The Indian Railways and food are inextricably linked in my earliest memories. And by that I do not necessarily mean the numerous ?picnic? meals carried aboard by my epicurean family each time we travelled during the summer holidays to visit both sets of grandparents and sometimes further-flung relatives.
Everyone who grew up in the pre-liberalised, pre-low cost air carrier India has similar memories of aloo-parantha-achar, idli-chutney or biryani-kebab meals carried in stainless steel dabbas and had with much relish in the train, as it wound its way slowly, across small towns and big junctions. Those meals of our memory can never compare with the cellophane-wrapped sandwiches and ?sky-kitchen?-catered curries that come to us in neat trays today. (Rajdhani or Shatabdi meals are not the same?not merely because the quality seems to have been steadily slipping over the years.)
But there is one particular train journey that I am more nostalgic about than the others: My first and last in a ?saloon?, a separate rail car in which I travelled with my grandparents from Benares to Madras, as it was then called; enjoying the privileges of an older, more bureaucratised India thanks to my grandfather, a senior railway official. The saloon was not merely a carriage. It was a separate world in itself; a mini household equipped, amongst other things with rations, a stove, and our cook from home, who travelled along with us.
All these details I know not because I remember them clearly, having then been under-five, but because my fond grandparents would often recount my experiences in later years?the sheer indulgence of having lived in a world where a railway cook could be sent scurrying to fetch a quarter of a kilo of bhindi from the local market of a city where the train had halted, for a meal for a fussing child?.
Nostalgia is a powerful, if rather pointless, emotion. But in the world of food, it need not necessarily be for home-cooked meals. The romance of the Indian railways, for instance, for many of us constituted not just the dabbas carried by our mothers but numerous small and savvy food retailers who dotted the stations where the trains stopped and weary passengers made a beeline for their fresh, delicious goodies. Each station was known for just one, only sometimes for two or more, delicacies.
The poori-aloo at Garhmukhteshwar were deemed special and better than anywhere else on the rail route across India. Sandila?s laddoos held much the same status?nameless vendors bringing these besan-and-atta sweets, sprinkled becomingly with some sugar powder on top, in earthen pots to the train windows. My aunt, a ?railway daughter-in-law? (!), recalls how squares of bright red paper would cover the mouths of these indigenous haandis, and a makeshift ?handle? of a short string or rope attached so that these could be carried around easily by the vendors.
Hapur was famous for one particular vendor encouraging travellers to try his Sindhi or Karachi halwa in a sing-song voice. It was also famous, strangely enough, for fried papad. Gajraula was more known than other stops for its tea sold in earthen kulhads, the smell of the mud adding to the brew?something that has completely gone missing at today?s roadside stalls too. There was magic in ber from Sambhal, oranges from Nagpur and mangoes from Malihabad that passengers would hastily buy from their windows as the trains stopped arbitrarily a few kilometers outside the station, near a grove or so.
The mangore (spicy moong dal fritters) of Surajgarh in Rajasthan were well-known, rasmalai and rasgule of Looni (near Jodhpur) deemed special, pointers undoubtedly to the enterprise of the Marwari community popularising specialities of the east in the west. Barmer?s khasta kachoris were sought out, so was the Madras biryani. And amongst the fare of the railway refreshment rooms in the posher cities, the mutton chops of New Delhi and veg cutlets of Dehradun found fame and an audience.
This is a short list handed over to me by my father and his siblings, all of who travelled extensively (and free) as part of the grand railway family. Undoubtedly many of you with similar experiences will have your own lists. But what this sets me thinking about are our regional foods and enterprise, now pushed to the margins in an era of chain-restaurants, food courts and QSRs dishing out uniform flavours. At the Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station, a hygienic and plastic-y caf? is a big favourite with the crowds?and not merely those travelling by train. But its menu could be that of any mall food court in the country.
At Delhi, Mumbai and other cities, there are long-awaited plans to lease out retail space to restaurant companies, which will be able to provide quality international fare, too, to travellers. And while this may be good news for rail commuters, given the less-than-hygienic and palatable options that they have today, these options leave no scope for local creativity and flavours to reach out to a larger world beyond.
Railway stations and their facilities need to be upgraded for sure? just like our airports in Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore have been. But what a look at the retail spaces (food and otherwise) at these airports will prove is the fact that local elements have been subsumed by a more glitzy, global look and feel. In fact in Delhi, at the domestic terminal, amidst the cafes, chips and Coke-vending machines, burgers, pizzas, Spanish-Italian bites and more, there is hardly any place that serves the city?s own food. (This, incidentally, is in contrast to other cities around the world, proud of their heritage, places like Hamburg and Vienna, where you can sample and pick up their distinctive sausages or even Bangkok and Hong Kong, more cosmopolitan.) Refurbishing stations is necessary, of course. But in our drive to become global, we may just eliminate everything local. That would be a pity.
The writer is a food critic