Rail Travel from Bombay in British Times
Two or three times in my childhood my mother took me by train from Bombay to visit our hometowns in Kerala - which was then a kingdom called Travancore. There was no direct train. We first went south-east to Madras (now known as Chennai) and then changed from Madras Central to Egmore Station some distance away to get the train to go south-west to reach Travancore. We had to wait a whole day. On one occasion I I was 5 or 6 and my sister, a toddler, was ill all the way. Like other railway stations Egmore had an exclusive European waiting room and Indian waiting-rooms. Luckily, the Station Master at Egmore was my mother's relation. Though we had only second class passes - which my father got working for Bombay Port Trust - the Station Master put us in the 1st Class waiting room where my mother could take better care of my sister.
Then came the scenic journey to Travancore, cutting through the eastern ghats and then the western ghats to reach Punalur. There we got off to take a public bus home, another half day's journey.
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Dreams of One Country, Ms. Jagjit Daniel's MovieScopic India
Novel. Now listed in GoodReads, the book my wife Jagjit and I worked on together has some
memorable scenes of Bombay and India in British times and World War II.
It's now available
for Print Copy delivered to you by Amazon - apart from e-download. Dreams is
a story set in the midst of historic national upheavals like the Emergency, of a Love-lit youth campaign
that launches India's talent-led ascent...to join the
world's progressive nations.
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