The changing tracks of romance of trains
People who lived near the tracks surely must get a bit poetic. It’s like seeing thousands of faces every hour, faces that you will never see in your life again
A side-lower berth in a long-distance train is the best place to see India. It gives a 55-inch panoramic view of the hinterland, a charging point, and ample space to stretch your legs, but not enough to sleep well. Hence, it’s the business class of trains, with the added possibility of some random person walking away with your slippers for a visit to the toilet.
Our colonisers constructed most of our railway stations on the outskirts of towns back in the 1800s. Since then, cities have grown around these. So, when a train enters a city, it goes through the entire cross-section to reach its heart — the railway station. It passes through its bazaars, mosques, temples, and railway phaataks (level crossings) where bikers wait impatiently for the train to pass.
You read shop boards, sex clinic ads on walls, and random inscriptions to figure out which city it is, racing against time to guess the city before the train draws close to the platform and signages reveal the name. The name is painted on a stone plaque, black on yellow. The moment it’s revealed, there is commotion in the train. Coolies, pheriwalas, passengers who need to disembark, passengers who need to board, your dad with his compulsive urge to get down and fill all the water bottles during the two-minute stop, one guy who claims that the poori sabji is famous here, everybody is suddenly active.
Leaving the platform, the train passes through the old city. The sun is about to set, a field appears where kids are playing cricket. The bowler takes his run-up, and you press your face against the window rails to see what happens. But the train charges ahead before you could see how the batsman fared. That delivery is forever lost. There are no replays here. That’s how a train journey teases you.
As the train catches speed, it goes past little houses on either side of the tracks. The open doors give you a glimpse into the lives and times of their occupants. With just that one snapshot, you get to know what’s playing on their TV, the stickers on their almirah, the neatly arranged steel utensils in their kitchen, and a calendar hung on the wall. You wistfully compare their life to yours. Train windows give one a guilt-free pass to voyeurism.
People who have lived near the tracks surely must get a bit poetic. It’s like seeing thousands of faces every hour, faces that you will never see in your life again. Some eyes will stick, difficult to forget. You can stare at their faces, without fear of any social awkwardness. It’s raw.
Soon, it’s dark, and the window has served its utility. Apart from some distant lights, it has only darkness to offer, with your face reflected in the glass. Time to pull the shutter down. Also, you are hungry. A train is like a cradle, rocks you slowly, aids digestion and improves sleep. Hence, you get hungry more often. Time to open the Tupperware for some poori aloo.
You proceed to peel pooris off each other and discover that solitary slice of mango pickle buried beneath the poori-stack. Sigh. it doesn’t take long to polish it off though.
Even the cold poori aloo tastes great, thanks to the Maillard reaction between the sugars and the amino acids: A science factoid is thrown at you by an uncle sitting nearby, a chemistry professor. You acknowledge this, poori stuffed in your mouth. Then you wait for his kid to return your slippers so that you can go wash your hands. Uncle takes this opportunity to talk about how the observable universe has changed since 2014. This is a train thing to do. Long hours of nothing. While the phone is getting charged, fellow passengers become a joint family. Food and political opinion are shared in equal measure, you are even sized up for potential matrimonial match, especially if you have a government job. Long-distance trains are like the show Bigg Boss.
Then, it’s time to sleep, and the herculean task of hoisting the middle berth looms. Consent of all seated must be sought. This is the only time democracy works to achieve something meaningful efficiently. One of the few times I felt useful as a kid was when I would quickly unhook the chain and fasten it to slots while my father lifted the middle berth.
Middle berth in the second class is unique; it shares 10% of the window, giving a peek to the kid pressing his face against it, or a chance to experience the wind in his hair. As it approaches a station, the yellow warm light of the outside grazes past your face periodically. You drift off. Bliss.
Times have changed. The Vande Bharat is slowly taking over. For millions of Indians who could never travel abroad, who always associated a sharp pencil-like train engine with prosperity and development, it is like that trip abroad. Vande Bharat is a blockbuster. The side lower berth is being re-designed. The train romantics and their families have taken to the airways.
Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur and tweets as @gabbbarsingh.The views expressed are personal