KASARGOD: A house on Ravaneeswaram-Challingal road would immediately catch the eye of passersby. While the house is modelled after a train coach, the wall is in the shape of a rake hauled by an orange liveried ALCO locomotive, which the Indian Railways had decommissioned two years ago.
T Damodaran, now 77, stumbled into Railways accidentally and became a train inspector before taking voluntary retirement 20 years ago.
Back home, he carried with him the memories of the train. When he constructed a house, he designed the first floor after the coach of Flying Rani, Western Railway's luxury train and the first one he worked on.
He fittingly named it 'Aacha Coach', after his mother Aacha.
"She was the one who wanted me to become a professional and trusted me," Damodaran said.
While this is not the first house modelled after a train, the detailing Damodaran has done is mind-blowing. The 'Aacha coach' and the 'rake wall' have it all, from couplings and springs to wheels. And the highlight: he carved all of them.
"I know these aren't easy for the masons. So, I sculpted them, with cement as the medium," he said.
Born into a family of farmers who leased land to work on, young Damodaran dropped out of his Pre-Degree course while at the Government College in Kasaragod because he realised it didn't fit him.
He then acquired a diploma in mechanical engineering from Kanhangad in 1970. Unsure of his next step, he went to Mumbai with a merchant navy man from his neighbourhood. "He set sail six days later and I didn't know how to survive in Bombay because I was a village lad," Damodaran recalled.
Summing up courage, he started visiting companies in search of a job and learnt that the Indian Navy was recruiting young boys. "I cleared the written and medical tests but goofed up the interview," he said.
He then appeared for a couple of technical jobs at Western Railway and his appointment was put on hold, and he returned home.
He took up odd jobs and landed in a pump company in Kannur as a salesman.
"Even as I started liking the job, the call letter from Western Railway arrived. I didn't want to go but my manager said it would be unwise to ignore a Railways job," Damodaran said.
He took up the job in 1977 and went on to work in Mumbai, Wadi and Mangaluru, until he retired in 1996.
During the construction of his house, while carpenters worked on doors and windows, Damodaran picked up a glass shred and started carving wood. What followed were a number of sculptures. His house is now full of such wood sculptures -- from house cat to river otters.
"I never learnt this art formally. I just saw the images of these creatures inside the wood and started bringing them out," he said, laughing heartily.
And now, Damodaran is planning to call in his neighbours for a function on February 21.
"There will be announcements like in a station, followed by a horn and the sound of a train to inaugurate the wall," he said.
As a parting advice, the elderly former railway man said, "I would have never have made either the coach or the wall had someone laughed at my first sculpture. People encouraged me and I kept continuing. A word of appreciation can do wonders in life."