Night Train To Madras

I leave the Ghandra Hotel at 3am for the early morning slow passenger train to the state capital Bhubaneswar, and then wait on platform 4 with a cup of chai for the Howrah-Chennai Superfast Mail. It is running an hour behind schedule and finally pulls in at 7.30 behind a WAG-7 electric – ostensibly a freight-only locomotive – sending a kingfisher to flight from it’s perch on the overhead line. The station announcer reels off the carriage formation in Hindi and English, and I find coach AH1 – a 2AC-cum-1AC hybrid – twenty-third place from the engine. The carriage attendant checks my reservation and directs me to ‘Cabin C’, which is in darkness, the curtains drawn and two sleeping figures in the right hand bunks of the 4 berth compartment. I quietly stow my bag beneath the left side lower bunk, and then take my Wills Classics and notebook and stand at the open door so as not to disturb my traveling companions at this early hour. The train is immensely long – 24 coaches including the second class ordinary sleeper behind mine – the WAG-7 disappearing from view when we round the long, sweeping curves that follow the coastline of the Bay of Bengal. There are unreserved, sleeper class, first class, two tier and three tier air-conditioned sleepers, a pantry car, a luggage-brake van and a guard-cum brake van. There is even a mobile RPF station in one of the coaches to deal with passengers’ complaints – or to deal with passengers. The RPF – Railway Protection Force – is a small army numbering thousands that is deployed across the 63,000 kilometre system, and in addition to providing security for trains and passengers, it has the power to prosecute 29 types of offences, including the serious ones of sabotage and train wrecking. Everything else is the domain of the GRP – the Government Railway Police, supported by whichever militia or paramilitary unit that happens to be passing by. But the sight of large groups of these AK-47 and Lachti-armed soldiers is not at all reassuring – quite the opposite, in fact. They descend like birds of ill omen on the stations and strut around the platforms and booking halls, staring passengers into silence, stalking the corridors and compartments of trains with impunity. Wherever they land they leach the colour and animation from their surroundings, poisoning the air with menace, tension and the threat of violence. They are looking for trouble; and if they cannot find it, they can make it. But still, Trains At A Glance tells me that I can expect to be compensated if maimed or killed in an Untoward Incident – like rioting, dacoity or violent attack – and that I would receive 5,000 Rupees if grievously injured in what is described as Shootout, something the RPF are no strangers to.

We follow the coastal strip south towards Andhra Pradesh, the bays and inlets netted off into fishing pens the size of paddy fields, the hills inland rising up behind the palms and banyan trees. The line hugs the waters edge, twisting and turning, climbing over viaducts and slicing through cuttings carved through crumbling red rock. It is reminiscent of my journey around Lake Balaton last summer, or the long day trip to the Cambrian Coast line when I was a third of the age I am now. When I return to the compartment I find an elderly Indian gentleman sitting on his lower berth reading the TOI; he greets me politely and we both place orders for food with the pantry car boy – breakfast for him, lunch for me. Of the other passenger, there is no sign; he must have left the train at Khurda Road. For the next two-and-a-half hours the train rattles along at a steady 50mph behind the WAG-7 that looks just like Franco-Indian WAM-4 that crossed the sandy lane outside Puri. I alternate between my seat in ‘Cabin C’ – it is as long as a three-seater settee and the backrest will later be folded down to become my bed – and the open carriage door, where I stand with a Wills Classic and lean out into the slipstream, the air seeming to become hotter with each passing mile. Although the train is called a Superfast Mail - as opposed to just Mail - it doesn't actually travel any faster than even the most humble Passenger train: it just stops at fewer stations, and only for 2 minutes rather than ten, which is the case with all other Mail and Express trains.

My lunch arrives at Visakhapatnam and my travelling companion departs; I will have the whole first class compartment to myself for the rest of the journey, and have a choice of four tables at which to eat my vegetable biryani and dal. The East Coast Railway freight engine that has brought the train down form Howrah is changed for a Southern Railways WAP-4 during the twenty minute stop; it is a major junction station, with a big engine shed and lines radiating to all points of the compass; some single, some double, sometimes running parallel to form a quadruple main line. We reverse and go back the way we came – my carriage now only one away from the engine – and then turn south towards Kankinda Town, crossing and looping an endless procession of container and coal trains going to and from Kankinda port. We take the line to the west, heading further inland, and cross onto the Vijayawada Division of the South Central Railway. At every station, every level crossing and from the brake van of each freight and passenger train we pass we are ‘green flagged’. The station master will be standing in front of his office whenever a train departs or passes through his station, much like in Hungary or Slovakia; but in India, he will have two flags – one red, one green – and will signal to the train that all is in order, or wave a warning if it is not. Likewise the crossing keeper outside his hut, and the guards inside the brake vans of the trains we overtake or meet coming in the opposite direction. Our train has no cab-to-shore radio to warn of danger, but the driver and guard each have a walkie-talkie and use them to communicate the flag signals: even if we are ‘red flagged’ because a problem is spotted further down the train when the engine has already passed, the guard will alert the driver to bring us to a stop. Simple, but effective.

The dinner I ordered at Visakhapatnam is served to my compartment when we stop at Samalakot; it is 6.30pm and already nearly full dark. Although I simply specified a ‘veg meal’, I know exactly what I will be eating: there are two whole pages of Trains At A Glance covering the standard menus of IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation). I know that a Standard Mail/Express Breakfast (In Casserole) Vegetarian will consist of either: A) bread butter, 2 slice with 10gms butter chiplet + cutlet, total weight 70gms; B) idli & vada (4 nos); C) upma & Vada (4 nos); D) pongal & vada (4 nos). And I know that to accompany this I will have coffee in pots (285 ml) + 2 coffee sachets + 2 sugar pouch + 2 disposable paper cups of 170 ml capacity, all of which will be served on a tray with a disposable mat and with good quality and stainless steel cutlery. The Rajdahni and Shatabdi trains serve a higher quality breakfast, lunch and dinner than the Mails and Expresses, and fill an entire page with dense, complex smallprint. I eat the Rice Pulao or Jira Rice or Plain Rice of Fine Quality (150 gms) with the Paratha (2 nos) or Chapati (4 nos) or Poories (5 nos) and Dal or Sambar (thick consistency 150 gms) and drink my Packaged Drinking Water in Ealed Glass (300 ml) which would probably be better described as a sealed glass. I Smoke a Wills Classic at the open carriage door and buy a cup of hot, sweet coffee from a wallah on the platform at Vijayawada. The carriage attendant makes up the lower right bunk of my compartment with military precision, and I sit in on the cushions opposite with my book bathed in the glow of the reading light. I am tired but cannot sleep, despite having been on the train for 15 hours already; besides, it is impossible to ignore the WAP-4’s blaring air horns, and my cabin is directly over the carriage’s leading wheels, which clatter and bang over junctions and points. I turn off the reading light, open the curtains and lie on my bed: I can see out, but nobody outside can see into my darkened room. It is totally black outside the window, not even a distant cooking fire to be seen, the stars hidden behind a blanket of night-cloud. Surrounded by darkness and deprived of any visual reference point, my fatigued mind plays tricks with me as I bounce and roll with the motion of the train: suddenly the carriage is plummeting downwards, then it is climbing at forty-five degrees; is the train really sliding sideways, or is it chasing it’s tail in tight circles? At some point exhaustion must have overcome my deceptive imagination, because it is now 4 o'clock in the morning and the outskirts of Chennai are beginning to gather by the lineside.