”
''Indian Railways are the second biggest employer in the
world, employing one-and-a-half million people who help to
transport an estimated 11 million passengers daily. From cradle
to grave, railways cater for every facet of the lives of their
workers: housing, health-care, education, leisure, jobs for
the families of workers killed in service... and above all
it gives the workers a sense of belonging to the railway family,''
Gerry says puffing out rings of smoke akin to a steam engine
in ecstacy.
For Subhash Kumar Rai, who is an assistant driver in the
North East Frontier Railways, life on the tracks is everything.
As a young boy who dreamt to be a rock-star, understood with
time that in life one needs to be more practical and took
the job of the assistant driver to run his family. It’s
no different for Tapash Bagchi or D'Cruz who feel very much
at home with Indian Railways.
The film also portrays the day-to-day problems faced by the
commuters, like demonstrations and strikes. But that can hardly
affect the operations of the trains because there are people
in the department like Tapas Bagchi who can resolve matters
in a skill even the best negotiators would envy.
Gerry Troyna hopes that someday London Railways will emulate
its Indian counterpart. “Trains stop in London at the
fall of a leaf. Here they run despite the physical and climatic
odds. I hope the British government took over the railways
and emulate India,” Gerry says, taking a potshot at those
who only criticise the Indian Railways.
The film also features Bombaiya, a free-wheeling 11-year-old
orphan who lives on platforms, and Mukteswar, a religious
coolie.
Returning to the topic of shooting the film, Gerry says,
''Monsoon railway moves month by month through the rainy season
- following the weather, which is a destructive and creative.
Weaving it into the cycle of the characters' lives and capturing
the scope and colour of trains and scenery, the monsoon is
recorded in all its moods and glories.''
The film documents everyday life in the railways... and also
dramatic events like a large team of workers struggling day
and night to rebuild a train track that was washed away by
flash floods in Assam... or Bombaiya giving up his wandering
life and finding his way to an orphanage. “It’s
so linked--- the monsoon, the people, the tonnes of iron and
steel,” Gerry gasps with excitement.
''Monsoon railway is an Indian journey through time, space
and society aboard one of the most amazing feats of human
engineering in the world--the railways of India. It’s
the human face of the locomotive,'' he feels.
This is Troyna’s 4th film on Indian Railways. Earlier,
he has made films like, Deccan, Line of Dreams and East to
West. In fact for Deccan, which was a part of the Nat Geo’s
Great Train Journeys of the World, he got an Academy nomination.
To him Indian Railways act as the metaphor for the Indian
lives. It depicts the character, history, culture, ideology
and best and worst of Indian society. It has its own life
and nothing seems to affect it, neither the human obstruction
nor the flooded Brahmaputra.
He has shot extensively for this 90minutes film. Except the
humidity of the tropical country nothing had been of much
problem to him, he says. “I have shot for some 170 hours
for this 90 minutes film.”
It is his romance for Indian Railways that made him do so
many films on it. Troyna says that the entire crew of this
film was Indian and the background music was done by Pandit
Dinesh.
Troyna, who feels he had been an Indian in his last life,
has been a regular visitor to the country for the last three
decades and the country's railways, set up by the Britishers,
has been his first love by his own admission.
Train tracks not only shape the destination of trains, but
careers and lives. As the trains blend into the horizon the
lilting tunes of “kalo kalo megher akash bhalo lage ogo
sudhi” fill the ambience in an aura of monsoon.
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