My Rail Connection

My Rail Connection

Like most good things, flying happened to me much later in my life. Until then, like millions of my countrymen, I was a passenger of the great Indian train journey that weaves our nation together.

My fascination with the world of railways and train journey began in a small, remote, dusty town of Jetalser in western India, which I frequently visited. I became part of Jetalser station. I sat in a mailroom at the station when the elderly postman sorted out mails. I hobnobbed with the tea stall owner of the platform, who occasionally took out a cookie from a glass jar for me. I sat on that grey cast iron bench with a lone coolie. I shivered with anticipation when goods or passenger trains entered the station with all the majesty of a lion entering the jungle.

Jamnagar, my native place, was a small railhead. Few trains passed through it. The entry of the steam engine train into the station was an event of the day in this small town. The poetry and rhythm of the fluid movement of the stationmaster, coolie, and mailroom supervisor, tea, and pakora seller were an indescribable joy for a 10-year-old boy.

The memory of Jamnagar railway station lingers on in my mind even today when I pass through these magnificent but now derelict buildings. I vividly recall a well-stocked bookstall in its portal, selling Agatha Christie novels, the only store selling English books in our otherwise ethnic Gujarati town.

There was a meter gauge rail going to Rajkot, traversing that distance in three hours. We often took this journey and enjoyed every moment of looking out of the open windows to brown, parched land, dusty and threadbare villages, and slow-motion of the train that was in no hurry to reach anywhere.

Baroda is another railway station that is etched in my memory like paint on glass. This majestic, pink-hued edifice is bustling 24 hours of the day. The station and trains passing through its portals are part of my life that is evergreen. Here was the station from where I bade farewell to quite a few close friends going away abroad. Here was a station from where we boarded the train with two young babies to go on our transfers. Here was a station from where I boarded trains to Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Kota, Nagda, Jaipur, Bhopal, Bina, Ludhiana, Amritsar, just to name a few.

Each journey had a life of its own and a story to go with it. Frequent trips to Ludhiana where bearers would bring us half a bottle of whiskey and food they prepare for themselves at 11 pm after other passengers have gone off to sleep, fortnightly trips to Kota where I boarded the train without reservation and slept on the train conductor’s seat for modest payment of Rupees twenty.

No train journey or a tale of a railway station should ever be complete without talking about Bombay; it's a railway system that carries an amazing six million people daily.

I traveled by Bombay local train for years without ever getting bored or tired. The suburban rail system in Bombay has a life and soul of its own. How else can one explain traveler groups celebrating birthdays in these crowded trains, hold Satyanarayana puja, play card games, and women cut vegetables to rush home to do the cooking? Try running towards a departing train at any station and scores of hands will reach out to pick you up.

Now that I am retired, I am dreaming of taking the longest train ride by the Vivek Express, a distance of 3000 miles from Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari. The train stops at 56 stations and the running time is 82 hours. So it will be me and a few friends, civilized conversations, books, food, a large single malt bottle, and sleeping with the rhythm of the Indian railway.