“Let us have tea,” he told me, and walked into a tea stall without giving me the chance to say no.
Barely five minutes had passed since I met him. To say he met me would be more appropriate, as he struck up a conversation when I was wandering on the platform and observing the vicinity. I do not drink tea but still followed him into the shop as he said he works for the railway.
Such a person, I thought, could give me clues that would help me find the answer to my question. For nearly a month, I had been contemplating who boards an intercity train that starts from a small, rural railway station at 2am. I had naively assumed no such train in Bangladesh begins its journey between midnight and 6am, until I came to know about Jamuna Express.
This train runs every day between Dhaka and the Tarakandi station in Jamalpur, a north-central district on the bank of the Jamuna River. By the time I arrived at the station, it was already past midnight. Adjusting the balaclava to keep only my eyes bare, I prepared for a long wait on a cold December night.
“I guess a variety of passengers take this train at this hour – job holders, traders, and those having day-to-day affairs in various districts of the Mymensingh division,” the bearded railway worker replied when I enquired about the Jamuna Express passengers’ characteristics.
Sipping tea from the cup and puffing on a cigarette, he further said there might also be passengers who would catch a bus or another train from Dhaka in the morning to travel elsewhere, thus needing to board this train in the middle of the night. At this stage, he gave me his name – Sujan. I covered my cup with both hands so as not to let him see that it was still almost full while his one was about to be empty.
The shop owner, with one of his hands amputated, was adeptly making tea for other customers sitting on plastic chairs scattered outside. The way he talked to Sujan indicated they already knew each other. Some folks were watching the news on the TV placed on a plank in a corner.
“If you want to ride this train, you have to leave for the Tarakandi station probably at or after midnight, depending on where you live. International flight departures between midnight and 6am are common, but this is the only Bangladeshi intercity train that starts rolling in total darkness. It is the day’s first train,” Sujan kept on explaining to satisfy my curiosity.
“So, we can call it the Dark Night Express?” I suggested. He slightly nodded but maintained nonchalance in his face, as if it did not matter if the Dark Night Express was a misnomer. Our conversation ended abruptly when one of his co-workers requested his presence on the platform.
My hands felt the cool winter breeze as I watched the short range of activities at the station. A female artist was rendering a folk song on TV at the tea stall right next to the station building, drawing a small crowd. Boys in groups walked back and forth on the platform, chatting, laughing, and occasionally talking loudly.
In the station master's room were several people talking to the official who sat at the computer desk. Around the corner was the ticket counter where two to three men stood, leaving me wondering whether they would buy physical tickets. Outside the counter, on the dirty floor, slept two persons, their bodies enveloped in blankets and the air filled with the stench of urine from the adjacent toilet.
Lights of various intensities coming from different directions blended into the mist and turned the station into an artwork of chiaroscuro. Behind the station appeared banana and other trees as well as a few tin-roofed houses, with faint lights coming through some of the windows. The locomotive’s roar, which cut through the silence of the night, could be heard from yards away.
Set up in 1991, Jamuna Fertiliser Company has helped put Tarakandi on the map, but the area’s rail tracks tell stories dating back to colonial times. The red-brick station building, typical of the British era, was built during the Mymensingh-Jagannathganj line’s construction in 1898–99. The now defunct Jagannathganj Ghat station on the Jamuna bank had ferry services between the eastern and western districts of present-day Bangladesh.
Jute grew galore in the alluvial land of flood-prone Jamalpur, which was named after Shah Jamal who came from Yemen to preach Islam during the reign of Mughal emperor Akbar. Rail lines were built to facilitate the cash crop’s transportation to Dhaka and the inland port of Narayanganj, from where it was shipped to Kolkata. Jamalpur’s Sarishabari upazila, where the Tarakandi station is located, was a flourishing jute trade hub, earning as much prominence as Narayanganj, known as the Dundee of Bangladesh.
That glory is now lost because of the closure of jute mills one after another, rendering thousands of workers unemployed and forcing many to change professions. Not far from the Sarishabari station are Alhaj Jute Mills and ARA Jute Mills, both closed over the last decade. But mustard, another major crop of Sarishabari, still retains its glory, with many people visiting the huge swathes of yellow mustard fields in winter to soak in the mesmerising beauty.
“There are three Dhaka-bound trains from Tarakandi every day. Jamalpur Express and Aghnibina Express leave in the afternoon/evening and reach Dhaka at 10:40pm at the earliest. If you want to be in Dhaka in the daytime, Jamuna Express is your only option,” explained the man sitting next to me when I asked him why he had taken the train, which left Tarakandi two minutes late.
“But passengers can take the bus early in the morning and avoid the night journey. They can have a good night’s sleep at home and set off for Dhaka in the morning in a fresh mood. Plus, the bus reaches Dhaka faster than the train,” I disputed.
“Yes, but there could be traffic jams and other uncertainties on the road. Besides, many do not prefer the bus ride. Additionally, there are passengers who do not think like you when it comes to a good night’s sleep. You can travel in first class if you need more comfort and better sleep,” he refuted.
I could not contradict him more. Our Shovon Chair carriage, which had 17 passengers when we left Tarakandi, was not designed for ultimate comfort. The maroon seats were not padded and there was not enough legroom, while my reclining lever did not work.
The train’s vacuum-brake coaches are very old but heavy-duty, I remembered Sujan saying. He did not remember any bizarre or memorable incident happening on board on the Dhaka–Tarakandi route, which he had been serving continuously for a year. He seemed to have a liking for the classic blue-yellow carriages that were in fashion when millennials like me were growing up.
Many travellers curled up on their seats, trying to get some sleep as the clank of wheels on tracks filled the compartment. I walked to the door and leaned out, looking at the nightscape featuring outlines of paddy fields, the sway of nearby tree leaves and branches in the strong wind produced by the speeding train, and occasional rural homes in the distance. A teen boy standing nearby said he had boarded the train because he needed to travel to Dhaka at night.
The Tarakandi–Mymensingh route looks almost like a semicircle, with the Jamalpur–Mymensingh stretch running along the old Brahmaputra channel. The stations came alive when the train screeched to a halt as passengers, attired in elaborate warm clothes, scrambled to find the doors of their respective compartments. Under the inky black sky, the Jamalpur station, where we reached at around 3:15am, was engulfed in thick fog, which diffused the overhead and outdoor lights, creating a spotlight effect.
I very much wanted to enjoy the foggy landscape bathed in the golden hues of the early morning light – a scene you can witness only during the short-lived winter – but missed it. Waking up to the chit-chat of passengers, I noticed on the map that we had crossed the Mymensingh division and were on our way to Joydebpur. Hawkers squeezed through the aisle of the packed carriage to sell tea and snacks.
Around two hours later at the Kamalapur station, it was a typical day with a flurry of activity – a stark contrast to where I was seven hours ago. I strode to the locomotive and scanned the adjacent carriage, hoping to see a familiar face. But Sujan was nowhere in sight, gone like the dark night.
