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The Railways have
been generously celebrated in Indian movies. The railway platform is
a metaphor of arrivals, departures, separations, quiet loneliness,
expectations and romance. Running trains have been sites of
love-making, proposals, advances, fights, accidents, songs, murder or
acquaintance-making. A train features in almost every Hindi movie
Of all the fine
arts, cinema has pat-ronised the Railways in a big way. Cinema is a
total art and encompasses other fine arts like music, dance,
literature in the form of story and dialogue, poetry as lyrics for
songs and visuals as a variation of theme of painting. In other
words, cinema patronises all art forms liberally.
Whereas the Railways
have not created any niche in individual art form, it has provided
space for the story line as a central theme for the initiation of
love and its fulfilment. It provides for action and enables enactment
of a tragedy.
The
train has been used as a metaphor is popular songs of yesteryear like
Ye Duniya Toofan Mail (this world is a stormy/express mail).
The rhythm of this popular melody conforms to the movement of a train
interspersed with the whistle of a train. Life is a journey with
passengers getting in and alighting at various destinations; all are
travellers meeting to disperse. There is a poignancy in the notes.
Another
popular movie song Mere Sapnon Ki Rani Kab Ayegi Tu in the
film, Aradhana, was a hit. The heroine travels in a mountain
toy train chugging at a snail’s pace in the Darjeeling hills
with the railway line running alongside a road and the hero in a car
serenades her.
The
dance sequence in open wagons as in the box office hit Dil Se
is not only full of musical substance but also extremely well
executed in its picturisation. The opening Chaiyan Chaiyan
song and dance aboard a railway wagon was a superhit. The Railways
provided the backdrop for abundant movement to the dancers engrossed
in raptures of rhythm.
The
Burning Train portrays the anguish of the passengers travelling
in a train that lost its control over brakes. Similarly, the classic
story of Pakeeza takes off when the hero glances at the
beautiful feet of the heroine travelling in the same compartment. And
then there is the train as memory personified in the song Chalte
Chalte. The interweaving of music, dance and visuals is a marvel
in cinematography.
The
fight sequence on a running train in another blockbuster, Sholay,
is sensational and breathtaking. Again the amalgam of visuals, sound
and background music creates a masterpiece of sorts. Scenes of fights
on the roof of a train or couplings between bogies are hair-raising
experiences.
Train
and train-related themes have consistently engaged the attention of
filmmakers. Toofan Mail (1934) set the trend of stunt movies.
Similarly Burning Train was a finely-executed film that kept
viewers on the tenterhooks. It was cinema capturing action at its
best. Coolie with super-hero Amitabh Bachchan and Coolie
No.1 with Govinda were also popular films where the masses could
identify themselves with the hero.
Train
scenes have figured prominently in films dealing with the theme of
Partition of the country in 1947. It was captured with poignancy in
Nastik. Generally, whenever a hero is depicted as a novice
from a rural area entering a metropolis, the scene pertains to the
railway station or outside one where he is found bewildered by the
sheer scale of things.
More than ships,
boats, aeroplanes or buses, the Railways have fired the imagination
of movie-makers who have generously used trains, railway platforms,
railway waiting rooms, engines, level crossings, station master’s
lanterns... Long live Indian Railways and movies!
The dance sequence in open wagons
as in the box office hit Dil Se is not only full of musical
substance but also extremely well executed in its picturisation. The
opening Chaiyan Chaiyan song and dance aboard a railway wagon
was a superhit. The railways provided the backdrop for abundant
movement to the dancers engrossed in raptures of rhythm.
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