I Love Srirangam (Railway Station) During the Day, and at Night!

 

I Love Srirangam (Railway Station) During the Day, and at Night!

I live in Srirangam, a suburb of the city of Tiruchirappalli. There was a time, a few years ago, I made a pilgrimage to the station (I live within about 150 meters of its entrance) in the evenings of off days (mainly the weekend and other holidays) and walk on the clean platforms end to end, about 550 m. Six or eight lengths made a pleasant, unhindered, brisk walk of about three to five kilometres. I always paid the platform ticket (Rs. 10/- then), whereas some oldies who could have easily afforded the platform ticket stinted on even that minimal expense, only to sit on the seats provided for passengers, and talk about what−corruption! Go figure.

Then, some idiot had to write to the authorities of Southern Railway, if not exclusively about this station, Srirangam, but about a number of stations up and down the network. As a result, SR put a ban on people using the platform for anything other than getting on and off a train. My walk on the platforms came to a shuddering halt.

Indian Railways, to its credit made a special effort to modernize−passenger amenities, improvement of parking and circulating areas, improvement of the station approach road(s), enhanced station building facade etc.−under its Amrit Bharat Station Scheme (ABSS) and Srirangam Railway Station, a centre of religious tourism (even from as far away as Saurashtra, most of them on the way to Rameswaram and Kanyakumari) was a designated beneficiary of this scheme. The scheme is completed. To make it better still, a separate project for passenger lifts is gaining pace.

In this post, I am focusing on the “enhanced station building facade”. Above are two photographs I have taken of the frontispiece, two during daylight hours. Additional two under the lights are given later.

When I was working in a civil engineering consulting company that also had a good-size architecture division, for many proposals of buildings, metro stations, (we even did one for New Delhi Railway Station) we were asked to take the clients in a 3D walk-through. We prepared a detailed tour and could spot aesthetic blind spots that we corrected.

Please read the large size lettering that states the name of the suburb: Srirangam. There is something else ahead of the name, what is that? “I Love”. The “Love” to me is obfuscated severely for obvious reasons, except to a teenager!

It proclaims−where the “It” can mean only the station as no other authorship is indicated−that “This station loves Srirangam”, quite narcissitic!  Any sentiment on a T-shirt implicitly identifies the wearer as the subject or the object. Had the consultant hired by the railways shown a walk-through in the daytime, the clients could have noticed that the colours of the letters do not stand out.

It is hard to read the “I”, blue, quite dark, on a dark background, in the left photograph, and only a little more visible in the right photo. What I am saying, in brief is someone who approved the colour scheme was not an aesthete.

Look at the lighting in the front porch, which silhouettes the name, the bottom half of the name in a shadow, in the night!

 The lighting designer should have back lit each of the letters with an individual luminaire from the pedestal level to give each letter as a prominent shadow. Or, she could have given it from the front, in precisely the same manner, but highlighting the letters in bright light.

I am a civil engineer and I lack the sensitivities of an aesthete. Yet, I could see something as not aesthetic. Isn’t that a credit to me?

I like Srirangam. It is not precisely what I wanted to retire to. Yet, it satisfies many of my needs and some wants too. There are calm streets that carry a small town atmosphere. The marketplace is as raucous as it can be in any big urban centre. At some places, quite far away from the temple, there are gated communities! How about that!

Srirangam is a mish-mash with the past trying to live with the present, and awaiting a dreaded future. Religion anchors it, in space and time. I wish someone loosened these fetters.

Srirangam falls between the two stools – a city and a town. The traffic indiscipline reminds you of a large urban space. The vehicle population is more severely skewed towards two-wheelers vis-a-vis four wheelers. Public facilities, such as garbage pick-up are OK, as a town.

If it ever enlarged into an urban space, it would suffer from the urban debilitations. It is not so bad, on an average, except for the modernized/upgraded railway station. More thought should have gone into its planning and execution.

Que sera sera. 

Raghuram Ekambaram