Those are the sentiments of the locals of this border town too who are happy to get some fame instead of the tag of notoriety that Gede has earned over the years as the point of cross-border smuggling. The international border between Indian and Bangladesh is just about a kilometre away and the locals look forward to the day when the Maitree Express will bridge this barrier. For them, the train will be a harbinger of, what the elders in the village fondly refer to as “those days”.

For octogenarian Rama Prasad Bhowmik, a resident of Kolkata, the mention of the Indo-Bangla train evokes fond memories. Bhowmik, who once lived in Faridpur district in what is now Bangladesh, spent his student days in Kolkata’s Vidyasagar College from 1944 to 1946. He travelled regularly between Sealdah and Rajbari (now in Bangladesh) in what used to be called the Chittagong Express.

“In those pre-independence period, I remember the delicious food that was on offer at the Sohrabji Rustamji’s restaurant at Poradah (now in Bangladesh). It all cost Rs 1.75 for a fabulous meal of steaming hot rice, dal and fish curry,” recalls Bhowmik. “I still remember the bogies of the Bengal-Assam Railways, used to be a flaming brick red.”

THE residents of Gede distinctly remember the day when the train service was suspended in 1965. “I was barely 10 and I was out playing with the boys of the neighbourhood. The lalgari (a red rake that used to go from Sealdah to Dacca) and the sabujgari (a green rake that used to come from Dacca to Sealdah) used to have a crossing at this border station late in the afternoon. But that day the lalgari chugged through the border but the green one did not arrive. We were curious, waiting for the green one to arrive. It used to signal the end of our day’s play in the open field, close to the station, when we headed back home. That day was different and the village elders came and prodded us back home, saying that the green rake would never arrive again. That was the last time we heard the grating sound of the trains,” says Sunil Kishore Ghosh, who now runs a grocery shop near the station premises.

... contd.