Culture on wheels

Students hardly bother travelling by the overcrowded shuttle train and take it rather as a pleasure ride.. PHOTO: STAR

Of 16,000 students, the university has accommodation facilities only for some 5000 in its nine dormitories, including three female halls and a few cottages.

The shuttle train, between the port city and the Chittagong University, carries about 11,000 students to the university from the city everyday.

Excluding a few travelling by buses, maxis or auto-rickshaws, they are to depend on two shuttle trains operating five times a day.

As such, during the one and a-half hour journey of 22 kilometres, it offers the huge number of students a nice time to practise latent cultural talents and exchange thoughts and views on different issues enriching mental faculty.

Around one and a half dozen of shuttle-based musical groups have developed over the years as most of the students pass the time amid a huge merriment gossiping and singing.

Members of these groups sing popular songs using different parts of the compartment body as musical instruments to create rhythm.

The groups are Cockpit, Khaitta Kha, Boiragi, Cherubim, Who Cares, Weapons, War Goods, Vagabond, Bangali, Always, Non-stop, Black Hole, Cyclopes, Auto and CU Virus.

Rashedul Hasan Tusher, a member of 'Cherubim', said," We enjoy singing inside the compartment that helps us develop fellow feelings and friendships with students of different departments."

It makes one feel the urge for going to the university regularly, Tusher said.

Krishnabrata Bhattacharya, member of 'Always', says, "I cannot think of going to the university without the group for a single day."

"We enjoy the journey because these groups perform and sing in the train," said Rafiya Sultana, a student of Communication and Journalism.

It helps students not to bother when they sit on windows, passages and doors in the overcrowded shuttle trains that carry at least 300 students in each of the nine 100-seat compartments, she said.

Besides, the students of the highest educational institution get a chance to exchange their thoughts and opinions on any subject during the journey.

The body of the compartments also provides room for practice and display of varies pieces of short writings, poems, advice and comments. Sometimes, political and other programmes or demands are also brought to the notice of the students through announcements or posters and leaflets pasted or inscribed on the compartment body.

It, however, is always not a pleasure ride because a section of students travel sitting on the rooftops and the student wings of political parties make the shuttle train as their target of attack to press their demands.

On the other hand, the age-old coupes allowing rainwater to come inside and worn-out railway tracks posing risk of accident mar the pleasure of travelling by the shuttle train.

Sometimes, rush of beggars and local people, mainly the city-bound vendors who board on the train with bag and baggage, hamper the refreshing atmosphere that means so much to the students.