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SAM CLUB DAY ‘16

The stalemate con nued for three days. Some staff, especially supervisors, went underground, as they were
more vulnerable to persuasion by the management, but most of them reportedly returned to their homes at
night to slip away again next morning. Meanwhile, personnel of Territorial Army were posted at sensi ve
loca ons around the shed and the traffic yard, not so much to operate any train services, but to see no
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untoward incident takes place. On the 12 morning Mr. Sachdeva, the then DS of Danapur Division, had a closed
door mee ng of all branch officers and unit heads at Area Manager's office to discuss strategies for mee ng the
strike situa on. Various sugges ons were put forward. On my part, I offered to raid the diesel shed colony in the

wee hours of the morning to round up some supervisors and get them into the shed to start some ac vi es.
Considering the charged atmosphere, the DS advised taking some security personnel with me. I chose to
disregard the advice as involving men in uniform in such an opera on could vi ate the atmosphere further, and
possibly invite charges of excesses on the part of the security men. 'loyalists' with bangles.

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And so it was that about 4:30 hours of 13 morning accompanied just by the Inspector Sohan Singh I visited
about two dozen houses of supervisors in the diesel colony, and brought out the surprised men from their
homes and to the diesel shed. There was not much protest. In fact, some of them appeared relieved at this
development, as they were possibly feeling uneasy with this stand-off.

Later in the morning, I learnt that some ladies of the diesel colony, assuming that their men folk were being
forcibly confined to shed, and possibly being harassed, marched out in a procession to my house intending to
gherao my family and demand of release of their men. My family being away, the agitated ladies were soon
brought to the shed to show that their men were happily si ng around, sipping tea and planning the next move
to set the shed on the course of normalcy, with the limited staff then available.

Thus the diesel shed became the first units to break the deadlock, and catalyzed similar ”back to work” process
in other units at Mughalsarai complex, which is a key opera onal area on the Indian Railways. Two or three days
later the strike was formally called off.

A erwards, in a get-together of diesel officers and supervisors at the Railway Ins tute, the la er narrated
stories and experiences as to how they would hide during the day, and return to their homes at night. There
were quite a few interes ng episodes including the one where one of our senior chargemen, a Bengali
gentleman by the name Poddar, had became so nervous and ji ery that he would jump every me he heard a
football behind him. There was much laughter and bonhomie all-round.

Ten years later, Poddar's son, Manash K. Poddar, became an SCRA of 1984 batch. I happened to have my pos ng
at Jamalpur as ACME (W) then. Mee ng Manash brought back memories of those tumultuous days in vivid
detail.

And as I write this piece, I am assailed by so many other memories of my service days, but more about them
later, perhaps.

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