Deccan Shatabdi

I wake the doorman at 5am and send him off to find someone to settle my bill; he reappears five minutes later with the bleary-eyed, half-asleep manager who is not at all happy to be awake at this hour. I pick up an auto-rickshaw in front of Egmore station, cross over the stinking river for the last time and arrive at Chennai Central in the sultry, pre-dawn gloom. Every inch of floorspace in the concourse is covered with prone and sleeping figures, mountains of luggage and cotton-wrapped parcels with only a six foot margin around the edges of the rectangular hall free and navigable; hundreds of tired passengers and resigned yatris waiting for hours or the whole night until a train arrives to take them on their journeys or pilgrimages. I buy a cup of sweet, milky coffee from the chai counter of yesterday's waking dream and find train 2007 - the Chennai-Mysore Shatabdi Express - waiting over the footbridge at platform 17. It has only eight coaches, seven of which are air-conditioned chair cars and the eighth a pantry car, and a WAM-4 electric waiting silently at the head. I find my name next to seat 49 on the reservations list posted at the door to coach C3, stow my bag in the overhead luggage rack and then discreetly smoke a Wills Classic in a dimly lit corner of the platform - an indulgence that could cost me a 200 Rupees fine should an RPF officer emerge from the shadows and challenge me.
The WAM-4 make light work of hustling the short train out of Central station and onto the flat, dark, featureless plains west of Chennai, cruising at a steady 90kph on the straight and level double track mainline. Trains At A Glance describes the Shatabdi Express as a Superfast Intercity on which "hospitality treats you to meal and snacks" and adding that "before you are through, your destination has arrived"; which seems to cheat the laws of physics. It is second only to the Rajdhani Expresses - the pride of Indian Railways, offering multi-cuisine catering, piped music and deluxe air-conditioned accommodation - and is followed by the cheaper Jan Shatabdi ( self catering and without air-conditioning ) and the Sapark Kranti Express which is only slightly faster than an ordinary Mail or Express, though a lot quicker than a lowly Passenger train. The Shatabdi is, however, ten times more expensive than a Passenger train, and costs five times as much for the same journey on a Mail or ordinary Express; and if you choose the Executive Chair Car, the price doubles again.
The coach attendant points at my cigarette as I stand in the open doorway at the end of the coach, unsuccessfully trying to light it with a tiny box of Bison Wax Matches in the 60mph slipstream.
"Two-hundred Rupees," he says, writing the figure invisibly on his left palm with his right forefinger.
"No fine," I tell him, holding the now smoking Wills Classic outside the door, "cigarette not in train".
"Fifty, fifty." He writes the revised figure on his palm.
"No fifty, and no baksheesh. Go away." I guide him by the shoulder to the connecting gangway of the next coach, leave him there and ignore him.
I return to my seat as breakfast is served: iddli, sambar and copra chutney - the traditional morning meal for millions of South Indians. The food is as good as any I've eaten in Dhabas, Tiffin Houses and "Meals Ready" halls anywhere, and better than some restaurants I have come across. Indian Railways and food have a close relationship which is carefully maintained by their Catering and Tourism Corporation - IRCTC. It is fresh, properly prepared and affordable; a world away from the bland, processed baguettes and microwaved burgers sold for scandalous prices on British trains. Even before privatisation, when important trains often had a proper buffet car, the incumbent Travellers Fare managed to turn itself into a laughing stock by offering the iconic, if infamous British Rail Ham Sandwich - that anti-hero of railway catering. But "how can I be sure of the quality of catering services on trains and at stations?" asks Your Questions Answered on page 264 of Trains At A Glance, just in case you have any concerns. It answers with advice about insisting on a "Cash Memo" for all services, consulting the menu, ordering with the waiter or coach attendant well in advance and recording your "suggestions" in the "complaints book" - which "can be called from the pantry car at any time by the passenger." But on the subject of the actual quality of the food itself, Trains remains silent. With unintended irony, or perhaps a degree of prescience, the next frequently asked question is addressed more fully: "Is medical assistance available on trains?"
