After a lot of ruckus about who would operate the sidewinder of the HMV gramophone, my oldest cousin or I would place a record on the turntable. It had a label the colour of a gulmohur flower. As a tradition, we played the same record ahead of the big train journey: Toofan Mail from the 1942 film, Jawab. Its lyrical allusion was lost on us. We couldn't fathom how life was like a train trip. Instead, we would sing along loudly "Duniya ye duniya toofan mail cooooo chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk-chuk," imitating the familiar, piercing honk and the chugging sounds of the train that were part of the song. Our one big vacation back in the Eighties was always a train trip from Madras to Jabalpur on the Gangakaveri Express. The kids never tired of the usual. Every year, my oldest cousin was in charge of the train timetable and would pore over it for hours even though it was the same old route. He would announce railway station names, scheduled arrival time and how long it would stop at each station. It was a two-day journey that sometimes even took two days and three nights. But there was so much to see. And eat. My maternal grandmother would pack us food that we ensured we polished off for our first meal, which was usually dinner. Curd rice with pickle and puri-alu were the staple and no sooner than the train would crawl out of Madras Central than our hunger pangs would begin. Travelling in sleeper class meant that vendors could get in easily at all stations and open windows allowed us to buy buttermilk at stations such as Ongole with only a minor one-minute halt. By the time Vijayawada arrived at half past midnight or some such hour, some of us - usually me - would have curled up on our berths. But both my cousins would be bright-eyed and would have just finished throwing several 2 and 5 paise coins, saved over many months, for this very purpose of tossing them into the Krishna river. The winner of this game would be the first one to have dropped all his coins. At Vijayawada station, the nasal pitched cries of "taandra taandra taandra" were enough to wake the dead and I'd be up to get my share of the sticky, thick-layered maavidi taandra or jelly made from ripe mangoes in the Krishna district. Although Warangal was a minor halt, it always had many passengers boarding and alighting. It arrived much before sunrise and far too early to think of food. But I do have bleary-eyed memories of mirapakaaya bajjis - fat, batter-fried green chillies - wrapped in newspaper being quickly demolished by my ever-hungry Telugu brethren. I can still bet that no one can else deal with greasy chillies at that hour. Breakfast was always at Balharshah. The neat, moon-shaped lettering in Telugu on the station name board had changed to Devanagari script. Our ears were now attuned to pick up Hindi, but except for narangi, which we realised was the name for oranges in Balharshah and Nagpur when we heard it first, the language of food seemed universal. Thick, limp dosas and tasteless idli with coconut chutney were par for the course, so I'd usually pick the breakfast served on the train, which would be two hot, crisp oval cutlets with a slice or two of bread and gooey ketchup. Runny pumpkin ketchup was yet to make an appearance. It was no fun if we didn't snack on bhel or the narangis we had picked up until it was time for lunch, marked by the next big station - Nagpur. If we were feeling particularly hungry, we'd buy biriyani from one of the stalls. Vegetable biriyani is the biggest culinary oxymoron that there is, but we craved the hit of high-sodium and garlic so much that it didn't really matter. Our grandmother seldom cooked with garlic at home and we took what we got, embracing dragon breath like a favourite cousin. Now this is the thing with Brahmin cooking - it deprives you of so much, so soon and for so long that when your palate opens up to new tastes, you either love or hate them. There is no middle ground. I'd much rather I was raised a tolerant, beef-loving omnivore than a culinary bigot. I'm sure that all this deprivation was also the reason why a strange thought possessed me on one of our trips. I was sure that train we had boarded would be derailed and all of us would meet a tragic death. Of course, I shared this ill-omen as loudly as my lungs would allow and cried all the way to Jabalpur. An army officer in the hope that I would shut up offered us all chocolates. Luckily for him, I grabbed a handful and crammed them into my mouth. They were potent liqueur chocolates that gave me what was perhaps my first buzz (I was five). I also recall calming down when I ate plump jamuns at Itarsi, sold in a cup made of fresh, green jamun leaves. The next hour would have been spent eating more fruit until our tongues were as black as the night outside our window. Between Itarsi and Pipariya, railway guards would patrol up and down the compartments and the adults in the train would quickly down the shutters of all windows. The words "Chambal" and "dacoits" were always whispered, never spoken aloud around us. I don't think we were anywhere close to Chambal. But be that as it may, it isn't as if we didn't know what was going on. We had all watched Sholay several times over and forever hoped that Gabbar with his paan-stained teeth would climb down from the top of the train and grab hold of the bars of our window before we could pull down the shutter. Let me tell you again: vegetarianism is overrated and can cause hallucinations. When we finally arrived in Jabalpur, train and passengers intact, my aunt would be waiting to receive us. She would have a simple, hot meal ready for dinner: some palak dal whose flavour and aroma I will always associate with Jabalpur and fragrant, basmati rice that tasted so sweet, almost as if there was a pinch of sugar in each long grain. I have never tasted such a full-flavoured spinach dish since. Jabalpur was also where we had our first taste of alu bukharas. What I imagined to be spicy, savoury kachoris filled with potato turned out to be plums. I can still taste the disappointment. Sure, the plums were so ripe, I had juice running down my chin, but "Where was my fried alu?" howled the part of my stomach that understood Hindi. The trips continued until I was about eight or nine. But if life was indeed like a train journey as Toofan Mail suggested, I never wanted this one to end.
