Summer on Track

Train journeys have evolved over time to reflect busier lives and a more crowded world. Luggage has become smart,the canvas holdalls and steel trunks replaced by backpacks and suitcases on wheels,clumsy potties for infants superseded by nappies and diapers,steel tiffin boxes of food edged out by cling wrap and aluminum foil. Trains have gotten quicker. While the grandfather of trains,the Grand Trunk Express has 36 stops between New Delhi and Chennai,its younger progeny,the Tamil Nadu Express,has only nine. However,even with the shortening and shrinking,train journeys still provide that interim,where time slows down,railway stations mark time and waiting becomes an activity in itself.

Our grandparents remember the time when railway officers were entitled to entire compartments. Junior officers were entitled to only a four-wheel bogey,the size of a small wagon,which was too unsteady to be attached to fast trains,and would clatter noisily behind a goods train. Senior officers would get a large salon the size of an entire bogey,where the number of rooms and plushness of the quarters were directly proportionate to the officers seniority. The sahib would sit out on the inspection deck attached behind the salon,watch the changing countryside,light up a cigarette and pretend to inspect the tracks.

There was a time when you could place a coin on the rails,wait for a train to pass over and marvel at its contorted shape. If you tried such a trick today,you might be hauled away for security reasons. In the gentler days,you could also try your luck at riding with the engine driver,if he was in a generous mood.

While these liberties might have reduced,we all have our own train memories,be it the sharing of poories and sabzi,learning poems from strangers,or escaping the male co-passenger who made kissing sounds. The stations along the way continue to feed us their specialities the plump petta from Agra,rewari from Meerut,milk from Itarsi or the oranges of Nagpur.

As children,we8217;ve rushed up and down the coaches,performed for co-passengers,while our parents politely tried to disown us. As college students,we have puffed the magic dragon in the vestibule and convinced ourselves that we8217;ve seen Lucy in the sky. We8217;ve played games of Uno and teen patti on the upper berth,where the jogging of the train has only added to the merriment. Travelling in the non-air conditioned coaches we8217;ve all sat on the floorboard and experienced that uncommon thrill of going over bridges. You dangle your slippers out of the train,over a river,and literally for miles there is no ground beneath your feet.

On the two-night long journeys,once we were done with Boggle and Word Building,I remember my father trying to teach us to calculate the train8217;s speed. The old rails before jointed rails were of a definite length with a small gap between two rails. The train makes that distinct clickety-clack sound when it goes over these gaps. We learned how to calculate the speed of a train as the number of clicks in half a minute would give us the speed in miles per hour. Once the tracks became electrified,we could calculate the speed by counting the electric poles on either side.

Studying in a boarding school in the deep south,I made the Delhi-Bangalore journey four times a year. Anyone who has travelled with a school party,of 40-50 students for over 40 hours in a train,knows that these journeys lend themselves naturally to anecdote and annals of history. The arrival at the station would be a wild affair with each child outdoing the other in effusion,which often left families reeking in a 48-hour unwashed embrace. The departure at New Delhi railway station at the end of a summer holiday,would always be a tragic affair with students in different stages of despair from the forlorn gaze to the quivering lip to the full-blown bawl. But once the train chugged out,family and woes were soon banished by thoughts of food and gossip. Who had packed what,who had the paranthas,who the Tang,who the Ferrero Rocher,who saw who during the holidays,who had received a love letter,who had learned to swim,who had seen the latest blockbuster,and,the horror,who had completed their holiday homework?

At Agra Cantonment station and later at Anantapur Station,a clapping would be heard from down the corridors. The boys of the group would make a wild dart to the upper berths,feign sleep and barricade themselves with bags. The eunuchs were on their way and the adolescent boys were in fear of life,limb and harassment. The teacher would placate the visitors with a few notes and they would leave with a few good-natured threats and jibes.

Nights were a time of secret movements up and down the corridors. Those who fell asleep by folly,risked having toothpaste faces drawn on them,shoes misplaced and sleeping bags deployed in the toilet. Night-time also provided an opportunity to make conversation with your secret crush,about the scurrying stars and the faraway street light. But as the night won over and the chatter tapered,you would be left with a darkness slipping outside the window and the train gently rocking you to sleep.