Glimpses of Childhood memories spent at Kurudvadi

Recently, while travelling from Hyderabad to Pune by train, I passed Kurudvadi. I have spent short time of my childhood at Kurudavadi.

Kurduvadi or Kurudwadi is a small town in Solapur district in Maharashtra state of India. It is known mainly for the railway junction connecting two different rail gauge tracks. Kurduwadi is known mainly for the narrow gauge railway workshop and railway junction on Central Railway of Indian Railways.

A branch railway line takes off from Kuruwadi connecting Osmanabad and Latur towards East and Pandharpur and Miraj towards South-West. The branch line called Barshi Light Railway was narrow gauge until 2008. Now it has been converted to broad gauge. The converted broad gauge track from Latur to Osmanabad was commissioned in September 2007 and the converted broad gauge track from Osmanabad-Barshi to Kurduvadi was commissioned in October 2008.

I am narrating my childhood sweet memories. It was in the 1976-77, my father who was working in South Central Railways based at Hubli, Dharwad district, Karnataka state of India (now called as South Western Railways with Hubli being the Head Office), was posted to Kurudvadi on deputation.

I was not attending school, but my brothers were. My father was at Kurudvadi and we all along with mother at Hubli. During Christmas vacation we all went to Kurudvadi. My father was incharge of accounts division and was given a big quarters. His office was closely located to the quarters. Behind the quarters was the Kurudvadi railway station. As it was quite popular for railway gauge work, leaps of spare parts were lying here and there.

First time we all encountered language problem. Marathi was the language widely spoken. We all could speak Hindi, of course not me, I could only speak Kannada and little bit of Tamil. Now, Marathi was a foreign language for all of us. I could get along with the little ones in the neighbourhood and play for this no language is needed in fact. My elder brothers could not play with neighbourhood children of their age due to unable to speak Marathi. I started to pick few words in Marathi. One of my brothers who use to play cricket found a group of children playing cricket and somehow managed to find entry into the team.

There were office assistance, who helped my mother in procurement of provisions and vegetables. There was one more uncle and Kulkarni was his surname. He could speak Marathi and Kannada, I would often trouble him and get the words in Marathi.

Everything was very close, like father’s office, station, market place and so on. I somehow liked it very much. We frequent to office and all the staff at the office, at the railway station knew us and we always address us “Naye bhau cha mulaga, mulgi” and would get us some berries, fried groundnuts, gauvas to eat.1 Me and my brothers would often go to railway station and the junction workshop. We would keep watching about trains’ arrival, departure, shunting, and going to yards. This had become our everyday amusement during our stay at Kurudvadi. We started collected the entire spare parts and stored in at the backyard. We did not realize we had made a mountain out of the collected spare parts like nuts, bolts, hinges and so on. We would construct trains, and play at home.

This was one day noticed by my father and he warned all of us of lodging the spare partrs. He said,” if the Railway authority would come on sudden inspection and found all the spare parts, then would suspend his service and sue him to the court”.
Fearing his words, same night when it was quite dark, we all collected them and put back in the junction work place and sighed of relief.

Then, my parents even thought of putting us in the school at Kurudvadi, but Marathi was compulsory language to learn. Schooling somehow did not work out, so we had to come back to Hubli and continue schooling. My father also was posted back to Hubli after a year or so. During our stay, we visited Pandapur.

Then I did not get chance to revisit Kurudvadi.