Nostalgia

We fled to the mountains every summer. Everyone who was anyone fled to the mountains in the hot weather particularly all Civil Service families. We came from a long line of civil servants.

And so, when the gul mohar trees flared scarlet and mynahs got drunk on the maroon and fleshy seemul flowers, I started to get restless for the safari to the Himalayas. And the excitement began long before we left home.

It started with the kitting up of Ibrahim Bux, our bearer. We always took along at least one servant who had to be equipped for the hills: new achkan, turban, cummerband, polished monograms and buckles. And so, when the darzi (tailor) came and took his measurements, I knew that the journey was imminent. Then there was Buster, our bull terrier, a dog with boundless energy, unflinching devotion and an insatiable appetite. Since we always reserved all four berths in the compartment for exclusive use day and night, Buster could have stayed with us, but dad was adamant. One year, Buster’s furiously wagging tail had dislodged dad’s bottle of Black & White and got the whole compartment smelling like a cheap bar in Port Said, as my grandfather put it. After that, Buster traveled in the Dog Box. We had also to attend to the matter of stocking the hamper. Many travellers did use the railway telegraph to send their meal orders in advance, but we generally ate our own food for the first two days of the journey. There was roast duck and hard boiled eggs, sandwiches in slightly dampened sandwich cloth, roast potatoes and boiled potatoes in their jackets, a round of cheese from the Military Farms, thermos flasks of tea, coffee and milk, a soda siphon in its wire-reinforced flagon, cake and a jar of sweets from Hall& Andersons, Calcutta. Also a biscuit tin tilled with freshly baked liver biscuits for Buster.

I did say it was a safari didn’t I?

Then came the great day. It was expected that all senior government officials, before boarding the train, would meet the station master, driver and guards. In those days the railways offered a very personalized service.

Finally, with a whistle and a hoot and a clanking of the coupling we began to move. We would spend three days in our polish wood and green rexine compartment.

There were no corridor trains then. Consequently, train compartments were private fortresses against the outside world. They were self-contained with attached bathrooms, cushioned berths and easy chairs with swing-out foot rests swiveled under the arms. They also had built-in whisky glass holders in the right arm. All windows were unbarred but they had three sliding blinds, one of glass, a second of wire mesh to exclude soot and sparks from the coal fired engine, and a jillmill with wooden louvers if you wanted fresh air and privacy. At the nearest stop to 11’o clock, 2’o clock in the afternoon, 5’o clock in the evening and sometimes at 8’o clock at night, the catering service brought in a large block of ice which they placed in a zinc container under the whirring fans. After an hour or so, ice-melt water begins to slosh around and spill onto the green floor, but the compartment stayed pleasantly cool and humid.

Cooled by the ice, lulled by the swaying clickety-clack of the train, it was very easy to fall asleep, walking only for the obligatory meals served from the hamper, or later, brought to our compartment by the caterer’s bearers. They were all starched turbans and white uniforms and for such mals-on-wheels they swung nonchalantly from door to door on speeding trains, their trays balanced on one hand. They never spilit a drop of the tomato soup with sippets, chicken curry and rice and caramel custard: standard Anglo-Indian fare on the railways.

Then the passengers dozed again. I didn’t how could? India unreeled outside our windows, holding me enthralled. Flat green fields; enormous wilderness stretched to the horizon; camel caravans plodded; slow herds of cattle drifted out of tight, mud-walled villages through the mists of morning, drafted back at go-dhuli (cattle dust time) in the pollen sunset. Often, in my enthusiasm to see it all, I raised or dropped all the blinds, felt the scorching wind sear across my face and reveled in that wondrous panorama flowing past. Almost as often, coal dust blew into my eyes, burning and smarting and had to be dislodged by the corners of my parents handkerchiefs and liberal applications of water from the thermos. Then, to soothe a wind-burnt skin, Mum laved 4711 Eau de Cologne on my face and the compartment smelt, to quote my grandfather again, like a bordello in Paris. Grand-dad was an Army Surgeon, much traveled, so presumably he had experienced it all!

New chapters of experience opened every time the train chugged into a station. Each station was unique. As Dad and I strode down the platforms, exercising a leash-tugging Buster, the sight and smells and sounds that assailed me were an unrolling Persian carpet of the senses. Village people in small clusters wafted the out-doorsy aroma of cattle, the men with their staves and moustaches chewing tobacco, the women with their glittering bangles and their mouths red with paan (betel leaf), mendicants with mattered hair and iron tridents wreathed in clouds of herbally-sweet smoke, dandies in white, effete with ittar, gruff planters in khaki shorts puffing briar pipes, green robed and bearded fakirs waving peacock plumes over smoking pots billowing with the fragrance of incense. The platforms were a symphony of scents.

Vendors sang their own chorales pushing their barrows. Their voices, their accents, were laced with the intonations of their regions. A senior civil servant once said that he had identified 316 distinct ways of speech during the train ride from Patna to Dehra Dun.

This journey was a child’s gourmet odyssey. There were mouthwatering laddoos from Sandhela, honey-gold amritis made with sun-melted jaggery from Varanasi, translucent pethas from Lucknow, crackling sugar candy animals from Bareilly…

There was also that very special treat. Once on every trip, dad and I hurried down the length of the platform, stood and looked at the firemen filling water into the boiler, drenching the coal, polishing the brass, particularly the plate wh9ich proudly bore the name of the driver. Every driver had his own engine. When he rested so did the engine. The driver’s firemen wiped the engine clean of soot at every watering hole. Often when the driver saw me he said, you want a ride sonny? Hop on board; we have a short run to the next station. What bliss! Valves and levers and the great engine growling and levers and the great engine growling and the firemen stocking the fierce furnace and the driver tugging the whistle till it hissed with steam and screamed and screamed its banshee shrick while the engine roared and swallowed up the track. That’s the ghat stretch through the Shivaliks: tiger and elephant country. Whee-whee! Read the Jungle book? Mowgli and Hathi and Sher Khan. Keep your eyes peeled for them sonny boy. Ha! Ha! And the firemen shut the firebox, the engine slowed down, puffes steam, the brakes squealed, the train stopped and we hopped off. I swaggered down the platform because I had been there, right at the head of the thundering Doon Express.

It was great pulling into the single platform of Dehra Dun station with the blue hills of Mussoorie rising beyond. But all through our cool, high holiday in the Himalayas I kept thinking of the time when I would ride the rails of the Doon Express again….