We were a bunch of civil engineers in a van, age varying between 25 years and 65, returning from a field inspection trip. It was quite late at night, and we were all tired, but none was asleep.
Returning from Vaitheeswaran Koil, we neared Thanjavur
and I looked out in the dark (not quite dark as street lamps did flash by) and
realized that we are driving on an upslope. It could be a flyover along
an arterial road crossing another heavily trafficked road underneath. Or, it
could be an ROB (Road Overbridge) going over a railway line.
As the van reached the top of the upslope, I noticed
that the safety barriers became taller suddenly. Yeah, a teaching moment I
thought!
I blurted out to a young engineer that we are crossing
a railway line. I got an earful for that from the other colleagues, many of
whom live in Thanjavur. They said, in unison, “No. It cannot be; look that
building out there, that is the railway station and it is parallel to the road,”
or something to that effect.
I did not recognize my standing in that group, merely a
Visiting Staff who is tolerated. I tried telling them that the space above the
railway line’s Right of Way (RoW) belongs to Indian Railways and any
construction in that space has got to be approved by the designated competent
authority in IR. This was pooh-poohed by the others as irrelevant.
I did not give up. I explained that IR does not want
its operations stopped by someone falling off from the road above, and on to
the tracks. Hence, the barriers were taken up to a level deemed tall enough to
deter suicidal efforts. Perhaps the rest were tired, or for any other reason, the
conversation stopped right there. There was a sense of “mission aborted” in my
mind.
There has to be a railway line running below and
across that RoB, I repeated to myself. I asked a close friend of mine who lives
in Thanjavur to go and check my late evening conjecture. He did and told me it
was correct.
I felt a moment of pride that I recognized something
that other professionals, some of them are teachers of some standing, not only
not recognized but argued against. Then, my euphoria melted and a sense of doom
occupied my mindscape – here is something teachers can casually throw as a factotum
– how to recognize an RoB while driving on it - in class (and there are courses
on railway, including alignments, in the curriculum) and this opportunity to
teach is being wasted.
It is dark, or I am blind, so leave it, goes the
thought of resignation. But, I wanted to look through the darkness.
I requested my friend to capture some image from the
RoB (looking down) that would make clear that there is a railway line beneath
and the barriers are indeed taller as the road crosses the railway’s RoW.
The photographs below are good enough to validate what I said above. In the top right-hand corner of the photo, you do see two levels of
the barrier. Of course, you see the tracks below. Put two and two together …
Are our teachers trained to do this? I don’t know.
There is a lot of discussion about the need to
introduce practical training in our engineering curriculum. While I am OK with
it, I also argue that practical training, at least of thoughts (yes, thoughts
too are practical!) and in bits and pieces, must be ground-up. It cannot be top-down,
formulaic and dominated by metrics.
Merely conjecturing, in the dark, about what could
exist in that darkness, is an element of practical training. Then, curiosity
takes over, and one does learn, and continue on the path of learning.
This is not merely a thought-for-today, but one that
had gestated for nearly seven years in my mind, but will not spread beyond the window of
my blogpost.
I feel sad.
Raghuram Ekambaram
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