It Was A Pleasure Then, It Still Is A Pleasure

Traveling has always been the yearning of the human mind...to get off the mundane life of daily chores.Be it old or young, the mind loves to wander, to go away and come back to its nest again.Home coming is heaven when it is--- after you are out of home...in other words if you have travelled out...home is home again.

With time, life too has advanced and taken many new innovative swirls and with it the pleasures of traveling too has made jumps and leaps making it more and more easy and pleasurable to every man.The concept of going out of home, your city, your country is so different now than what it was in the beginning of our leaps in technology; we have almost forgotten those bygone years, or may be we dont want to remember that with all its difficulties, its inconveniences and hurdles.To day we are in the age of jets and supersonics...who would like to recall those days of traveling in carts, on camels, horses...those steam engine run trains ? All that seems such a slogging now...we have reached a much higher level, where life in travels is so much more abounding by way of satisafaction and ease and relaxation..and that is the main purpose of moving out I can say.

But come what may..the saying " Oh those good old days !!" have an enticing effect on the mind and it is, at times, a pleasure to live through those old days when life was not so easy and comfortable, yet as enjoyable as could be expected....and that brings to mind traveling by trains when it was the easiest and best way to move fast and easily out of home.

The other day I came across an article on train traveling three decades back....just thirty years !! yet it seemed like reading history...we have advanced so much I felt reading it....going through the article I felt, if I sit to write my experiences in train traveling half a century back, it will surely be a much richer and deeper history to read and recall on what was train traveling then.

Every confrontation with railways today reminds me of railways way back last century in the forties and fifties.Traveling, then too, was a very enjoyabe and easy experience and if compared with today's train traveling the comparison is vast.

Today if we have to think of a trip, the first hurdle is train reservations... which, just a few years back had to be done forty five days ahead, then it extended to sixty days and now it is ninety days in advance.That means if you have to make a holiday outstation, you must plan it out three months in advance. A planned holiday trip is of course, very organised and stress free all through; but what if you want to have a sudden trip for a week or two? According to the rules of the present day, you should not venture on such pleasure dreams. Such sudden train travel today is almost impossible or full of such hurdles and uncertainties that you feel you better do without it. But this same thing was so easy and convenient just half a century back.----you wish to make a trip--just pack off, go to the railway station ask for a reserved berth and there you are,it is in your hand and off you go.Every common man had this previlege...the ease was almost common to all.

So every year when we went for our vacation trip it was sheer luxury and fun.Luggage would surely be a steel trunk with a bold steel lock dangling , no VIP suitcases red or blue on wheels...a hold-all was a must, that would have all our bedding and blankets and pillows, bedsheets, slippers stuffed in its pockets.Next would be a typical 'surai' stand, made of ordinary wood to fit in an earthen 'surai' that would supply cool water all through the journey and would be easily refilled at any station from any simple water tap, no mineral water or aquaguard stalls, simple water from taps was pure , hygienic and harmless. With so much baggage,naturally, those red turbaned coolies were profusely strewn all through the platform, no stylish carts to have our luaggage loaded sometimes with our children too.

So with luggage on a friendly coolie's head we would move towards our bogie. There were three classes, 1st,II nd and III rd. No long coach with corridors and separate units as cabins with little space for at least four passengers to get in. No in those times....every reserved compartment was a separate unit...a single room with its own separate entrance with a bolted door on either side.So as we entered our compartment, and the coolie set down our luggage and as we closed the main door it bacame a private home for us.It had its separate washroom, very spacious with racks and mirrors unbounded. In those days there were no very strict or rigid rules about reservations, so we would simply rely on our luck that we don't have any co-passengers for the trip, and luckily, it sometimes happened that way only, or if anyone had to come in, on seeing that we were a cozy family well set in the bogie, would politely back out and seek another place in the train and we were confident that he would get a comfy place too, along the length of the train...not like today...getting into a big squabble over the issue.

A whole private room to ourselves, we would spread out our beddings, take out our slippers, change into a casual wear, spread out our books or time-pass games, and of-course set up all our toilettries in the washroom that would be solely for our use till the journey ended. It was a dream travel as if in the privacy of a home, rattling through new lands, living life as at home.

As the train would move we would often keep our front door open---and see fields and small habitats pass by and we would breathe in the fresh new strange breeze gushing in with the soft smell from the new soils...getting intoxicated by the fresh air, we would spread out our games of Ludo or cards on the clean floor of the room...was this in any way other than home?

At the halt at a station, tea vendors, snack vendors, are, and have been common always, so at any stoppage, the tea vendor, snack vendor, toy vendor would just come and sit at our open front door just as it happened at home.Purchases would again be made as at home with those entertaining bargaining and haggling over prices and the vendor would just jump off as the train took to move, and we would close our front door to be in the privacy of a home again.

Waiters from the pantry car would come with a knock at our door at the stations to take our orders for meals....food would not come in tall columns with trays of food piled over one another...they came in separate trays covered with neat clean white napkins...tea in pots, covered by tea cosy, soft curled butter for crispy toasts as breakfast order.The waiter would lay out the food before taking leave and we would then have a hearty meal as the train rattled away and we enjoying the gypsy dinner with gossips and stories as a meal at home. Such luxury was available for almost every common man , not just for the elite special class as it is today, yet I doubt, if such casual luxury can me made available for our elites of today. Railway officials had saloons to travel in when they had to go on their touring...each saloon had 3 rooms well furnished with curtains and coolers..bed room, dining room, dressing room and a kitchen with a khansama....touring would take a week or two and life in these saloons was nothing less than our grand "Palace on wheels" of today.

We surely don't have such travel luxuries now....the reason can be pinned down to our blasting growth in population and the innumerable reasons for which every man has to move out of home for earning.Despite innumerable trains being made available to make traveling easy, still our trains run with overflowing passengers, windows and doors seem to be bursting with crowds of the common man.

Lost is the simplicity of traveling, so is its pleasure, yet despite all the crowds and all the hazards, our children love traveling in those constricted cabins that give hardly any space to spread out yet our children still take huge delight in it and pride on a vacation every year, oblivious to the pleasures of train travelling 50 years ago. Seeing their thrill I whisper to myself, "yes indeed, ignorance is bliss" and never miss a chance to relate stories of our train traveling when we were kids like them, and I feel my effort complete when our children sit to hear the tales with wide eyed disbelief and I feel myself a winner before these kids that belong to this of age jets and super sonics, yet cannot overlook the tales of train traveling last century.