IT STARTED like a day just as any other. I was cooking a few things to freeze for I had experienced a very bad situation the week before — two families arrived at dinnertime and trying to serve something presentable to them had not allowed me to entertain them as I wanted to.
Our maid, Rashida, was busy with the weekly washing. After chopping ingredients for cooking; I always depend on maids to cut the onions and the garlic. We were all in a rush to finish our chores before attending a mehndi programme in the evening. My mother had already gone there beforehand.
The doorbell rang, and I froze at the thought of receiving guests amid all this hullabaloo. But it was someone calling for Rashida, my brother informed me. I breathed a sigh of relief.
Rashida left the washing and went to the door. She is in her mid-40s, has one son and three daughters. The son works on daily wages in the village and cannot make enough to make both ends meet. Realizing this, Rashida left the village to wok as household help in the city. The job has not only enabled her family to survive, but also to make extra money to save for her daughters’ marriages. She had married off two of them and is now saving for the last one.
Amid these thoughts, I suddenly felt someone entering the kitchen. Turning round, I found Rashida standing in the doorway, her face pale and tears in her eyes.
“What happened,” I asked her.
My neighbour’s maid who had followed Rashida into the kitchen said, “Bibiji, there had been a bus accident near our village at the railway crossing and her son is among the victims. Her brother-in-law has come to take her home.”
I was left aghast. Her husband had died in an accident near her village at the same railway crossing while going to work, and now her son! It can’t be. She had brought up her son by working in people’s homes and educated him enough for him to become a mechanic.
I wanted to say something nice to her, give her some hope, but there were no words. Her brother-in-law was waiting impatiently for her to leave with him as early as possible.
They left, leaving me totally disoriented and uninterested in completing the chores at hand. What a life! Rashida had planning to wear one of my dresses in the evening for the mehndi, and now she may be sitting beside her wounded son in a hospital or....
I later read in a newspaper that 28 people died on the spot when a Sargodha-bound train smashed into a bus at an unmanned level crossing near Malikwal. Why had the gatekeeper not closed the gate?
Tracing the number of accidents caused by unmanned railway crossing gates, I was surprised by the data. Three years ago, six school children and a driver were killed when a train hit their pickup at an unmanned crossing near Sargodha. On May 2000, a passenger train collided with a trailer at yet another unmanned crossing, killing a boy. In July the same year, one person was killed and four other were injured when a train rammed into a stationary truck near Sahiwal. In 2001, two people were killed and 11 injured when a Sialkot-bound train collided with an NLC trailer near Sialkot.
How can the authorities can sit idle after so many accidents at crossings? What are they waiting for? Is the incident of 28 lives lost not enough for them? Do they demand a bigger sacrifice to shake them out of their stupor and slumber?
I was told that the Pakistan Railways had been paid Rs1.9 million (Rs1.1 million short of the required cost) to introduce a manned level crossing at Malikwal. The departments concerned had been sent many reminders for the payment of the balance, but to no avail. The gate has remain unmanned.
The two governments department — NHA and Pakistan Railways — have operational problems, but isn’t human life much more precious than routine bottlenecks, and which should be resolved at the earliest? In the meantime, unmanned railway crossings continue to pose as a threat to human life with nothing being done in this regard. Without a doubt, not even a single person from both the concerned departments feels the pain the 28 families will go through for the rest of their lives just because these departments have failed to resolve a trivial financial issue among themselves.
IT STARTED like a day just as any other. I was cooking a few things to freeze for I had experienced a very bad situation the week before — two families arrived at dinnertime and trying to serve something presentable to them had not allowed me to entertain them as I wanted to.
