15 October 2013, 11:49 AM IST
My father was a great traveller. He was a true wayfarer, someone to whom the act of journeying was at least as important as the incidental objective of reaching a specific destination. Yet he was a domestic man and liked to travel with a comfortable clutter of luggage, which included the family. As a result, I spent my early childhood on swaying, rattling trains criss-crossing the Indian subcontinent.
We seldom went by first or second class. I don't think it was so much that we couldn't afford it as that my father seemed to feel that real travel, as distinct from merely getting from one point to another, could not fully be savoured within the stiff and rather starchy setting which was a feature of higher class accommodation. Sometimes, however, he drew the line at the hurly-burly of the third class coaches and made a truly middle-class compromise by opting for the inter -- a curious niche that now belongs to the past. Inter was different from the first and second classes in that it had a longer coach which carried some 16 or 20 passengers as against the four, six or eight of the former, and it was distinguished from third class by the addition of an inch-and-a-half of padding on the slatted wooden seats.
I sat by the window with the wind in my face, drowsy with the rocking lullaby of the rails, the slow spin of the flat countryside, the heat of the afternoon and the bluebottle drone of whirring fans. Then the train slowed, there was the staccato rhythm of points, and my father shouted, "It's Tundla! Who wants some fresh crisp dalmoth?" I was up and at the open door before the train had stopped moving, scanning the surging crowd for sight of the dalmoth vendor. For, of course, if it was Tundla near Delhi, it would only be dalmoth. It could not possibly be the glass bangles of rainbow music with which a seller was trying to tempt my sister; nor the creamy rabri, served in shallow cones of dried leaf; nor, regrettably, the pocket knife with its many intriguing blades and other implements fanned out in a glittering arc which kept distracting me. My father was firm about that. Tundla, he had taught us, was famous for its dalmoth. Only someone who had the opportunity to travel, which we had, and so did not know any better, which we did, would buy anything apart from dalmoth at Tundla station.
From my father's catechisms my sister and I knew that Burdwan, 70 miles out of Calcutta where we lived, was the place of mihidana, tiny globules of gram flour soaked in syrup, and sitabhog, a sweet vermicelli confection. At Moghul-serai, you bought earthenware pots which kept water cool even on the hottest of days. If one took a slight detour one could go to Patna for laddus, round as cannon-balls and almost as hard, but sweetly delicious to eat. The holy city of Benaras was the place for mangoes, as also was Saharanpur.
In my personalised geography of taste and texture Nagpur, wherever that was, evoked the tang of oranges and the aromatic smoothness of their peels. Allahabad was for flower vases and glazed ceramic dogs of improbable hue, Aligarh for knives and locks, Agra for bangles and Moradabad for brassware. Barog, on the narrow gauge line once known as "Mr Kipling's railway" because the English writer often used it going up to the hill resort of Simla, spelt breakfast. Barog station was supposed to serve the best breakfast on the entire railway network, even if – like my father – you were a strict vegetarian and substituted vegetable cutlets for the traditional British-style bacon and eggs. And at Karjat, chugging up the narrow gauge line into the Western Ghats, you could get piping hot battata wadas, potato patties hot dipped in batter and fried. And so the vast country with its far-flung, strange names grew familiar to me, each place with its own localised flavour, its own reason to be on the map.
But now we were in Tundla, and unless I looked sharp there wasn't going to be any dalmoth for us. I finally spotted a vendor, and called him, buying a packet which we washed down in crunchy mouthfuls with earthenware bowls of spicy tea.
South of the Vindhya range, it is coffee, and very good coffee if you like it with plenty of milk and sugar and poured out by the yard in great steaming cascades to cool it. However, in the northern part of India, tea is the most common item of platform fare. From lonely whistle-stops in the far reaches of night, to important junctions teeming in the noonday heat you can hear the sing-song cry of chai, garram chai! (Tea, hot tea!). The call conjures up all the sights and smells and sounds of train travel in India.
Fierce sunlight, tiger-striped by iron bars, the acrid miasma of dust and stream, the cool sweetness of water poured from a baked clay pot, the press of bodies and clamour of voices, the oiled patience of great machinery, the unending land slipping by the window, the sudden thunder of a bridge and the wail of the whistle down the tunnel of night. All this in a mud bowl of tea.
(To be concluded tomorrow)
jug.suraiya@timesgroup.com
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