My Railway Song of British Times

My Railway Song of British Times

From the long common verandah on the third floor of our 5-storey tenement building on Dadar Main Road I - as a child - could look past the houses of Kutra Wadi to rail lines of the Great Indian Peninsular or G.I.P. Railway and beyond to the lines of the Bombay Baroda and Central India Railway. (After Independence the names were changed to Central and Western Railways respectively.) One of my pastimes as a child was waiting on the verandah to watch my father return from his job at Ballard Estate in the Fort area of Bombay. And to while away the time (and not get worried when he was late) I would the watch the trains going back-and-forth and chant in sing-song: 'G.I.P. Railway! B.B. and C.I. Railway! G.I.P.......'  

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Dreams of One Country, Ms Jagjit Daniel's MovieScopic India Novel. Te book my wife Jagjit and I worked on together also 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 delayed, talent-led ascent...to join the world's most progressive nations.

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Rail Travel from Bombay in British Times

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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