TRAINSPOTTING IN HINTERLAND

REVERSE SWING

- MADHAVAN NARAYANAN

“NOT all those who wander are lost”—this line from a J RR Tolkien poem deserves an Indian derivative.

Not all those who travel are tourists. We know of family travellers traversing cities, pilgrim packed into buses, and business jet-setters claiming extra legroom. But it’s time to look beyond and appreciate a hinterland revolution in motion, thanks to the Indian Railways.

There was a time when second-class train travel was a fancied—and often only—option among India’s urban middle-class citizens. Shyam Benegal captured the sentiment evocatively in Yatra, a 15-episode fiction series for Doordarshan in 1986, in an era when both TV viewers and train travellers had no choice beyond what the government offered.

Although India’s chequered history of luxury trains dates back to 1934, when the ‘ice-cooled’ Peshawar Express (later renamed Frontier Mail) was launched, the real journey began in 1969 with the fully air-conditioned Rajdhani Express that connected Howrah with New Delhi. Luxurious train travel gained momentum with the shorter Shatabdi Express routes launched in 1988.

More recently, we have seen the rise of the Vande Bharat Express, some of them with a ‘vistadome’ variant enabling panoramic views from the seat. The high-speed Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train is an emerging showpiece, while city metro systems are springing forth across the country. Air-conditioned chair cars have increased comfort, but lowered the romance of rugged travel in which co-passengers used to become friends, at least grudgingly during the journey.