For the Love of Trains, Tinkle and Tomato Soup
There’s always memories that I end up stumbling upon every time I clean my cupboard. Usually it’s photos of my childhood self, embarrassing journal entries and once in a while, letters to crushes. I had this really flawed thought process back when I was 11–12 years old that my letters would be the key to my crush’s heart and more often than not, I would write the letter, while mustering the courage to hand them the letter however, was a different story. It didn’t exactly help that I would have a new crush every month, which would mean I would have one letter for each of them. Long story short when kids my age stashed answer sheets with bad marks, I would stash letters written to my crushes, along with my answer sheets which would have unbelievable marks like 3/10, 5/50, so on and so forth
Some days back, I was in the process of organizing my books, when I stumbled upon a Tinkle Double Digest. Now the concept of a Tinkle Double Digest always blew my mind. I’d always be disappointed when the regular Tinkle editions would end in 30 or so pages, and here is an edition with 100 pages? It is literally what dreams are made of. And then a flash of nostalgic memories followed.
I’d always purchase a Tinkle Double Digest every time my family took a train journey somewhere. And we did that a lot. Every single time I would have some sort of vacation, be it Dusshera, Diwali, Christmas, Summer we were always taking a train somewhere. We’d take a train to Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Tumkur, Chikmangalur, Hampi and they’d all involve a minimum train journey of 8 hours. I’d always look forward to that.
We’d usually end up reaching the train station really early thanks to my dad’s ever looming fear that we would miss the train. And that was a fear made very real to me in the film Taare Zameen Par, when Ishaan dreams that the train leaves him on the platform even while he’s running to get to it. That film terrified and impressed me at the same time, but more on that conversation later.
Until I was around 14–15 years old, the hierarchy of berths was always this. It would be mom and my brother on the lower berth, me on the middle berth and dad on the upper berth. And during the day time, I’d always take the window seat with my Tinkle and be engrossed in the book for the whole journey, only pausing to look out of the window once in a while. As I look back on that situation now, I have no idea how I did it. I’d be happy just sitting with the book and looking at the views outside for hours together.
Another thing that was honestly not favorite thing about trains was the multitude of snacks vendors would sell. In an effort to not spend more than we already were, Mom would pack some snacks from home and I’d munch on them. However despite what I had in my hand, I always found the snacks there more appealing. And a personal favorite of mine among all that was sold, was the tomato soup.
The IRCTC, sells this really crazy tomato soup which honestly tastes like nothing I’ve had before. It doesn’t taste like the Knorr Soup or the ones that you get in restaurants. It had its own distinct taste, and it was always guaranteed to make me smile. I can almost taste it as I write about it, even though soup is the farthest thing I want to have on this hot summer day.
Most of my train journeys have been in sleeper class, and there’s just something about sleeper class that still beats the A/C class today, in my opinion. Firstly, the fact that we had to carry our own bedsheets and pillows meant that I was getting to recreate my sleep setup at home, in the train, which was always comfortable. Even as a kid, I had this concept of missing my pillow. The carrying of pillows was followed by tying of bedsheets around the berth, because my parents were scared that I would roll on down to the ground in the middle of the night.
Second, the windows opened properly in sleeper class so that I could see outside. I could see which village we were passing, which station we had arrived and look at different families saying goodbye. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was to make up a story about every single person I’d see on the platform or on the train. The tall burly man, was a gangster on the run from the police. The woman with the old shawl was on the way to visit her parents in her hometown. The loud family in the next compartment was on their way to a marriage. I still remember walking into my first A/C compartment and being disappointed that I couldn’t look outside.
If I have to recommend a train journey a person has to take, it has to be the train journey from Sakleshpur to Bangalore. The route has beautiful scenic view filled with waterfalls, hills and beautiful patches of land. I remember travelling that route for the first time, and I was absolutely awestruck. There’s just something about seeing natural structures that brings you that serenity, that peace of mind.
After I turned around 14–15, I began to take lesser train journeys. The ones I took would be on an A/C train and they’d always be overnight journeys. A train journey just became another form of transport and I started prepping for it how I’d prepare for usual journeys. A phone with full charge filled with episodes and movies and a power bank. After all, we were in the technological age with smartphones, internet and along with it came the fear of missing out aka FOMO.
I wasn’t honestly aware of how much FOMO I had, until I was travelling back from Pune to Bangalore and my phone charger decided to go for a toss. I was in panic mode, because with my phone gone, I couldn’t watch my movies, I couldn’t text my friends, I couldn’t scroll for memes and what not. On the same journey, I met a guy from Kerala, and he suddenly struck up a conversation with me. Because I couldn’t speak Malayalam and he couldn’t speak English or Kannada, we stuck to the only common language we knew, which was Hindi. And boy oh boy, just trying to speak Hindi and make conversation with him took me such a long time, I never realized how the time went by. And guess what? I didn’t really miss anything being off my phone. Just a couple of memes and some texts. Not a life and death situation.
When I found that Tinkle while cleaning, I immediately choose my cozy spot on the sofa and stretched my legs. And then I went on to read it cover by cover, pausing to look out the window once in a while. And guess what? The world didn’t come crashing down. And it taught me one important thing. It’s to not hide these childhood habits, the ones that brought you pure unadulterated joy.
It’s like Saanvi’s dialogue from Kirik Party, which in my opinion is one of the finest films made in the last decade. She tells Karna, “As we grow up, it’s funny how our thought process changes right? We think okay now I’m older, I need to start behaving maturely. But in the process we hide our childhood desires and habits? Now as I spent this night doing things I only did as child, I feel like the kid in me is reborn again".
