Penguin Book of Indian Railway Stories

by Ruskin Bond

  There is an obvious price to be paid for all this feudal folde-rol and it comes out in the arrogance of the palace staff towards tourists—to be followed by an instant flip to servility of the most gross order when one of the erstwhile royal families appears. Unlike lesser seats where this schizophrenic switch from growling bulldog to grovelling pi has been made into a fine art, Udaipur gives you the true impress of royalty with its subtly understated graces. Like the sun from which the rulers of this elegant state are descended, they have nothing to prove and Udaipur’s atmosphere in every way is a cut above Jaipur’s rather gross display of pomp. But in one feature Jaipur scores over its senior rival. The view over the city at night from yet another palace on the hilltop (shown to me by Teki Tejwal, the Statesman photographer) was unforgettable.

  Jodhpur’s main fort of Mehrangarh is another dominating experience but the wonderful architectural integrity of the city has been seriously compromised by the modern Ummaid Bhavan palace, a modern triumphal ode to mindless opulence. Built as a drought-relief project, one can only suggest that during the next drought the dismantling of this vulgar eyesore would bring relief to the outraged skyline. Jaisalmer is in a class of its own and must rank as one of the world’s most improbable fairytale towns. Its architecture is fused to the desert landscape and the artistry of its citizens amidst such hostile elements makes the mess of India’s bigger cities, where people take no pride in their easier surroundings, all the more culpable.

  Another delightful halt took place in Chittoragarh but we were so pressed for time that it might have been kinder to have left it out, not from any shortcoming of the ruins but simply because its superior mix of architecture and history demands proper respect. The line of Udaipur cuts through some rugged scenery and ahead the marble quarries of the Aravallis lead up to the great ghat section from Kamblighat to Phulad. The princely quality of these ex-royal lines can still be seen in the stone-work of the stations. Unfortunately our tight schedule at Udaipur caused the POW to run late and miss the right of way on to the tight curves of the descent. That meant going down at dusk and depriving this railway buff the mechanical highlight of the week’s run. Special engines were once shedded at Kamblighat to ease the trains down but today YPs do the job gingerly. Our train all the way from Bandikui (which we had reached in the middle of our first night out of Delhi) had been hauled by a YDM4 diesel and the driver had no qualms at taking her down the tortuous ghat line with his twenty-one coaches. In fact he welcomed a TV crew aboard to film the descent. (At last I had come across one advantage that diesel locos have over steam—standing room in the cab.)

  As Kamblighat is a recognized watering hole for thirsty steamers I thought this would be the time to have a bath in the tricky shower on wheels. For once the pressure was right but owing to the buck and slew of the train as it screamed round the sharp unwinding ghat I found the water going everywhere except where it was intended. I made a note of the fact that in the hugely restricted bathroom the waste-pipe of the W.C. stuck out from the wall a full ten inches. As every inch counted one wondered how the Russian size of passenger fared in his ablutions.

  Sleeping in the train was most comfortable and here the only complaint (from my Kerala cabin-mate) was that the air-conditioning was too fierce. Several less actively disposed passengers also queried the intensive tourist routine and would have preferred to relax more on board rather than traipse around palace basements with their oddball collections of princely paraphernalia that ranged from collapsible commodes to Prussian spiked helmets. The disappointment of the steam fan was aggravated by promises of steam engines that never appeared. Such official attempts at soothing indignant reactions were fatal especially when the aggrieved party seemed to be more realistic about railway working than the expert paid to lecture him. If coal-fired locos could not be found on the main line how would they be fuelled at Jaisalmer in the middle of the desert? Most annoying of all was to hear the final promise that steam would be made available for the final stretch back into Delhi. Thus for the first time on the whole trip the photographer could capture the POW hauled by a steam engine in the full light of day. But when we did reach Delhi, by the time Balbir Arora from the rear of the long train had rushed down to get his long-awaited bonus, both engines had decoupled and were seen as disappearing specks down the line. They had decamped for watering, having posed for the full satisfaction of the Yankee cameramen housed in the front portion of the train.

