Boiled Eggs and Ghunghrila Railway Station

Few would have ever noticed a small town of Ghunghrila  in between Jhelum and Rawalpindi – but I have a very vivid memory attached to it since my childhood when I was around12-13 years. In those days Subak Rafatar, a newly introduced two-bogie railcar had just started plying between Lahore and Rawalpindi and my father happened to be posted to Rawalpindi in Interpol. So every summer vacation, we would board the early morning railcar to Rawalpindi and came back after the vacation in the three-o-clock returning railcar. It was fun traveling and enjoying the ride in the brand new train.

Now here enters Ghunghrila. During one of our travels to Rawalpindi, this time in the winter vacation, the railcar stopped at Ghunghrila railway station for a crossing. The sky was overcast and it was drizzling. The over grown grass in the nearby terraced field was swaying with the blowing cool breeze. The scene was so fascinating ( now I would call romantic – but then I was too young to have it called so) that I still remember the entire scene. To add more to it, there came a small boy selling boiled eggs “Garam Andays” and our mother ordered one for all of us. The nearly hot boiled eggs eaten with pinch of salt and pepper added much more the scene I was already enjoying.  
Now even after decades, whenever I pass by Ghunghrila on my way to Rawalpindi, I slow down my car just near the place and I imagine a railcar parked by the same place and a little boy looking out enjoying the travel and the scene. My two grown up children laugh at me for still recalling the gone old day as I have narrated the same thing to them a dozen of times – but they would never be able to comprehend the enjoyment their father had when he was a child.