The first train, a smoke puffing monster, ran in India,
Moving like a millipede, cautious, yet, no phobia;
As though well-chosen astronauts, lucky four guests traveled,
In cozy, cool, curtained compartments cautiously castled…

Soon, trains – thought of as luxury, prestige, status, and style –
Turned to be thrift trips that take travelers so long a mile,
A beggar could move in it singing, dancing, and begging;
Clowns, jugglers, and vendors easily could make their living…

The Indian trains and rails have long-lasting histories,
Mass accidents, like puzzles, have remained great mysteries;
Derailments, like earthquakes, shake and take the trivial tracks,
Direct collisions, like wild-bore hits, tricked by timely cracks…

Dangers, unintended, like calamities, die away,
Traumas of accidents, into normalcy, bloom someday;
Intentional human errors do corrode moral sense,
Like Abel, they knock the closed castles of human conscience…

A great train-trauma the times of nation never forgets,
Like horrible nightmares, innocent hearts got terrorized;
Is the partition-time human life slaughter, like cattle,
Sending them in blood pools by trains, like dead in the battle…

Then the religious bitterness in the form of riot,
Murdering, blazing – young, old, women and children – quiet;
Singing, dancing – like the god of death – around dead bodies,
Joyous, on the death of humanity, like dry poppies…

Common human beings here, like animals, do not care,
Many trains – as late as twelve hours, daily – all through the year;
Deaths and murders – like sunrise and set – if trains often bear,
Doesn’t the goal of the invention of trains seem sheer sneer?