  Companionship between press and tourists overcame all the minor irritants and everyone’s chief fear in view of the outstanding and varied menus on board was that they would be too bulky to get down again from the dining car. The bar was something of a joke, done up in black gleaming plastic-laminate with silvered designs that made the most sober instinctively reach for a drink. (It was more like Las Vegas than Rajasthan.) But it also doubled as a lounge and overcame a very serious running defect of our inaugural train. The distinctively named carriages had their corridor connections sealed off on the grounds that this would encourage privacy and a family feeling amongst the confined passengers. But in practice one suspected it was caused by the basic metric bug-bear of lack of space. At the end of each coach was housed a chief bearer with his butling assistant, both donned in the traditional attire of their province. They had to cook and housekeep and act as security guards against hordes of curious bystanders, as well as appear unflapping at all times before their sahibs. The cribbed arrangements meant that their pantry shelves by day were turned into bunks at night, though in fact one of ours thought it more comfortable to sleep on the floor of the small dining lounge at the other end of the coach, where we had breakfast or watched video films. It was the temptation of the latter that caused the butler to turn himself into a guard at night.

  One thoughtful input of the train designers (the whole rake was conceived and constructed at the Perambur Coach Factory in an incredible six months) was to leave the windows of our individual lounges open so that the true railway lover could stick his head out in the time-honoured custom of his tribe. If there is one monstrous shortcoming of air-conditioning it is in the cocooning of passengers away from the passing scene. Sometimes as one sat looking out of the elegant oval window that was set in our lounge door one could see a passenger train pull up alongside with rustic travellers clinging to the roof, desperate evidence of poverty and horrendous inequality. As a minor saving grace from the charge of privileged right of way, the POW enjoyed no VIP status and had to give precedence to the daily scheduled stock.

  The most serious grumble came from the railway crew themselves, especially the men manning the air-conditioning coach. They found it difficult to buttonhole a journalist who would write about their grievance rather than review the exterior gloss of their smartly painted rake. Apparently in the rush to get the Palace on the road the logistics of housing and feeding the support staff had not been worked out. Now they found they had to eat off station platforms and sleep at their work places. To get drinking water at a wayside station in Rajasthan is not the easiest of tasks, as I found out when I got up early to see the desert sun climb crimsonly over the golden ramparts of Jaisalmer. I asked a local camel driver where they got their water and he pointed to the ground. A well had to go down 300 feet before the crucial layer was struck. But after the sweat of drilling, the reward was to find sweet and mazboot pani (as the locals described it).

  That day in Jaisalmer began disappointingly. As usual when the train got in late we could expect garlands. The critical hour was 10 a.m. because before that the local tourist officer legally need not bestir himself. A cynic in the party thought that all our reception parties looked alike. Were they, their drums, tilaks and garlands, stuffed after the ceremony in the brake-van to follow us for the next off loading? The buses arranged by Rajasthan Tourism to take us from the station to the prescribed unwheeled palaces included a local guide who on the whole performed well. The best was a young man in Udaipur whose commentary matched the class of the city’s palaces. T
he worst was undoubtedly the layabout who thoroughly demoralized our party’s opinion of Jaisalmer. His main job appeared to be that of commission agent for he was much more concerned to linger at handicraft shops than display the town’s remarkably rich architectural heritage. Incredibly, this nincompoop persuaded the whole party to avoid looking over the fort palace on the flimsy grounds that it was ‘empty’. In point of fact the emptiness of Jaisalmer’s magical fortification is a thousand times more fulfilling than trudging past the grandiose clutter of Rajasthan’s other regal basements.

