Observations: In Between Trains

There are two sounds I love above almost everything else. The first is the sound of birds chirping. The second is the whistle of trains as they rush past, far away. Fortunately, my new home allows me to hear both these sounds every day. Every evening, after sunset, I sit out in my balcony, and listen to the mournful, lonesome wails of long distance trains as they rush through the night.

“Wooooooooaaaaaannnnnnnhhhhhh”, the long distance trains shriek, as they speed through the night. They sound like huge, metallic dinosaurs lost in the winter night fog, desperately trying to find their way back to the rest of the herd. The train lines are quite far away from where I live, about two miles, but the sound carries at night, when all is quiet. It is a sound that never fails to thrill me.

I have reasons for loving trains. When I was a small boy, air travel was nowhere near as ubiquitous or inexpensive as it is today. Every time my parents wanted to go on a vacation, we piled onto a train. We usually vacationed in winter, and travelled to places far away. This meant preparing for the train trip days in advance. My dad, with his usual precision and eye for detail, would make long lists of what needed to be taken along for the trip. For my mother and him, travelling anywhere meant days of advance preparation. It felt more like an expedition than a vacation. But that was all part of the experience. My parents are still amazed at how I pack for a trip (my packing takes no more than thirty minutes). For them, travelling involved a lot of preparation – material and mental.

Winter is the best time for travelling by train in India. The weather is great, and the early morning fog adds an element of romance and mystery to any train trip, especially if you are travelling in North India. Take a look out of your train compartment on a winter morning anywhere in North India, and you will feel like you have stepped into the pages of a Raj-era E.M. Forster novel.

I still have so many vivid memories of travelling by train in winter. Some of them are permanently etched in my mind. Watching the towering Howrah Bridge materialize out of thin air as the train pulled into Howrah Station on a Calcutta winter morning is one such memory. I guarantee you that the first sight of Howrah Bridge from the train will leave you speechless. It looks like a flawless structure, a shiny beast straight out of a science fiction movie.

Another such memory is that of the great Sanchi Stupa outside the little town of Vidisha in Central India. When travelling from Mumbai (Bombay) to Delhi on the Central Railway, you will suddenly see the “chhatra” or roof of the main Sanchi Stupa rising from behind the tree-line by the side of the tracks. The roof of the Stupa appears to float in mid-air, thanks to the heavy early morning fog. The Stupa is a marvellous complex of buildings dating back to the third century B.C. Its construction was started in the reign of Ashoka the Great – India’s greatest king. The Stupa is part of the living history of India, and in my opinion, should qualify as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The contrast of the Stupa seemingly floating in mid-air, with the emerald-green fields of Central India as a backdrop, is stunning, and is something that will stay with you for a long time.

Unfortunately, steam powered trains are a thing of the past. These engines were once the backbone of the Indian Railways and were very much in service until about twenty years ago, especially on the smaller and lesser known train routes. Watching several steam powered engines huff and puff their way into the railway sheds in Lucknow is another enduring memory of my childhood. When you travelled in a train pulled by a steam powered engine, you knew that travelling could be a pretty tiring and strenuous affair. You could sense the little engine giving it all it had, as the soot from the coal fired engine settled on your clothes. It took a long while for the engine to finally get up to high speed, by which time it was groaning and gasping for breath. When the train finally pulled into a station, you heard the little engine exhale, and take a break from its labours. It was truly fascinating stuff, in my opinion.

Steam engines are no longer in service on the Indian Railways. They have become extinct and gone the way of the dodo. There may be a steam engine heaven somewhere, where these sturdy engines built more than a century ago frolic and play. If so, I would like to go there when I die. The one steam engine that is still in service is the one going up to Himalayan mountain town of Darjeeling, in Northern West Bengal. This little engine, more than a hundred years old, is lovingly preserved and taken care of, and is still in daily use. Travelling on that train is one of the things I intend doing before I die. The sight of the world’s third highest peak, Kanchenjunga, wreathed in clouds as it first appears from the train, is something I would not want to miss.

Of course, Indian train stations tend to be unhygienic, crowded, chaotic places. Watching a crowd of travellers at an Indian railway station, writer Paul Theroux remarked that they looked like “a crowd of lazy refugees fleeing an ambiguous catastrophe”. That pretty much sums it up.

Apart from the real pleasures, sights and sounds of train travel, there is also another factor that is responsible for my love of trains. As a child, train travel for me meant vacations, a change from the mundane and routine. It meant pleasurable anticipation, and a chance to leave one’s boring and sometimes difficult life behind for the irresistible charm of new places and adventures. Like Jimi Hendrix once sang:

“I hear my train a’comin’
Comin’ to take me
From this lonesome town”

I know what Jimi meant. Trains were a way to reinvent oneself; a way to new adventures and a new life; a way to leave behind those parts of yourself that you did not like; a new start.

Air travel doesn’t have the same appeal. Even today, when I feel uncertain or apprehensive about the future, I convince myself that I am in between trains. Sooner or later, my train is going to pull into the station and take me away from this lonesome town.