118. Saved by the porter

Thousand Moon: Shri Chandrakant Balaji  Joshi
 Contributed By: Dr. Raghunath Boradkar

Shri Chandrakant Balaji  Joshi is 84 years old. He stays in Bibvewadi Pune. Here he narrates an incident that could have been dangerous and tragic but for the timely help from the surrounding people mainly the porters on the Railway staion and that too in the middle of the night. As he says…

I was transferred To Arankavadu near Hill station OOTY in 1980 from Khadaki Ammunition Factory.

The type of Explosive manufactured there needed a cool atmosphere and so the British had built a factory there.

Being a very scenic place we used to get many visitors. Once my son in-law, daughter and my grandson were to visit us. We were very happy and were looking forward to their visit. Koimbtur was the nearest railway station and so we went to receive them there. The train arrived at about 1 AM at night. My daughter and son in law were busy getting their luggage out. My grandson who was about 4 years old came to the door and seeing me he shouted Grandpa and jumped. Everything happened so suddenly that I could just not catch him and he fell on the tracks through the gap between the train and the platform. We all missed our heart beats and got panicky and started shouting. Nobody knew why we were shouting and there was language problem too. But one porter who was getting down the luggage noticed .There were two of them One of them ran to tell the Guard and the other one got on the tracks through the space between the two compartments  and gently got him out. Luckily there were no injuries except minor scratches. My daughter wanted that he should be taken to a hospital the porter somehow understood that and so he took us to the nearest Hospital. After some first aid treatment we could go home. There were some scratches on his nose. He must have hit the platform as he fell.

The next day we took him to the Arankavadu hospital and got him X rayed for any possible fracture of the nasal bones. To our good luck there was nothing. But later on my grandson used to go on asking me if his nose was broken.

Shri C.B.Joshi