The honeymooners who organised a train that helped others get home too

When a close friend of mine had a quiet wedding in Manipur on March 18, it seemed a risk-free affair. The coronavirus hadn’t yet travelled to the Northeast. But when she revealed that they had decided on a honeymoon in Goa, I wondered if the newly-weds were pushing their luck.
 

A month later, we chatted about our lockdowned lives. She told me that she spent her days eating, sleeping, watching Netflix, occasionally cooking and walking on the beach.
 

I listened enviously, till it suddenly struck me that my friend Diana Chabungbam and her husband K Bikram Singh (names changed) were still in Goa! It had sounded dreamy to me, but for them it was like an act in an absurdist play.
 

They were staying near Baga in North Goa. They had arrived on March 20 and were to return on March 24. Lockdown kicked in on March 24. They were stuck. In the early days, they savoured their seafood and drinks at the resort. Then they began to tire of hotel food and cooked the odd meal themselves.
 

In the second week of May, Singh met a worker from Ukhrul, Manipur, who told him about others from the Northeast who wanted to go home. Singh got in touch with Livingstone Shaiza, the owner of Meiphung, a Northeastern restaurant in Baga. A few days later, the couple went to a Sports Authority of India hostel in Mapusa. The Goa government had made it a temporary shelter for Northeastern workers who had lost jobs, on the urging of the deputy collector of Bardez, Mamu Hage, a young IAS officer who happened to be from Arunachal Pradesh.
 

One Northeastern group was having discussions on going home. They wanted the Manipur government to charter flights for them. Chabungbam and Singh suggested asking for a Shramik train instead. Some 900 Manipuris wanted to sign up. But the Shramik specials were running at a capacity of 1,200 passengers. The couple urged Manipuri officials to request neighbouring states to help increase the number of passengers. It led to the addition of Arunachalis and Tripuris, pushing the figure beyond 1,100.

The train was to leave from Karmali station in North Goa on May 21. However, the night before, the boarding station was changed to Madgaon in South Goa. Passengers had to reach the station by 1 pm, three hours before departure. There they queued up to be screened and collect their tickets from a makeshift tent. The train finally left at 7.30 pm.
 

The passengers had been given vegetable pulao, khichdi, pickle and water. They were set for the night, but physical distancing was a joke to sleep on.
 

On the second day the train chugged slowly along in the heat. It remained in Maharashtra all day, and lunch was bananas and water at a nondescript station. By evening, the train ran out of water.
 

Passengers called the railways and complained to officials on WhatsApp groups. Some tweeted, tagging the rail minister. The railways responded with calls, and frequent supplies of bread and bananas. Around 300 Manipuris got on the train in Bhopal.

As the train approached the city, the passengers deployed “door watchers” to prevent unnecessary movement of people inside.

As the mercury soared, people rushed out in search of water whenever the train stopped at a platform. At one station in Madhya Pradesh, Singh bought two cartons of water bottles. “The weather was unbearable. We would soak cotton towels in water and wrap them around our bodies,” says Chabungbam.
 

By the fourth day, with the train still in MP, the people were angry, restless and sad. Texting me, Chabungbam confessed that until the previous day she had been critical of those returning to Manipur and testing positive for Covid-19. “Now I am in their place and realise it’s so easy to get infected.”
 

Early the next morning, the passengers woke to a hail of stones. They scrambled to pull down the shutters and bolt the doors but the windowpanes had been broken by angry migrants who couldn’t get on the train. Chabungbam escaped a head injury but Singh suffered bruises on the chest. But she felt sorry for the migrants. “They must have been very frustrated, walking to their villages without any buses or trains,” she thought.
 

Ten minutes later, the train pulled into Katihar, Bihar. The passengers had complained the previous night, and a divisional magistrate was responsive.
 

“At Katihar, it felt like VIP treatment. Cleaning staff came and filled water in the tanks and made the toilets usable again,” says Chabungbam.
 

The food improved with the addition of sweets and snacks and the weather turned pleasant as the train entered West Bengal. Late evening on May 25, those headed for Arunachal Pradesh got off at Guwahati. The next afternoon, train number 01650 finally reached Jiribam in Manipur, more than two days behind schedule.
 

After a screening and a familiar lunch, the couple boarded a packed bus in the evening. It takes roughly eight hours from Jiribam to Imphal. But first there was a landslide to reckon with. They reached a screening centre at 8 am and their paid quarantine facility at 3 pm on May 27.
 

A week later, they both tested negative. “The best test result I have ever had,” Chabungbam told a friend. She says they can now go home. But to ensure their families’ safety, they are willing to extend their “honeymoon” by another week inside a hotel room.