Years ago I was involved in a train accident, while travelling from Hyderabad to Naraspur for the shooting of ‘Prema katha’, which resulted in around 17 deaths. It was one of the most dramatic, comic and tragic experiences of my life.

I was sleeping on the upper berth in a First Class cabin, when I suddenly heard a huge rattling sound, and at the same time a moaning sound started coming from a person sleeping in the lower berth steadily rising in its volume. My first thought was that the train is off the track and I felt it will crash when the moaning below will reach its crescendo (I have this disease of constantly living in a state of filmdom irrespective of the situation). Both the rattling and the moaning stopped suddenly and there was complete silence. It was pitch dark and for a few seconds I thought I must have been dreaming.

Then I tried to get up and I couldn’t as my head was being pressed against the wall of the coach. I couldn’t figure out why, for a while, till I realized that coach was on its side inclined at about 30 degrees. With great difficulty I managed to get down and started searching for my shoes. As I wore them I started hearing faint whispers of people asking each other whether they were alright. The volume at which they were talking almost made me feel that they were scared to disturb the situation.

Slowly I managed to reach the coach door. There was a very faint moon light outside. As I stepped out my shoe went into the slush of paddy field. My first thought was “Yuck, my shoes are screwed.” I bought this new pair of shoes just the previous day. Once I got over the tragedy of my shoes I looked around to see a couple of coaches behind lying on their side and people slowly crawling out through the connecting doors of the coaches which broke in the accident. I went walking to the track which was about 50feet from the train as it was dry there. By that time people were coming out.

The initial reports were that nobody was killed or hurt. Now where these people got these reports from is anybody’s guess. One guy got a bed sheet and a pillow from inside the train, put it on the tracks and instructed people around to wake him up when the rescue train arrives.

As I looked around there was a mixture of shouts, sounds of people crying and strangely laughter too. Quite a bit of my unit was in the S5 coach which was about 4 coaches down. So I started walking towards it when a little ahead I saw a man with a severed leg on the grass. That’s when I came to know that the ‘all are well’ news were false. As I went further I saw the coach just before S5 so mangled and I could hear a man moaning in pain asking for water from inside. I couldn’t see the inside through the window in the darkness but I could make out that he was somehow trapped. A guy walked up to the window with a water bottle to hand it through the window when somebody shouted at him not to give the water. The water guy turned to the shouting guy to ask him why and the shouting guy gave his gyan on why an injured man should not be given water. The water guy had a sudden desire to be educated more on the subject. So both the shouting guy and the water guy went into an educational tour of the dangers of giving water to injured people. The shouting guy suddenly developed the personality of a all knowing teacher and the water guy of that of a wide-eyed pupil, and this scene was happening with the background score of the man inside the train moaning in pain and begging for water.

“Sir, are you fine?” someone shouted from the back and I turned to see E.Nivas who was my assistant at that time. He was in S5 coach. I asked him what about the rest of the crew. He said “mostly fine but Vidya is out”. I knew even when he said it what he meant, but I still thought it was strange to use a terminology of cricket to describe a known person’s death in a situation like that. Vidya was a camera assistant who joined my unit recommended by my cousin who was very close to his family. Niwas told me that it took him 45 minutes to come out of the coach. He was sleeping in the lower berth and after the accident he tried to move Vidya and he couldn’t and then he realized he was dead.

I took out my cell phone which was working and called up my cousin in Mumbai. It was about 4am. After I told him Vidya is dead, my cousin’s sleepy voiced first question was “are you sure?” I stopped short because I realized that I was just conveying what Niwas told me and I asked Niwas “are you sure?” Niwas also got into doubt and said that “he was not moving, for sure” and I said “then maybe he was just unconscious”. This put Niwas in further doubt, so both me and Niwas trudged through the slush to go to S5 coach which was lying on a 45 degrees incline. We went under it and Niwas started shouting Vidya’s name through the grilled window and I heard a moan. I turned sharply to Niwas and said “he’s alive” to which Niwas said “that’s not Vidya, it’s Murthy”. “Who is Murthy” I asked him and Niwas said he was just a friend they made in the coach the previous night and he was sleeping in the middle berth right below Vidya, and who also was apparently trapped.

Now Niwas started shouting at Murthy to try and nudge Vidya above him to see if he was alive. Murthy’s returning moans from the darkness became a character and I was instructing my directions to Niwas in soft whispers almost feeling guilty about using this new character Murthy as a medium to find out Vidya’s state. So the conversation went 3-ways between my whispers translated to Niwas’s shouts to Murthy’s groans and moans and all of us listening to Vidya’s silence.

Suddenly a cheerful voice from behind said “Varma saab you are here?” I turned around to see a man with a group of people walking towards me. I couldn’t recognise him. He realized that and introduced himself as a Railway Officer who I met in the shooting of the climax of “Kshana Kshanam”. He had come on the rescue train and went about introducing his colleagues “We have all come here to do the needful”, “He is Station Supervisor Ramchandran”, “He is my close friend Venkateshwarlu” etc etc. Then he asked me “Can we do anything for you?” I said “Sir there’s a unit member of mine called Vidya who is trapped inside this coach. Can you help in finding out his state?” To which he said “Yes, yes I will do the needful.” Suddenly a voice from behind said “Are you suspecting any sabotage?” We turned around to see a reporter with a Dictaphone. Suddenly the Officer became very authoritative and told him “First we have to attend to the needful. But any information you should only ask me. My name is Rao.” I could clearly see that Mr.Needful wants to see his name in the paper the next day.

To be continued...

By Ram Gopal Varma