A Railway Journey

It has been years since I had a long Railway journey. The Missus being in the Railways entitles me to privileges to travel in relative comfort in trains free of cost. In return I give up my LTC benefits. Things changed as I grew older in government. Flights became the norm. In a tough posting there have been occasions when one had to take a flight as many as eight times a month. Slowly I developed an intense dislike of the food served in flights and started longing for a Railway journey where one could lie back reading a book in air-conditioned comfort as the train rumbles on. There is of course the bonhomie among co- passengers which is sorely missing in a sanitized short plane ride. A night and day in an enclosed space often brings co-travelers a great deal closer.

I read a very interesting book by Biswanath Gosh called Chai Chai- about places one would stop on a Railway journey but would never get off. The author takes a break at stations one would only stop at on a long journey and spends a couple of days at each non-descript junction with a fame that befell them by virtue of being situated at the cross roads of Indian Railway lines. Places like Ballarshah, Itarsi and Shoranur…

With the Missus and Chathu in Chennai, I am back to one of those inevitable phases of separation among Government spouses. I was in the Rajdhani express to Chennai last week. In younger days one would wish for single attractive women to be your co-passengers. Now I only wish that no elderly person, pregnant woman or a mother with infant child one would displace me from the lower berth that has been allotted to me- With an unceasing back pain, I am no more in a mood to clamber on to upper or side berths where my long legs won’t fit in.

As soon as I got in and settled down in my lower berth, I could see a hyperactive elderly Mami (short term for an elderly Brahmin woman) who had her entire extended family travelling with her in various parts of the train. In a few moments she had convinced half the guys in my compartment to take up berths in other coaches so that she could travel in close proximity of her family. The males of her family left her to coordinate the brouhaha that accompanied this re-arrangement, which involved hectic consultations and negotiations with strangers before the train got moving. I must have sounded cussed when I refused to move citing a back pain and inability to lug my luggage around. (I wasn’ t fibbing- a year back I would have readily moved) But she offered to do the shifting of luggage also. But I discovered that in exchange I would be taking a upper side berth two coaches away, which is an inch and a half short of six feet (my height). I politely declined. So did the guy sitting in the lower berth facing me. He was going on a pilgrimage to Rameshwaram. He was from UP and I overheard him telling someone on his mobile that ever since his younger son expired he had been planning this pilgrimage- for the peace of his soul. Suddenly I felt a rush of grief and sympathy for this rather non-descript old man living with the burden of memories of a predeceased son.

The train started moving. Tea is served. The passengers are quiet and were busy reading, gazing out, plugged into their personal media players or talking on their mobiles. A young typical Tamilian Chennaite got talking. He, incidentally landed close to us as a result of the complex reshuffle of berths. Throughout the journey, he went about the task of helping North Indian travelers fix up appointments with Doctors in Chennai, book bus tickets to many destinations like Chidambaram and Trichy. “ Yeny place in Tamilnad, Saar, Yacee super deluxe buses are there. It is naat like Narth India, he said. But don’t trust the Aato chaps, he said, they bring a bad name to an otherwise lovely, warm city. Really a good Samaritan, salt of the earth, the kind of guy, who reinforces our faith in humanity. I also realized that he is the archetypal South Indian bumbler with a funny accent, poked fun at by pretty much everyone in the North of Vindhyas. By the end of the journey, most travelers had his two mobile numbers (one his brother’s and the other his) to be accessed in distress.

In my return journey, my co passenger was a Subedar Major in the Army travelling on posting from Ordnance Depot Avadi to Jammu. Since we both belonged to the same mother of all departments in the Government, we got chatting. Another Tamilian family (a couple working in State Govt with an only son) were going on LTC to Delhi, Shimla and Jaipur. There were feeble attempts between the Subedar and the Tamil family to communicate with each other. I realized how different they were. After several attempts both sides were communicating through me, with arguably good conversational abilities in both Tamil and Hindi(or bad, depending on how you look at it).

The food got worse in the return journey. With my Subedar friend threatening the caterers that Saab’s (i.e my) wife is a General Manager in the Railways and that this quality of food will not be tolerated. This sudden elevation of the status of Missus to GM (which is a couple of notches above her present exalted position- I haven’t reached her level; thanks to the slow pace of promotions in Defence Ministry Departments) failed to impress the caterers and they went about their task businesslike. The food and the general cleanliness of the train only got worse as we neared Delhi.

Years back, food used to be served in large round steel plates containing small steel bowls for vegetables and Dal. They were loaded from designated stations like Guntakkal, Itarsi, Gwalior and Jhansi. After each meal the plates were taken away, the wasted food containing only organic stuff dumped in large sacks and the plates and bowls go for washing. Now the caterers in spiffy uniforms give a whole lot of pouches. Pickle, Jam, butter, tea, milk powder and a whole lot of other stuff comes in small plastic or paper pouches which after use, contribute greatly to the degradation of the environment. The Railway tracks and the common areas near the toilets become inundated with plastic and paper garbage by the end of the long journey. These guys are clearly not equipped to deal with large mounds of recyclable garbage.

I really didn’t do much reading. I had hopes of finishing Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Money on this trip. Instead, I just lay myself down and watched the landscape rushing by, past ravines, mountains, desolated countryside, cities and coasts. The whole experience puts you in a reflective mood, about life and its’ many uncertainties. Many years back I undertook journeys to join my post in Ahmedabad in a bank, to appear for interviews in the civil services, to meet a dear friend in Lucknow, to fight a court case in Allahabad, to meet my parents in Palghat. I remember a night interchange in Jhansi when I discovered that my berth has been sold by the TTE to another passenger for a small consideration. I remember becoming friends with an Australian school teacher of the Kodaikanal International School. I also have vivid recollections of an attractive lady journalist (where would she be now, I often wonder: we did keep in touch for some time), a student from BITS Pilani, an Assamese with whom I shared a joint, a Tirupur textile industrialist who played songs from the Hindi movie Chandni loudly in his first class compartment and survived on cucumber, carrots and copious amounts of whisky thoughout the journey. It is almost as if I see a microcosm of the country in these journeys. And these journeys are very different from three hour flights with snooty nosed guys who treasure their privacy and laptops so much.