Azadi Express

When I heard of the “Azadi Express” stationed at the cantonment railway station, I could imagine lots of families with kids. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine so many people my age to be present there! Honestly, I myself wasn’t very keen on visiting. I was pulled along by a friend, and boy am I glad that I went! A couple of steps into the first compartment, one is plunged into the pre independence era, where the atrocities committed on the Indians by the British is shown through sketches, pictures and text written in English, Hindi, and more interestingly, in the regional language Kannada. The successive bogies took me through the revolts, and struggle for independence and then the post independence growth of India.

All that said, I must confess, I didn’t expect so much youth to turn up! Many engineering students were strolling around, keenly reading about our independence struggle. When questioned what it was about the Azadi Express was it that drew them, pat came the reply, “Just the concept!” from Sindhu, a 4th year Telecom student. There were people of all age groups to be seen, and if the word of the volunteers is to be believed, more than 6000 people have visited in 24 hours! That’s a large number considering that it’s a weekday!

One of the visitors was 38 year old house wife Sarada, with her two lovely daughters Vasudha and Vaishnavi, 14 and 10 years old. The kids had pulled the mom along to see their history text books brought to life. When asked what the Republic Day signifies, Vasudha promptly replied while her mom stammered! This is the case with most who “grow out” of the school phase. A quick check revealed that 7 out of 10 young college going students did not know the significance of the Republic Day! Mr.Srinivas Murthy, a retired government official felt otherwise. He felt that there’s a lot of potential in the youth of today, and that while the youth may project an idea of reckless irresponsibility, they are infact very bright and hardworking. “The only thing we need to do is to make the youth realize that working for the country is as important as working for oneself and making money. Our freedom fighters are the best examples to this cause”, he felt.

While many strolled through slowly through the bogies, it was hard to ignore a few keenly studying every single detail, with a book in hand, making notes. One such group, was a bunch of men aspiring to be sub-inspectors. They are writing the PSI exam, which is scheduled on 2nd Feb. When I joked if they were making notes in preparation for the exam, R.Ramachandra,32, said that it was important to know as much as possible about the country’s past to take it into the future. Now there’s the kind of men we need in the Police Department!

In all this, it was difficult to ignore the young men and women in florescent jackets standing by as security. All these bright souls are recruited by the Nehru Yuvaka Kendra, where they work as volunteers. Every state has a different set of volunteers who are from that state, so that they can be of assistance to the general public.

The Azadi Express will travel, in all 70 stations, and will be managed by more than 300 volunteers. Most of these volunteers are young aspiring students studying basic sciences. They are very happy with the response of the public to this concept, but many felt that the advertisement could have been better and more efficient. Prabhu.V, a Bsc student, one of the volunteers said that contrary to general belief, a lot of young crowd was flowing in. Apart from the hoards of school children, there are also a lot of college-going students visiting the train. But he felt that not many IT professionals have visited yet. Let’s hope our techies find time to make it during the weekend, because this train definitely worth it!