I want the old trains back

PERIPATETIC

My parents and I took a trip down nostalgia lane yesterday. The topic of conversation "" travel at a time when the journey offered up as much jollity as the eventual destination.

And unlike fantasies about how inflation was once controllable and politicians once honourable, this actually happened. For the early part of my life, I experienced it for myself.

A two-and-a-half-day long train journey from Kanpur to Kozhikode today might seem unthinkable and utterly avoidable but in those days it offered up plenty of thrills.

Separate luggage would be packed for the journey itself "" books (still more would be purchased at Higginbothams on the platform), Scrabble (magnetic, of course), playing cards, toiletries in watertight dispensers and practical PJs that we'd scramble into to scamper around.

Trunk calls were made to notify relatives and friends who lived along the rail route.

And the hapless souls would show up waving a little too earnestly as the train drew into Jhansi or Vijayawada.

The sister and I'd secretly hope they'd arrive with treats; any respite from omelette sandwiches and poori bhaaji was welcome.

We were often disappointed; all that was offered was a flask of coffee. "That they were there at midnight to say hello suffices," said Perpetual Pollyanna, otherwise known as my mother.

Train travel was a moving feast. The only thing more important than your tiffin carrier was the size of your neighbour's; platitudes over making acquaintance replaced by the silent handing out of farsan. The Gujaratis and Marwaris were particularly generous companions.

The tiffin carrier was always tactically stacked... each dabba opened only at the appropriate time. "Idlis please?" "Not until the third morning of the journey... idlis keep best." Airline travellers are not nearly as excited by the trappings of their food trays, often treating them to a rather jaundiced eye.

Second to food, and only by a wafer, was the element of social interaction. On the train you were a willing participant, on airplanes seclusion is disdainfully sought out. The relative anonymity of a captive audience on trains invariably seduced you into all sorts of indiscreet talk. And some of those "friends" actually did call back.

The tiffin carrier reminds one of other items of "carry-on luggage" fast disappearing from urban consciousness. Whatever happened to those hold-alls, a roll-up of pillow, blanket and other bedding?

The parents recall the trusty ice-vendor on every station. Blocks of ice were purchased and placed in the centre of the first class coupe to simmer down an excruciating summer.

"What about the puddle left behind," I asked. Mother looked confused, "Who worried about little things like that." Today, there's airport rage to contend with road rage. That or a dull ennui that hangs over airline travellers.

In his 1934 book, English Journey, British author J B Priestley wrote, rather ahead of his time: "When people moved slowly in their travel there was time to establish proper communications with what was strange, to absorb, to adjust oneself. Now that we are whizzed about the world, there is no time for absorbing and adjusting . . . By the time we can travel at four hundred miles an hour we shall probably move over a dead uniformity... Indeed, by that time there will be movement, but, strictly speaking, no more travel."

There's a lot of talk in the European press these days of train companies hitting back at budget air operators. Trains are being seen as greener, sometimes quicker, more efficient, and "" in an instance of inverse snobbery "" even as more glamourous. Will the age of the leisurely train journey reappear? I am not sure urban India wants it to. Not if they can afford not to.