  At the Jaisalmer railway station we had pulled up in our blue-lined ivory livery alongside a genuine royal saloon. The local Maharaja hires out his saloon to parties who prefer the real thing, in spite of the heat and dust these old mahogany bodied coaches are heir to. At Jaipur, in the sidings, the observant visitor could spot the original POW rake awaiting a decision on its redeployment. Apparently one pressing reason for substituting the old carriages by new was not for the cosmetic need to meet modern standards of appearance (replacing real leather bar stools piped with brass studs with rexine coverings fixed with tin tacks) but to satisfy safety standards. A whole rake of highly inflammable coaches is hardly an incentive to railway officers to work out ways to speed up its schedule.

  There was talk that a second metre gauge Palace would be introduced in the south to accommodate the vintage but now idle rake. Called ‘Heritage on Wheels’ it would run on a circuit of Karnataka and Goa lines taking in the cornucopia of India’s southern cultural delights, including Shravanbelgola, Belur, Halebid, Aihole, Badami and Hampi plus the beaches of Goa beyond the ghat line from Londa. The danger here might be to repeat the excess of Rajasthan’s too rich diet. Probably a little more of railway interest and less emphasis on tourist sites would result in more pleasant recollections of Karnataka’s sensational cultural circuit. The forests along the line make for magnificent viewing and the riotous greenery of the Sahyadris is a tourist delight in itself.

  Everyone on the train was by now complaining of indigestion both cultural and culinary. Big meals followed the endless tramp round fusty forts and the menu was so seductive that commonsense invariably lost out to satiation. The oldies in the group began to wilt from the pace and were forced to choose between a swim in the five star pool of our lunch rendezvous or shop for local handicrafts. As the sole steam specialist I boarded a local passenger parked alongside our train and went down the line to the Udaipur loco shed to try and find any predecessor to the YP. Jaipur had yielded a YL but so reluctantly that its loco shed foreman seemed to think I had just landed from Mars.

  Cameras, like alcohol, are forbidden fruits on Indian railways. However read the rules carefully for the more morally doubtful of the two and you discover that consumption of the latter is only proscribed (in best feudal tradition) for the lower orders. Injustice seems bitterly compounded when those already cramped in plebeian circumstances are expected to abstain (though there is nothing in the rules that expressly forbids a second-class passenger from sticking his head out of the window and having a swig when his train passes through a tunnel.)

  Such dilemmas did not assault our itinerary and ensconced amidst the luxury lounge’s Rajasthani decor (which extended to a silk painted ceiling, one sipped the local tonic that came more profitably from the stationary deshi tekka than our moving glitzy bar. Kesar kasturi is the desert equivalent of ‘Highland cream’ and its soporific fall-out after a sensuous mouthful of flame recalls the old Hebridean motto: ‘There’s no such thing as a bad whisky: they all make you immortal.’ There is logic and magic in comparing the distilled spirit with the mysteries of steam traction. Just as water boiled by simple chemistry expands to rejuvenate the dance of molecules, so the spirit of the railway traveller soars with his metric tot of saffron and musk.

  The final stage of our by now thoroughly enjoyable ride through the desert brought us to the scruffy but homely station of Agra Fort. Metre gauge stations unlike their renovated (read ‘destroyed’) counterparts on the broad gauge still command a lot of affection from the student of steam’s golden days. On the overnight journey back to Delhi by the chhoti line (the BG gets you there in four hours) are several delightfully preserved platforms where the station-master’s office still houses an ancient clock and bulky furniture from an age that preceded the coming of the Pickford removal van. Bandikui junction is a delightful period piece, not just a station but a whole railway town laid out in open country, similar to Swindon when Brunei designed his rail workers cottages. The pecking order in Bandikui is sternly apparent from the size of the bungalow you are allotted. But sprawling bougainvillaea has tended to even out the apartheid of hierarchy. A magnificent church spire soars forlornly in search of a congregation from the midst of what was once its hallowed yard but is now a blaze of golden wheat.