The train climbs steadily onto the edge of the Deccan Plateau and the flat plains give way to low hills and scrubby bush, interspersed with paddy fields and swathes of nodding palms. The line begins to twist and rise, riding high embankments and diving into deep cuttings in the reddish-brown earth. Huge boulders dot the landscape, sometimes standing alone and balanced at odd angles, other times piled into enormous conical, gravity defying mounds.
We arrive at Bangalore city at eleven o'clock and pause for fifteen minutes while an army of cleaners board the train with fox-tail sweeping brushes and vats of disinfectant for the toilets, and the pantry car boys bring on more supplies for the Shatabdi lunch. The city's technology fuelled wealth has become something of an Indian cliche, but it is immediately obvious and completely inescapable. So too is the disparity between the glass-and-steel high-rise office blocks, the opulent apartment complexes and the grinding poverty of the rag-pickers and slum-dwellers living beside the railway line. The WAM-4 is replaced with a South Western Railways WDP-4 for the run on the single track, 135km un-electrified line to Mysore. The designation identifies it as a broad gauge passenger diesel locomotive, but it is a very different machine from the familiar WDM. It is an American design, and shares the same long bonnet layout as the WDM, but there the similarity ends: it is modern, micro-processor controlled and instead of the Chug of an ALCO engine, there is a muted whirring from the General Motors diesel that provides the power.
By the time we pull out of Bangalore, the train is thirty minutes behind schedule. The driver gives the WDP its head once we have cleared the sprawling suburbs, pushing the 4000 horsepower high-speed diesel engine to full power on the climbs and straights and then braking for the crossings and bends. It is noticeably quicker than the old WDM, especially so with only eight coaches: a WDP-4 is capable of handling a 24 coach, 1400 tonne train at 110kph and could easily take the Shatabdi to 160kph and beyond if the track and operating rules permitted it.
The coach attendant calls me from my post at the open door back to my seat where lunch has been served - biryani, raitha, roti and chutney. Even if Trains declines to comment on the quality of the food, I will vouch for it. Back at the open door, I lean out and watch the track unfold in front of the WDP. We are travelling very quickly with the long hood of the locomotive leading, the driving cab at the back: after riding on the WDM in Puri, I am aware just how little visibility the driver will have, and how the second man will be calling warnings to him from his position in the right hand seat. We approach a long, sweeping bend and curve through the centre of a small town, huts and concrete apartment blocks crowding the line, ragged scraps of woven nylon made into makeshift, tented hovels at the edge of the tracks. The driver touches the brakes as we lean into the turn, locks the air-horns on and then pulls the the power handle wide open, scattering herds of grazing goats and sending rooting pigs into a blind panic, running in circles and crashing into each other. We pass the level crossing in the middle of town at the best part of 60mph, people turning their backs against the storm of litter and dust sucked up in our wake, their children covering their ears and screaming in fright, then hurtle through the little station in a cloud of exhaust fumes and noise. It is both exhilarating and frightening leaning out of the doorway and seeing the improbably narrow passage the rails follow between the buildings and bastees streak by: if the train derailed here, at this speed, it would demolish half of this small, quiet town. The pace never slackens: through coffee plantations, villages and paddy fields, climbing still higher onto the Mysore plateau, the WDP at full blast with the air horns locked on for what seems like minutes at a time.
We cross the River Cauvery at Srirangapattana and arrive at Mysore Junction at 1.10pm - only ten minutes late after the hair-raising run from Bangalore. I take an auto-rickshaw to the Hotel Mayura Hoysala - a restored colonial mansion - and check into a spacious, well appointed room with a veranda overlooking the Mysore-Chamrajnagar division of South Western Railways. I am sunburned from two hours in the hot wind at the open door of the train, but Mysore is perceptibly cooler and less humid than the steaming cauldron of Chennai. I order a cold Kingfisher from room service, watch a WDM-2 bring a local passenger service into the station, shower, change and then go out into the warm evening air. I sit on the rooftop terrace of Shilpashri Bar And Restaurant and watch the sun sink over Mysore, wondering how much skill it would take to drive a WDP to the very limit on the Bangalore-Mysore division; and when I will feel hungry again after the Deccan Shatabdi hospitality.