What does having an MBA got do with achieving Indian Railway chicken curry life goals?

 

A chicken curry and rice dinner at home on a compartmentalised thali a few nights back brought up a rush of memories

When do you know that you have made it in life? Is it when you get the degree/ job/ spouse/ house/ award/ salary/ designation/ car of your dreams?

For me it was all about plate of chicken curry and rice! Let me explain. 

I had travelled quite a bit by planes across continents by the time I was 8. And had driven across ‘the continent’ (Western Europe) and Iran as a kid when my dad would take us on driving holidays. We moved to India in 1980 and he passed away a couple of years later. The next time I travelled by air was in ‘97 at the age of 23. I had joined a market research agency from campus. We would fly for fieldwork ‘at actuals.’ Billed separately to the client which meant tax exemptions  back then. My first flight on work was from Calcutta to Bangalore and the excitement was palpable but this story is not about that. It’s about my train journeys across India.

 My mum and I had gone from Delhi to Calcutta by the Rajdhani when I was 3 or 4. It was my first trip to India. We’d flown into Delhi, spent time at maternal grandparents place before heading to Calcutta to meet my father’s family. I don’t remember anything from that train trip barring the fact that lots of people were at the station waiting to welcome us. The heat made me go as red as a tomato. And I didn’t understand the language then which made things even more overwhelming. After moving to Calcutta, my mum, dad and I had gone to Puri be train just before my brother was born.

I went on a train journey in ‘84 or ‘85 when we went on a holiday with my grandparents, mama and Boromashi to Darjeeling. I don’t remember much about the journey but for the fact that it ran late and reached Siliguri at night from Sealdah. We stayed at a hotel overnight before heading up the hills in the morning. The room was full of big cockroaches! Other memories from the trip include skirting around human poop while climbing the steps to our guesthouse, having my first momos with my mama, going to Keventer’s and having cold coffee, going to check a boarding school as the grown ups were considering if that might be better for me, going to the Himalayan Museum on a pony ride with my mama, and watching a Karate movie with him in a small room which you paid money and went into and watched movies on a TV and a VCR. The movie theatre of the hills. 

We went to Rajgir by train a few years later on another family holiday. I have no memory of the train journey. Apart from having fish curry and rice at the station on the way back. 

The next time I travelled by train was after my 12th board exams while I waited for the results to come out. It had been a stressful period for me as I had taken science. Handling maths (my perennial nemesis) and even physics was akin to what facing Holding and Roberts at Sabina Park in ‘76 was for the Indian batsmen. Makes no sense to you? Read Sunny Days by Sunil Gavaskar. A harrowing time to say the least. I was often tempted to throw in the towel and drop a year till my math teacher encouraged me saying school exams were tougher than ISC and that he was sure I’d manage. I did.

My Chhotomashi (youngest maternal aunt) suggested I take a break, accompany her back to New Delhi where she lived and spend some time there. I had a fun time discovering Delhi and being treated as a quasi grown up by her friends 

unlike at home where I was a baby. My aunt taught me life lessons such as how to make grilled sandwiches and how to clean up the kitchen and make the bed. Seems rather Dickensian doesn’t it? It wasn’t that bad. I had a fairly pampered childhood like most Bengali boys. My aunt had stayed in a hostel in Delhi after my grandpa retired and moved to Calcutta. She was fairly independent and wanted to make me so too. Today she likes to take credit for my kitchen exploits. She says that its inception lay in the kitchen of her barsati in Hauz Khas. I see no reason to contest that. 

We went to Delhi by train. Deluxe AC chair car and I returned alone. Mum had made and packed chicken sandwiches which we ate at night on the train. On the way back there was no packed food for me. I had a veg meal with my allowance. I wanted to have a Citra (a soft drink) but was worried that I might not have enough money left for the cab from Howrah to home and skipped it. I reached home, unpacked and took out the really cool leather wallet that my aunt’s future parent in laws had gifted me. I saw that they had put some money in it. A hundred rupee note. Maybe even a fifty. Could be more. Which in 1992 meant I could have bought all the Citras in the train; and a few Gold Spots, Campa Colas and Thums Up too!

