My first long journey in a train was when I was probably 13 years old. It was surely an exciting and interesting way to travel when compared to the only other means I knew – buses. I had discovered a spacious and relatively luxurious way to travel. And I had loved the idea of travelling for long hours, with landscapes rolling back, and bringing new places and new structures that were once ahead of us, hour after hour. That first journey was along the coast of Kerala and I loved having to encounter rivers that we frequently crossed, the rivers that were on their way to meet the Arabian Sea. The villages, the lush greenery and the paddy fields and coconuts trees weren’t really new to me, but what had amused me was the population density that I had not seen before. I had loved the experience of seeing new things. We, a bunch of kids always tried hard to loose sight of the elderly to sit next to the door and watch the receding landscapes and indulge in the pleasure of wind hitting us as the train kept speeding. I did not make many train journeys later as a kid, may be another one or two in the next few years.
On a charming toy train
As I grew up, I hardly travelled beyond distances that could be covered by a bus and the train journeys were only a distant past. In 2003, I made another journey from Bangalore to Siliguri via Chennai and Kolkata. When I started, I remembered those pleasing journeys I undertook as a child and looked forward to reliving those memories. But what I did see was definitely not what I was looking forward to. There were two set of people who ensured that the journey was unbearable – the first set was we passengers and the second was the railways themselves.
A lot most people travelling in the train seem to find it delighting to dirty the train. I was shocked to see that the berths booked by large travelling families used it not just for sitting and sleeping. It added up as kitchen as well as wash area! It was hard to watch people callously wash their hands after lunch right below their berths and let the water flow freely in the compartment. And garbage was thrown inside or out of the window without much thought. Garbage and plastic was always there adjoining the track no matter how long you travelled. It was depressing to see all that.
The Indian Railways seemed to be eqully enthusiastic about keeping their property dirty. I searched and searched, and found it difficult to believe that there are no dustbins in the compartments. I was forced to use a plastic bag to store garbage, but had no choice but throw out of the window the wet disposables like coffee cup. It hurts to do that; I stopped consuming coffee in my further journeys. The stations are dirty and the railway tracks are dirtier. Howrah station on the way was depressing. Basic amenities like restaurants are missing even in larger stations. The food served in the train is not very appealing either and you don’t have much choice but to consume it. Railways seems to be hard at work to make the journey as miserable as possible. But the convenience of space and comfort and the pleasure of watching the world outside the window still remained.
I haven’t travelled first class or AC yet, and have been told that they are much better and convenient. But each time I made a decision to travel in any of these classes, at least for the sake of experience, I end up thinking hard and taking a flight instead. Fortunately, not all routes suffer from the same problem and there are places especially in the south where it still pleasant to make a journey by train. A journey on the Konkan railway is something I have been thinking of, and am looking forward to seeing the rail route from Mysore to Mangalore opening up. But in general, I still long for the experience that the trains can offer, and yet find it difficult to choose trains against flights. But I hope the days come when Indian Railways truly works to make our journeys memorable and pleasant and I can return to making the journeys I always loved.
What is your take on travelling in trains?
Auli -> Rishikesh -> Corbett National Park -> Varanasi -> Agra
+Previous: About Corbett
+Next: Arriving at Varanasi
+Go to beginning of the series
After Corbett, my next destination was Varanasi. My options were to take a slow train from Ramnagar to Varanasi or take a bus to Moradabad, and then take a faster train to Varanasi that would drop me there in half the time. I chose the later.
I did not have much to do in Ramnagar on the day of departure, so I decided to leave early and take the bus to Moradabad. My train was scheduled to leave Moradabad at 4.30pm but I was there as early as 1pm. I could not find any clean restaurants anywhere close to the station and decided to eat something at the station and rest for a while. That is when I realized that I had high expectations of India’s train stations.
Moradabad is a fairly big station, with four platforms and anything like a thousand people in the station at any point of time. I entered in and searched for a restaurant, and was surprised to see that there wasn’t any! It was hard to understand how Indian Railways decided that travellers in a busy train station like this did not need to replenish themselves! There was a small dark and dingy shop where a sign read “refreshments”. But all that they had for sale was a few biscuit packets, mineral water(thank god!) and chai. And even the biscuits were of just one particular brand that did not enthuse me much.
So I decided to go hungry. I picked up a magazine and walked into the waiting room to kill time till the train arrives. After ten minutes or so, a railway-uniformed lady walked in, and went around with a register to everyone in the room. She came to me too, asked me to fill in my name and ticket details and asked me to show my ticket. I wondered why are they doing all this and asked her –
“Yeh kis liye?” – What is this for?
She did not seem to be in a mood to respond and bluntly said “because you are here at this time!”. I gave a puzzled look and started scribbling into the dusty pages of the register. She loosened up a bit, smiled and asked me if I had never travelled by train. I replied that I never waited in a waiting room!
Looks like the railways were guarding the waiting room as very precious asset! They wanted to ensure only people with an outbound ticket were seated in the room. And they had even hired some one to just sit there, check everyone’s tickets once in a while and make entries in the register. Did one of our netas come up with this idea to create more jobs?! I am not sure if they think waiting rooms are such great places that people all over would flock in to sit there, and there is a need to restrict these invaders! And this jealous guarding of their property seems to be in the blood of the railways. A year ago when I wanted to use the cloakroom in Haridwar, the person in charge denied the service because my ticket to the evening train was starting from Dehradun and not Haridwar. And all this despite the cloakroom being a paid service!
And then there is furious licensing of the economy of the platform. The fruit vendor with a cart in the platform had a seller’s license plate with a license number stuck to his cart. The man carrying a fruit basket had a license too and so did the small condiments shop and the magazine seller. There was nothing you could do without a license inside the station. I wonder what all bureaucratic and under-the-table processes would one have to go through to acquire one of these precious licenses! May be the fruit vendor was station master’s son’s friend’s maid’s son, or may be he had to make an initial investment that was much beyond just buying fruits! And all this would have been done, starting with an ad in the national newspapers inviting applications or tenders to sell fruits in platforms and plenty of other paper work that would have kept our babus busy!
By the time my train arrived, I was hungry and decided to at least eat some Bananas. I wasn’t very keen to eat the dinner served in the train and could not have managed to go hungry in the night too. The train arrived on time. I got in and was alarmed to see someone already seated on my berth. But he quietly made way for me and sat down in a corner. A little later, I wanted to stretch and asked him to move to another seat and he obliged without complaining. As the train moved forward, the TT came, announced my berth number and asked for my ticket. He did not bother to check the tickets of many others(including the guy who was on my berth) who did not seem to have a ticket. His business, it appears, was to check if the legitimate ticket holder actually had his ticket, and ignore rest of the people! People came and went at every station and a good number of them did not seem to have a ticket. I was fortunate to have an upper birth and was not disturbed by this flow.
Footfalls in the compartment came down considerably with the nightfall. Inside of the compartment fell silent as people started getting under their bed-sheets one by one and the only sound that could be heard was the monotonous “dug-dug” of the speeding train. I pulled out my sleeping bag too and spent rest of the night half asleep and half awake, anticipating the next few days at India’s most ancient and holy city. I stepped out on the platform of Varanasi City station at 7am the next morning, again, right on time.