All Pawan Bansal's poetry from the Railway Budget 2013 speech

The Rail budget itself has been criticised as being extremely pedestrian and sorely lacking ambition.

But what Bansal lacked in measures, he made up for in poetry. Or so it seemed in any case. From Christine Weatherly’s “The Little Blue engine” which he called ‘inspirational’ to ghazal like allegories on the railways one day ‘flying on its own wings’- the speech was just peppered with poetry.

This is a collection of it all:

The first poem came right at the beginning of the speech, right after the Minister thanked the Prime Minster, Sonia Gandhi, and for some bizarre reason, Rajiv Gandhi.

I recall here the inspirational words of Christine Weatherly:

When you travel on the railway,

And the line goes up a hill,

Just listen to the engine

As it pulls you with a will.

Though it goes very slowly

It sings this little song

“I think I can, I think I can,”

And so it goes along.

This piece of purple prose occurred while the Minister was talking about passenger amenities:

“Hungama khada karna mera maksad nahi, koshish hai yeh surat badalni chahiye”

We definitely heard groaning after that one!

This one came as the Minister said he dreamt that one day Railways would find ways to contribute to its infrastructural projects:

A bird sitting on a tree has no fear of falling, not because of the strength of the branch but because of faith in its own wings.

There was one more on “Mountains and oceans” that we failed to catch, and it was not listed in the speech. We’re impressed now. Is there a freestyle slam poet hidden there somewhere Mr Bansal?

And it was back to Weatherly as the speech concluded. Unfortunately not many could hear it thanks to all the ruckus in the house by disgruntled MPs who felt that their constituencies had been ignored. So we reproduce it here:

Earlier I had cited Christine Weatherly. I turn to her again.

But later on the Journey….

….the engine’s singing still.

If you listen very quietly

You will hear this little song,

“I thought I could, … I could!”

And so it speeds along.