  But first the Taj Mahal summoned our attentions. Thanks to the rigorous security precautions we were made to enter by the police quarters so that our initial vision of the tear-drop on the cheek of eternity was through the drying underpants on a police washing line. Lunch was held in another Taj and as conviviality flowed on this penultimate celebration the management decided to drop a hint that, as far as they were concerned, the party was over. (Their subtle signal was to switch off all the lights.) But our group was not to be dislodged so easily. When it was whispered to the food and beverage manager that the climax to our tour had been ruined and that our company had been just about to surprise one of its members with a rendering of ‘Happy birthday to you’ the mellow mood was re-established. As I joined in the chorus, slightly miffed that my birthday had passed—the chairman of the tourist corporation had offered to stand the lucky person a drink in the POW bar that night—I heard the winner’s name, oddly familiar . . .’Happy birthday dear Balbir Arora, happy birthday to you.’

  Railway Reverie

  R.K. Laxman

  SHEKAR ENTERED THE TRAIN compartment and made his way along, bumping against people and assorted baggage left in the narrow corridor. When he finally found his seat he almost collapsed into it.

  The whole day had been spent running around tying up things left to the last minute. He collected his laundry from the U.N. Laundry & Drycleaners, packed his suitcase, gathered the books and papers scattered all over his room and stuffed them haphazardly on the shelf, went hunting for the sweeper to clean up the room, stood in an endless, near immobile queue at the bank to encash a cheque, went to the post office to put through a long-distance call to his mother to inform her about the time of his arrival but abandoned the effort after several attempts. Then he went to his landlady to hand over the key to his paying guest room to which he had moved sometime ago and told her he would be back in a fortnight. When he had finished all this he had just enough time to pick up his luggage and rush to the railway station.

  He looked around to gauge the advantages of the berth he occupied and was satisfied with his window seat but felt that the fan was not angled to benefit him much.

  There were too many people crowding the compartment. Shekar hoped that most of them would get off before the train started. Some were already saying goodbye. There were a few engaged in giving or receiving last minute instructions, advice. There were others who were just hanging on looking bored and glancing at their watches every few minutes. Shekar thought he could write an article ‘Impressions Gathered in a Railway Compartment’. Of course, he would add a lot more details to make it hilarious reading. As he was pondering over this theme he felt someone tapping his elbow. He turned round and saw the coolie who had brought his luggage. He stood there scratching his head, waiting for Shekar to pay him off. Shekar had completely forgotten his presence. He apologized and taking out his purse, gave him some money. The coolie was all set to grumble and make his habitual demand for extra payment when he saw the denomination of the currency note on his palm and slunk away hurriedly.

  ‘Too much, too much! You are spoiling the greedy fellows . . .’ came a voice from a corner.

&nb
sp; ‘Do you know how much these chaps earn per day?’ continued the voice. Shekar took some time to locate it in the crowd. It belonged to a fat chap. He smiled and said, ‘That’s all right. It does not hurt me to pay a little more to these coolies occasionally. I don’t travel very often, you see . . . .’

  ‘But we do. These fellows expect the same extravagant payment from us also . . . .’

  Shekar was in no mood to carry on the argument. But the fat fellow continued, ‘Do you know how much I used to pay these coolies ten years ago?’ Some passengers came in between them at this point and obstructed the view. The fat man leaned sideways and shouted, ‘You know how much? Ten years ago? Why even five years ago . . .?’

  He seemed a determined type and Shekar became a captive listener. The man was waiting for an answer still leaning his whole bulk to one side.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Shekar.

  ‘Ah, I thought so! One rupee per luggage of average size like your suitcase.’ He waited for Shekar’s reaction of astonishment. Shekar deliberately looked wooden.

  This irritated the fellow. ‘Now you generously pay five rupees! It is this kind of careless extravagance which is responsible for inflation . . . .’

  Mercifully the guard’s whistle simultaneously with a shrill hoot from the engine provided an escape for Shekar. The train began to move and the people on the platform floated away backward and disappeared, giving way to lampposts, stone buildings, signboards, railway hardware, slums, huts, factories and finally vast fields.