Chapter 4 — Unit 4: Travel and Adventure

"The Tunnel" is written by Ruskin Bond.

Suraj is a young, adventure-loving boy who cycles to a jungle railway tunnel to watch the steam engine emerge, and later walks through the tunnel out of curiosity. He befriends the tunnel watchman Sunder Singh.

Sunder Singh is the tunnel watchman. Every day, before the train comes through, he walks the length of the tunnel to check for obstacles. If all is well he rests; if there is danger he waves a red flag (by day) or his oil lamp (by night) to warn the engine driver.

Suraj walks through the tunnel simply because he wanted to know what the inside of a tunnel was really like. He finds the walls damp and sticky; a bat flies past and a lizard scuttles between the rails.

Coming out of the tunnel's darkness, Suraj sees a flash of orange and gold and a long swishing tail moving between the trees on the hillside. Sunder Singh tells him it was the leopard.

Sunder Singh says the leopard minds its own business, visits the range for a few days every month, and will not harm him or Suraj. He notes, however, that it has a weakness for goats and stray dogs.

On the evening Suraj returns to watch the night mail, they hear a rhythmic sawing sound and Sunder Singh realises the leopard is inside the tunnel. With the train due soon, Sunder Singh takes his axe and lamp and both enter the tunnel shouting. Their combined voices confuse the leopard, which turns and disappears into the darkness, allowing the train to pass safely.

Sunder Singh says it is safer in the jungle than in the town. As an example he tells Suraj that last month, when he went into town, he was almost run over by a bus — whereas nothing happens to him out in the jungle.

When Suraj travels on the night mail a week later, he cannot see Sunder Singh but spots his lamp glowing at the dark cutting. The story describes Sunder Singh as remaining a firefly for thousands of travellers, lighting up the darkness for steam engines and leopards alike.

"Travel" is written by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The speaker feels a powerful, restless longing for train travel. Though the railroad is miles away, she hears the whistle shrieking by day and sees the engine's cinders red on the sky at night. She declares she would take any train no matter where it is going.

The poem follows an ABAB rhyme scheme across its three stanzas.

The unit notes that India's first passenger train ran on 16 April 1853 between Bori Bunder (Mumbai) and Thane, covering 34 kilometres, operated by three locomotives named Sahib, Sultan, and Sindh with thirteen carriages. It also notes that the Atal Tunnel (9.02 km, under Rohtang Pass on the Manali–Leh Highway) holds the World Book of Records title for the world's longest highway tunnel above 10,000 feet. The unit also mentions the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Nilgiri Mountain Railway, and Kalka–Shimla Railway as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and notes that the Vande Bharat Express — India's first indigenous semi-high-speed train — was flagged off on 15 February 2019 on the New Delhi–Varanasi route at 160 km/h.

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