I went back to Delhi that winter for my Chhotomashi’s wedding. By train with my brother, my grandparents, Boromashi and my cousin who was really tiny then. We were in different compartments and my grandpa would come and check on my brother and me. Dadu loved travelling by train and food was a crucial part of the experience for him. We would order vegetarian thalis. My dadu would deem it ‘safe’. Chicken wasn’t. Non veg for breakfast was safe. Omelette toast. Food sold by hawkers wasn’t safe. Filling water bottles at taps at stations was safe. Only to be done if accompanied by a grown up. No accepting food from strangers. You could be drugged and robbed. Which is why I had to refuse offers of thepla, bhujiya and laddoos from kind Gujarati and Marwari matrons when then opened massive trunks full of food for their families and offer me some.

Veg meal is what I ordered when I went to Bombay from Calcutta to present my summer training project during my MBA to Balsara Hygiene. I got a travel allowance but saved as much as I could to use it as movie watching and roll eating funds later. If memory serves me right, veg meal was Rs 16 or Rs 18. Egg curry meal was Rs 25. Chicken curry meal Rs 48. Chicken roast, Rs 60. I am talking of the 90s.

The veg meals would be uploaded at specific stations while the non veg would be cooked on the train. At least in trains such as Deluxe, Howrah Bombay Mail and Gitanjali Express. The arrival of the trays carried by the porter was welcomed with heightened levels of excitement by the largely Bengali passengers. More to get a break from boredom than for any misplaced anticipation of gourmet fare.

You would sit up on your bunk and wait. I am talking of third AC sleeper trains. I’d often end up on a higher berth as elder folks would prefer lower ones. You took your tray once you received it.  Places it on the newspaper you’d bought from a vendor to spread out for this purpose. These were editions from small towns and much thinner than metro editions and carried news from a day back.

The food would be packed in foil boxes which you’d gingerly open while the train swayed across tracks. Often rather violently, which made your heart stop as you worried about soiling the (by then) much creased white bedsheet supplied with the bedding. You’d keep the pouch of water aside. Drinking from which needed yogic concentration and flexibility. Take out the small white towel which came with the bedding for wiping your hands after you washed up later.

The first box would invariably contain withered cucumber and carrot slices. Salad. The next one would have a yellow liquid. Dal. The third had cubed potatoes and peas floating in brownish oily water. Alu matar. Pickle masala with no mango etc in it. Rice with green peas. Pulao 🥳. Two puris, which were so hard that you could take care of the SMERSH agents chasing you by tossing the puris at them if you were James Bond and on a train. Of course if you were Bond you would be on the Orient Express, having vodka with caviar and not a veg thali in Gitanjali. I did reach the Indian equivalent of this a few years later and that’s what this story is about.

I had just passed out of B School and joined the working class. The white collar bourgeois desk warrior class to be precise. Trainee level. I moved to Mumbai. After a year and a half I got leave to go home. Back in the late 90s no one gave two hoots about a ‘mental health break;’which I am now told has left ‘stomach upset’ and ‘parent unwell’ far behind as a reason given by youngsters for leave at work. I’d managed to get my RAC ticket confirmed by a college mate’s father who worked in the Railways. The previous day was a flop show. I had reached the station in the morning to see that my waitlisted ticket hadn’t moved even after two months of waiting!

Anyway, all that was behind me. I was on the train.

I was heading home. Home where I had my own room and wouldn’t have to share it unlike in my PG. And where the toilet was western. And where meals were non veg unlike in my PG. My PG aunty had most kindly packed alu parathas and mango pickle to have on the train.

‘Lunch order sir,’ said a voice waking me up from deep sleep post breakfast the next morning. I could not ignore him as I’d finished the parathas at night. I placed my order. 

The tray was delivered half an hour later. No foil packs to open this time. The food had been prepared on the coach and served directly on compartmentalised trays. Piping hot chicken curry, rice, watery curd and pickle. And with that I had ordered a Citra. 

I took my first spoonful and smiled. I was 24. And I had made it in life!

In retrospect I feel that I’d perhaps set my life goals a tad low. What do you think?

Ps: I got married a couple of years later. Low cost airlines came in. My train travel dropped to almost nil. While I don’t know much about train food today, what I can tell you for sure is that the chicken curry in the Howrah Bombay Mail was much better that in the faster and more expensive Gitanjali Express back then. Possible the cooks in the latter had no time for slow cooking. 

PPS: Do share your train travel food memories with me in the comments section.