I cannot remember when I traveled in a train for the first time but my mother tells me it must have been when I was a couple of months old. My father, a bank officer, would get transferred every few years and we would set off, discovering new parts of India. And wherever we were, thrice a year we would be on a train to my grandparents' house in Rajahmundry, on the banks of River Godavari.
My affair with trains intensified when I joined boarding school in Bangalore for my 11th and 12th standard. Every term break, I would take a night train to Madras (as it was called then, and still is, in my memories) and change to the Coromandel Express the next morning to Vijayawada. I loved traveling alone, charting out what I would do next. I'd spend most of the eight hours standing or sitting at the door, taking in the beautiful sights of Indian countryside. Filmfare, CineBlitz and other assorted magazines would be devoured alongwith samosas, coffee, dal-vadas and soan papdi.
My English text had Ruskin Bond's Eyes Have It as one of twelve short stories; I had also read his Night Train at Deoli. I dreamt of such romantic encounters on my journeys too, but alas, that wasn't to be. Perhaps I didn't have the finesse of Bond or maybe Dehra and Mussourie were where the action was!
For eight years during my hostel life, I must have made countless journeys. From Bangalore to Vijayawada, Surat and Ahmedabad to Mumbai, Surat to Tirupati and Ahmedabad to Cochin, each was a thrilling adventure. I was a romantic poet in one, I broke a foot in another, I ran barefoot on a platform at midnight looking for chai during a third, I slept under a berth in one other...
As I make this twenty hour journey with my wife and two daughters in the comfort of an AC First Class compartment, in the company of Ruskin Bond's Short Stories, I cannot but feel nostalgic about the journeys that shaped my youth.