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As a child, the potential of a great vacation rose significantly when we were told a train journey was involved. Scrambling up towards the highest bunk beds to join your siblings or cousins, whilst towering and giggling over the adults was only one of the many joys of a train journey. Sampling all the food that went by, playing numerous card games or just exchanging anecdotes with several other friendly passengers — it’s another world in there. If there were any drawbacks to the whole experience, it might have been how deathly cold the nights got, which you would never survive if not for the blankets provided by the railway.
However, as warm as those blankets may have been, they definitely weren’t the most hygienic. In fact, The Indian Express even did an in-depth feature on the same, noting that the Railways only wash their blanket once every two months! If that didn’t just give you the shivers, maybe read the article dedicated to the same. Thankfully, the Indian Railways has asked the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) to help design new blankets with a material that will help them maintain a standard of hygiene easily. Anil Saxena, Spokesperson of Ministry of Railways told The Financial Express, “NIFT has also been asked to reduce the overall size of the blanket since currently, it tends to touch the train floor – hence accumulating dirt fast.”
While this initiative is definitely welcome, in the end it’ll all come down to the users of said blankets to ensure these standards are maintained. Too often us Indians don’t know how to appreciate a good thing which results in the degradation of the service in next to no time. Bottom line, folks? Don’t make a mess, keep your space as clean as it came — maybe then we’ll actually start seeing a difference. Or so, we can hope. Though in the end it all depends on the staff who aim to maintain this standard of cleanliness too. There’s only so much we can do.
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