Great Summer Pilgrimage

 

The Great Summer Pilgrimage

Summer in Delhi meant only one thing.

We were going to our parents hometown.

Every year, as soon as school closed, the great migration began. Suitcases appeared from nowhere. Steel tiffin carriers were filled with enough food to feed a small battalion. Relatives were informed. Neighbours were told. And someone would produce the Indian Railways timetable, which was treated with the respect normally reserved for sacred texts.

There were two great choices: GT Express or Tamil Nadu Express.

They were both trains to Madras, but they represented two very different schools of thought.

GT Express was the old-fashioned expedition.

It felt like you were travelling across India because, in fact, you were travelling across India. You had time to settle into your berth, establish relationships with the family in the next compartment, identify the railway vendors and develop a detailed understanding of every major station between Delhi and Madras.

Tamil Nadu Express was different.

It had the air of a train that had somewhere to be.

It was faster, newer and somehow more serious about getting you to Madras. GT felt like a three-day family holiday that happened to involve a railway track. Tamil Nadu Express felt like Indian Railways had finally become impatient with you.

For us children, both were equally exciting.

For Amma, the difference was largely academic.

Food had to last three days.

The tiffin carriers were packed with military precision.

Idli and molagapodi. Puliyodarai. Curd rice.

The curd rice was particularly ambitious. By the time it was packed in Delhi, it was already slightly sour. By the second day, it had acquired a personality. By the third day, it required extra salt, a little milk bath and considerable faith.

Sometimes it simply gave up.

This was when we began looking around the compartment hopefully for the presence of a Gujarati family.

Every compartment had a possibility.

And the Gujarati family usually had the food trunk.

It was an extraordinary object, this trunk. It seemed to contain an inexhaustible supply of thepla, dhokla, farsan, pickles and snacks. No matter how many times they opened it, more food appeared.

We regarded it as an Akshaya Patra.

Our tiffin carrier was a finite resource.

Their trunk appeared to operate on a different economic system.

The journey itself had its rituals.

At every station, someone would get down to fill water. Someone else would buy a newspaper or magazine. There were magazines everywhere—Ananda Vikatan, Kumudam, India Today, Sportstar—and buying one was considered an essential part of the journey.

Then there were the junctions.

The train would stop for what seemed like an eternity.

Almost immediately, the same question would arise:

“Is it late?”

Nobody asked whether the train was on time.

We were already suspicious of that possibility.

The railway timetable book would be consulted repeatedly, as if staring at it long enough might persuade the train to behave.

GT Express encouraged this kind of uncertainty.

Tamil Nadu Express merely gave us a different reason to worry: why aren't we moving faster?

There was also railway coffee.

It came in a flask.

The flask had probably been in service since Independence and had possibly never been washed properly since then.

Still, when the vendor poured it into the little paper cup, it was called coffee and we accepted the description.

Then came the afternoon cutlet.

A mysterious object, often shaped like a heart for reasons nobody ever explained, accompanied by an equally mysterious red liquid called ketchup.

It was not quite clear what either contained, but after a day and a half on a train, standards had adjusted themselves accordingly.

The journey had its regional specialties too.

Nagpur oranges. Mathura peda. Itarsi puri-subzi.

The railway stations became a kind of moving food map of India.

Every halt brought a new possibility.

Every halt also brought the inevitable question:

“How much longer?”

And then there was the greatest attraction of all: the open train door.

We would stand there, holding onto the railing, letting the wind hit our faces as the countryside rushed past.

It was exhilarating.

It was also, according to Amma, an excellent way to fall off a train and end the family vacation permanently.

“Come inside!”

“You will fall!”

“Close the door!”

We ignored her.

Perhaps this is where my lifelong fascination with convertibles began.

There was something about the wind in your face, the landscape rushing past and the complete absence of a roof that seemed fundamentally right.

Meanwhile, inside the compartment, another engineering experiment was taking place.

When the ceiling fan slowed down, somebody would produce a comb and insert it carefully into the fan blades to give it a little push.

This was not particularly effective.

But it was comforting to know that Indian Railways had passengers willing to participate in mechanical maintenance.

Three days later, finally, Madras.

We had survived the curd rice.

We had consumed the cutlets.

We had bought the magazines.

We had asked at every major station whether we were late.

We had survived Amma's repeated predictions of our imminent death.

We had finally arrived.

Except we hadn't.

Because the journey to our final destination was still waiting for us.

From Egmore, we had another train to catch—the Day Express to Sirkazhi.

And this was the great joke of the whole journey.

After spending three days travelling from Delhi to Madras, we were now told that we had one more day of train travel.

GT Express or Tamil Nadu Express had brought us to Madras.

The Day Express would take us home.

At that point, nobody cared which train it was.

We had reached Tamil Nadu.

And in those days, that was not a destination.

It was a reward for surviving the journey.