“Cubed potatoes parboiled and lightly sautéed in mustard oil with a tempering of nigella (kala jeera) and green chillies. Sometimes, my grandmother would throw in a handful of fresh peas. This was paired with creamy white maida luchi . This was the 'railer tarkari' that has fed my family in trains since the 1930s. The fresh green chillies and peas added to the flavour and crunch. Grandmother would add salt and a wee bit of sugar as well, and leave the dish covered and simmering.” Mohua Mitra shares this glorious family tradition in response to my message about the puri alu that I packed for my son’s 48-hour train journey. Deepali Das pitches in and says the sukka mutton dish is forever referred to as railway mutton in her family. She continues, “Then there was the bhararwa bhindi and karare alu that was sent to the pantry to be warmed up. There were at least three kinds of pickles.”
Long journeys were common as we crisscrossed from Calcutta to Madras, or to Patiala or Jamnagar, when we were growing up. And, going by the comments, it is obvious that eating on the train was a big part of those journeys. Nanhi Mann remembers, “Barely had the train pulled out of the station, there was a chorus of ‘Mummy, bhook lagi hai ’ (We are hungry). The alu parathas were the first to be demolished. They were packed in a waxed paper with tilted orange and blue squares on them. If it was summer, cucumbers were peeled then and there. We unwrapped little paper packets with salt and pepper, sprinkled them on the cucumber and polished them off.” Or there were sandwiches. Remember the bread and butter and bottles of jam and sauce? (I don’t think they had sachets then). Newspaper was spread out on the seat, bread unwrapped, spoons and butter knives wiped clean with napkins, followed by the exciting ritual of sandwich-making. Sometimes, we bought boiled eggs from the platform vendors.
“We had parathas and onion-stuffed karelas on our 36-hour trips to Ludhiana,” says Neeta. “They were guaranteed to last. We also had sweet parathas made with ghee, milk and sugar.” Inderpreet Kaur remembers that the dough was kneaded with milk and the parathas were wrapped in muslin to keep fresh and soft. “Our first meal was chicken or mutton masala with the ajwain parathas,” she recalls. “And every meal was washed down with station chai.”
From the south Indian households came the puliodarai and curd rice. So that it wouldn’t sour, rice was mixed well with milk and just a spoonful of curd was added. By the time we ate it, it was just perfect. Lemon or vadumaanga pickles completed the feast. Other goodies were idlis that were well marinated in sesame oil and gunpowder mixture. The curd rice was eaten first and the puliodharai was the last to be unwrapped — as every one knows, the more it is kept, the tastier it gets. Lemon rice, and for those who had moms like that, fried papads packed in plastic bags.
“The Marwaris were clearly the kings and queens of train food with all their precious pickles and parathas,” says Dr. Sutapa Pal. Being a Bengali herself, luchi and aloo bhaja was staple train food, along with sandesh, of course. Rani Sokhey’s train memoirs incredibly include tomato salad in Ajmer. She also remembers dahiwadas at some station and khakhra, thepla and shakkarpara.
Mohua has some pretty fancy memories of train journeys too. “Travelling AC first class on long train journeys to South India or to the mountains via Delhi and Chandigarh, on holiday as a child was a special privilege — part of dad’s corporate perks. Quite a royal treatment it would be, with the coach attendant offering me lozenges. Meals were served in style with proper shining cutlery; there would be soup served in a soup plate (and not a soup bowl), nice warm dinner rolls, fried fish and chips with proper tartare sauce, roast mutton and then a nice pudding.”
No one has forgotten the special smell of the steam engine, getting coal dust in the eyes as we stuck our heads out of the windows, excitement as we were served our food on the top berth; the holdalls, the flasks and campers; the mud pots of water that almost certainly broke half way into the journey, ears straining to hear the approaching vendor shouting, “Cutlays, Cutlays”…It is a part of travel that few experience these days. Dr. Reshmi Paul is almost poetic about her favourite memory: “We strained our ears trying to locate the tintintintin sound of the jhalmuri wala. The mixture of puffed rice, chanachur, mustard oil, sliced coconut, green chillies and soaked red Bengal gram was served in small paper pouches by the hawkers. A delicacy not to be found anywhere else but on the train.”
