Romance of the Indian Railways through chronicler Michael Portillo’s warm lens

India’s transformation from locomotives to high-speed modern trains is part of the story of Great Indian Railway Journeys.

Michael Portillo is one of the world’s foremost railway enthusiasts and chroniclers featured in shows such as Great British Railway Journeys (2010) and Great Continental Railway Journeys (2012) on BBC. A former Conservative Member of Parliament and Cabinet minister who was key to saving the Settle to Carlisle line from closure in 1989, Portillo embarks on a trans-India journey on the extraordinarily expansive Indian Railways orbit for a new show that is as much cultural commentary as it is a railways travelogue.

A still from Great Indian Railway Journeys from the episode about Mahabodhi Temple at Bodh Gaya(BBC)

A lot of what Portillo covers has the age-old exotic gaze on “colourful, paradoxical” Indian streets, monuments, palaces, temples, and markets. Portillo’s guide is a book with a red hard-bound cover, with resplendent golden letters marking the title: Bradshaw’s Through Routes: A Handbook of Indian Colonial and Foreign Travel.

How much has India changed from when George Bradshaw, a British cartographer, printer, and publisher, published this book in 1903? Are there even remnants of what Bradshaw documented 120 years ago?

Portillo seems to hope there are and he does find a lot that, through his eyes, appear close to Bradshaw’s observations. Portillo is a good sport when an elephant in Guruvayur temple storm-splashes his face with water or when a galauti kabab on Lucknow streets stings his palate with its masala heat. In bright pink, green, and blue shirts and trousers, Portillo is visibly amused as well as impressed.

That is the norm. The white man’s lens on India has been primarily about our strange harmonies and juxtapositions. And our colours. Portillo is no different.

Stanley Fernandes, vice president of distribution, South Asia, BBC Studios, said: “We are thrilled to bring audiences another gem that will take viewers along on this unforgettable journey through India’s soul-stirring landscapes and vibrant cultures in a unique travel format. Through Great Indian Railway Journeys, we aim to showcase the essence of new India fulfilled by its diversity, history, and enduring spirit.” Portillo sticks to this brief meticulously.

The four episodes have four different journeys: Lucknow-Ghazipur-Bodh Gaya-Chittaranjan and Kolkata; Mysore-Bangalore-Bangarapet-Chennai; Jodhpur-Osiyan-Jaipur-Bandkui Junction-Agra-Delhi; and Amritsar-Ludhiana-Ambala-Chandigarh-Kalka-Shimla.

He browses at AH Wheeler bookshops, the iconic bookseller on railways platforms that continue to thrive, we come to know that Chittaranjan exists as a town only because of the railways, like various other towns across India, we get imposing, breathless shots and angles of Howrah Station and Kolkata’s Great Eastern Hotel, a structure that still immaculately preserves colonial customs and design elements, we hear stories of India’s Anglo-Indian communities at a gorgeously filmed sequence at Bangalore’s suburb, Whitefield, we see Portillo trying bhangra moves in unreserved compartments. By the end, you somehow cannot but agree with Portillo when he says, “India is the selfie capital of the world!”

A still from Great Indian Railway Journeys(BBC)

India’s transformation from locomotives to high-speed modern trains is part of the story of Great Indian Railway Journeys. The gaze on this old-new co-existence is again patently foreign, even White. Yet, the show has its resounding triumphs: Watching the four one-hour episodes I was reminded of how little even most of us have not experienced the country’s staggering diversity. The one thing that this show eloquently says, without saying it overtly, is India’s pluralistic character is its real singularity.

What the documentary does not—and—cannot achieve is the insider’s nuance and depth — the multi-hued, multi-angled lens on our multitudes. When Portillo speaks to some of the royal family members, one mostly sees and hears nostalgic references to “the Raj”.

The railways are an unerasable part of Indian TV and big screen. In 1986, Doordarshan aired Shyam Benegal’s Yatra, with an ensemble cast that included Neena Gupta, Om Puri and Mohan Gokhale among others, for the most riveting depiction of life on Indian trains. It was filmed on the Himsagar Express, a weekly fast train of the Indian Railways running between Kanyakumari to the Vaishno Devi temple in Jammu and Kashmir.

In the 1980s, when Yatra was filmed, it was India’s longest railway line, now replaced by the Dibrugarh-Kanyakumari Express, from the easternmost town in Assam to the tip of the Indian subcontinent. The soul of Benegal’s storytelling was derived from two distinct ideas: The Indian knack for jugaad, and how crowded train compartments often manifest the powers of jugaad problem-solving in ingenuous ways, and how train compartments are like microcosms of the diversity that thrives across communities, languages and cultures.

The train sequence of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955) is the stuff of elite film study classrooms around the world. Its appeal is still fresh on the senses every time you watch it. Besides the superbly designed, filmed, and edited train attack sequence in Sriram Raghavan’s Johnny Gaddar (2007), a film that made the rail experience unforgettably moving in the last century is Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Swades (2004).

The “America-returned” hero played by Shah Rukh Khan sits on a regular compartment looking out of the iron grills of the train when a small boy looks up at him from the platform, holding a steel bucket filled to the brim with plain water on one hand and an empty tumbler on the other hand. “Pachas paise ka paani le lo, pachas paise ka paani le lo,” he pleads. The man pays him the 50 paise, buys a glass of water and the train starts to move — the moment of the hero’s inner transformation that fuels the rest of the story.

Great Indian Railway Journeys chugs along on familiar terrain. But it does remind us why our diversity is our superpower. Great Indian Railway Journeys, on 'BBC Player on Prime Video Channels', started airing on August 12.

Sanjukta Sharma is a Mumbai-based writer and film critic. Write to her at Sanjukta.sharma@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal