By Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, MD

Going by the responses I have been getting for my last two articles, travelling by train seems to hold a great enchantment to most people. So many people have written or messaged to say that they have so many happy memories of rail travel from their childhood, that I have just not been able to find time to write back to all of them yet.

But I’ll certainly do it before it’s too late. The interesting thing to note here is that while many people have said that they were greatly charmed by the train travelling they used to do in their childhood, a good many have said that they still enjoy travelling over long distances by train, rather than taking any other mode of travel, although these days, they are forced to travel long distances only by air to save time, which over time, has now become very precious.

I am from among them, as I still long to be on any train that I get to see, now and then, irrespective of where it happens to be going. This proves the adage that ‘Happiness is to be found along the way and not at the end of the road.’ Among the fondest memories of all my travels, are the ones of the many rail journeys that I used to make as a small child, between Mysore and Hassan.

This was because this stretch was the one that took me part of the way, between where I was studying and where my heart longed to be, which was in our coffee estate in Chikmagalur. This short journey of what was then seen as seventy-five miles, used to take exactly five hours, with my train travelling at an average speed of a whopping fifteen miles which translates to less than 25 kms in one hour!

And, this journey, that I always used to do, donning a pith hat and wearing leather ankle boots, like Shambu the Shikari, with a water bottle slung across my chest, instead of a gun, held me spellbound every time I undertook it, even as I grew up from being a small child to a fully grown man.

In those days of steam locomotives, my train would need two long stops of twenty minutes each en route, at K.R. Nagar and Mandagere, to fill up the engine tanks with water from the giant red, curved cast-iron spouts, that looked like the trunks of elephants.

But it was the stop at Mandagere that I looked forward to and waited for most, because that was the one that enabled the passengers to tank up too. It had a canteen that was famous for its soft, melt-in-the mouth idlies, that would be served steaming hot, on large Palas leaves, with generous helpings of freshly ground chutney.

It was run by a man who had the most friendly temperament and because I was a frequent traveller on that route, every time he saw me, he would stoop and pick me up from right across the red cement counter and place me on a blue wooden stool inside, before serving my fixed quota of two idlies, with an extra helping of chutney, which he had come to know that I would always ask for, very soon.

And, if it seemed to him that I was gobbling up my idlies in too much haste, he would point to the huge clock on the canteen wall and remind me that there was still plenty of time before my train left. In those days of early childhood, I was never allowed to travel alone and my uncle, Prof. M.J. Sadiq, or our estate manager P.M. Pemmaiah, would invariably be my most regular chaperones, with my father and his older brother with their close friend Muthu Rao, who would come by Jeep from Chikmagalur and hand over or take charge of me at the Hassan station.

They would always have a return ticket to Mysore ready for my uncle because his train to Mysore from Arsikere would stop at Hassan only for two minutes. After I grew up a little and stared to travel unaccompanied and was clearly beyond the stage when he could pick me up, the Mandagere canteen owner would always call me inside the canteen and now serve me the adult dose of four idlies but never before making me sit down on my favourite stool!

There’s no doubt in my mind that it was the magical taste of those Mandagere idlies from my childhood and the love and cheerfulness of that man, which touched my soul so much, which has made the humble idly my most favourite and preferred snack, be it for breakfast, lunch or dinner, even to this day!

Although I’ve not done that route in a long time now, I still long to revisit Mandagere, just to see if the railway canteen there still serves idlies and whether they still taste the same. And, if they do, the descendants of that man must most surely be manning it because only they would know what magic goes into them!

The next train journey that became very dear to me as I went along in my life, was the one I would take between Mysore and Gulbarga as a medical student at the M.R. Medical College there. It was a pretty long journey of twenty-three hours in those days, that could be accomplished only by travelling on three different trains and switching tracks from meter-gauge to broad gauge and vice-versa, at the Guntakal railway station, because what was then Bangalore, was not yet connected by a direct broad-gauge railway line, to what was then Bombay.

I have done this journey dozens of times, over a span of six years and this too has remained very dear to my heart because it was not just any ordinary journey but the one that also took me from my dream of becoming a doctor, to its final realisation. The happy train for me then was the 9 Down Madras Mail, that used to bring me home for my holidays and getting onto that train was something my friends from down South and I used to look forward to, long before our holidays started.

Our hero then was Sunder Raj, an infinitely patient, Tamil speaking booking clerk, who was endowed with a very helping nature and who understood the need of all home-bound students and would therefore somehow manage to find us seats on the trains we would seek to travel on.

Although all my accompanying friends used to make much fun of me then, on the strict advice of my parents, I would always undertake this long journey, both ways, with a five-liter jerry can of drinking water, so that I would not be forced to drink any unsafe water from the taps on the                                            railway platform.

And, though it looked very funny, it made much sense because those were the days when safe, bottled drinking water had not yet seen the light of the day in our country. And, although they would make fun of me, all my friends too would drink water only from my can!

My stop for food, both ways on these journeys, was the railway canteen at the Guntakal station. It was a large airy place, which was manned by an ever-smiling and cheerful man called C.H. Khader, always dressed in a pristine white shirt and lungi, who hailed from what was then Kerala, before it became Keralam, last week.

The standard fare for me there was two freshly made, fluffy Kerala parotas, served with the most delicious egg curry that I have ever tasted to this day. After this feast, because the stop at Guntakal was a very long one, sometimes lasting up to an hour, before my connecting trains could arrive, I used to entrust my luggage to the watchful eye of Khader Bhai and after picking up a book or magazine from the book stall on the platform, I’d wander around the vast goods yard of the station, watching wagons being loaded and unloaded and shunted around by chugging and hissing steam engines.

Sometimes I used to spend time, sitting on a bench and making pencil sketches in my notebook, of the people resting in various poses and postures, while waiting for their trains. This was a pastime I started indulging in, after seeing students of a local art school doing it regularly on the Gulbarga railway platform, as a part of their assignments, under the watchful eye of their teacher, J.S. Khanderao, who was a wizard with a paint brush.

Thanks to the humble idly that has come all the way with me from Mandagere, seeing me becoming a man from a boy, the equally humble combination of Kerala parotas and egg curry from Guntakal, that has seen me becoming a doctor, from just any other man and my romance with rail travel, are among my most favourite things, even to this day!

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