The GT Express of yore – Travel or Travail ?
The Grand Trunk Express was the
only train for Madrasis ( an omnibus
term for all those hailing from south of Vindhyas) for travel to Madras and
beyond from Delhi before other superfast trains like Delhi – Chennai Tamilnadu Express, Rajdhani
Express and Garib Rath Express, were introduced. The GT, as it was popularly
called, is one of the oldest trains commencing operations on 1st
January 1929. It takes 35.5 hours spread over two nights and a day for a distance
of 2184 kms passing through 36 stations and eight states. Notwithstanding these
impressive statistics, travel by GT in the fifties was a unique experience with
no computerised reservation, provision of bed rolls, pantry car, air-conditioned
sleeper accommodation
.
Preparation began with booking of
tickets one week in advance, which actually meant that you went to the New
Delhi Railway Station on the previous night of the day when of reservation
opened and took/marked your position in the queue. There you met friends as
well as made new friends and talked as per the wont of Madrasis about your
respective departments/officers and Panjabi jokes. Knowing that nothing was to
happen till 8.00 a.m. the next morning when the reservation counter opened, you
whiled away the in half-sleep and going out to the shops outside the station on
Kutab Road for tea or cigarette , duly informing the person next to you in the
queue to keep your place.
When the window opened, the booking
clerk would spend some 15 minutes or so talking to his colleagues and opening
and closing big registers maintained train-wise and blanking off seats earmarked
for outstation quota etc. When your turn came, he took your reservation slip
and spent another 5 minutes trying to make out the connecting trains from Chennai to your destination
, often some village in South India with no railway station, e.g. Ganapati
Agraharam near Kumbakonam. He would
finally give up and ask you for help and you
would jump at this unexpected great opportunity to exhibit your deep knowledge of the Indian railway
system and start a discourse on the
connectivity of Ganapati Agraharam. The Madrasi trait in you for meticulous details in your presentation would only add to the
booking clerk’s confusion as you reeled
facts like “ there are two terminals in Madras, one the Central Station and the
other Egmore , that all south bound trains are on metre gauge originating from
Egmore, that the nearest railway station
is Kumbakonam which is on the Main line
to Rameshwaram and not on the chord line
via Villupuram” etc. To his question why then should you have asked for ticket
to Ganapati Agraharam where there is no railway station, you would explain that
you are travelling on LTC and Ganapati Agraharam is your declared native place for LTC and that you have to produce
tickets booked up to that place. The Panjabi booking clerk would mutter some choicest
abuse in his mother tongue with which you are conversant thanks to your years
in Delhi.
Now the preparations at home.
Since sleeper class those days were not fitted with cushioned berths but only
wooden planks and railways did not provide bed rolls, bedding constituted the most important and
indispensable item of luggage . You
could make it as heavy as you pleased since it was not included in calculating
the free allowance for luggage. So, it became the heaviest luggage containing not just the jamakalaams,
bedsheets, pillows, blankets ( razaais in winter) but other items like discarded/worn-out
dresses and clothing such as kanjeevaram/cotton sarees, men’s shirts (with torn
collar), trousers ( torn at folds at the heels) dhotis, frocks, pajamas and so on. All nicely tucked in
oversized “hold –alls” (a bedding accessary made of very thick canvas cloth and
rolled to form like a drum and secured tight with leather belt). The old and
worn out clothing were taken to exchange them for “ever- silver” (stainless
steel) utensils in Madras as such exchange was not available in Delhi. Even if, against 6 silk sarees, 3 full pants,
3 shirts and so on , you got only a
spoon and a “katori” , it was a good bargain.
The long journey entailed taking adequate
supply of food, snacks, water and coffee. Large tiffin carriers with idlis
laced with milagai podi and oil, puri with sookka aaloo subzi, chapati,
tamarind rice, lemon rice, curd rice, appalam, vadaam, mor- milagai, and other
pickles formed the menu. .Big thermos flasks for hot water for making baby food
were a must if there were infants in the family travelling. My mother would
also carry milk in glass bottles (Horlicks bottles were ideal for this) for
adding to the curd rice on the second day of the journey since by then it would
have turned sour.
Coffee decoction was taken in a
separate bottle to mix with garam dudh enroute. Needless to say we also would
carry sugar and salt. There were no
paper plates, cups and napkins those days and so we had to take stainless steel
plates, spoons, tumblers and cloth napkins for cleaning.
For infants there would be the
improvised “thooli” (hammock) in the moving space between opposite berths and a
good supply of mopping cloth.
Magazines like Ananda Vikatan, Kalki, etc, but the oppressive heat made sleep as the
only leisure activity on journey. Though
some brought transistors, they could not be played in the noisy background of
the running train. Most families travelled in summer months during school
vacation. All fun of travel was lost from the afternoon of the second day when the
train passed through the hot parts of the country like Nagpur and Andhra
Pradesh. The fans in the coach would
either not work at all or at slow speeds. Taps in the toilets and wash basins
would go dry or would not function.
On(railway)line purchase was done at Nagpur
station, where you could not avoid getting cheated buying oranges. The basket of
oranges you bought paying one third of the price quoted would have only one
third of the fruits good , the other two-th irds, hidden in the bottom of the
basket, being sour or rotten.
The Delhi “Surahi” was another indispensable
item. Filled at every major junction, after a dash to the water-tap located farthest from your
coach, their necks were always narrow to permit direct filling of water from the tap and therefore
more water was spilled than filled. Also, most surahis would not make the full
journey to Madras as they more often than not broke enroute, the water flooding
the coach and soiling the underbelly of the huge trunk boxes (light moulded
suit cases were not in vogue) and sometimes seeping inside.
There was always a couple of
Delhi “Modas” to carry which were what your host family said they would be
happy to get when you wrote to them about your trip and as courtesy asked if they needed anything
specific from Delhi . These modas were both stool type and chair type and
heavens forbid if the latter were transported since they occupied all moving
space in the coach. Another favourite
item requested by friends was the “Jaadi” (aka Barani) in different sizes, one
fitting into another for storing pickles and making curd. Packing them to avoid
breakage in transit was an art.
The snacks were usually home- made
stuff like thattai, barfi, etc., plus Delhi’s famous atta biscuits. They were all
nicely packed in old oil tins fitted with lids on top. On the return trip from
Madras, these tins were used for bringing condiments like ammami appalam,
vadaam, maavadu, etc besides tamarind, soap- nut powder which were not easily
available and costly in Delhi.
The hold- all had to be opened
and packed each night to take bed linen out. While opening was easy, re-packing
would prove a hard task since its width was more than the width of the berth
and therefore things stuffed inside would move and hang outside the berth.
Sometimes the leather strap would break and we had do make do with some dupatta
or old saree to tie around the hold-all.
About an hour or so before the
train reached Madras, it was time to spruce up ourselves with a wash of face and limbs, all blackened by the smoke
from the engine and dust. A change into clean clothes would be warranted. But by this time the water in the coach would
have been completely used up and so some dry cleaning had to done instead.
The anxiety to set foot on Madras
would turn into frustration when the GT ran late most of the days. Delays in
arrival at Madras were the rule and not the exception in its case. GT was the reason of the famous old joke when
it arrived sharp at 6.15.a.m one day to the surprise of everybody. Lo, it was
the GT Express which should have arrived the previous day!
Nonetheless, the joy on
everybody’s face when the train at last stopped at “Namm Voor” Madras and your host received you on the platform greeting you with “ Vango, Vango” (Welcome, Welcome)
put paid to all the travails of travel by GT.
