the children ghost stories to put them to sleep later at university going back to calcutta how suddenly the terrain would change from the arid cow belt to the eyepiercing green of bihar and bengal the excitement of going back to calcutta familiarity the old ambassador parked right outside platform 1 then a detour through the maidan everything unchanged except parents getting a few extra wrinkles recently my parents along with my wife and a close friend travelled together we saw a film on the laptop while late evening up rushed by mother played civilisation till midnight flasks of tea when living in paris the train station wasnt very far once i took a train to st malo one that was filled with indian writers going to attend a literary festival and we broke all rulessimple meals conversationumesh ramakrishnan author vicechairman ct partnersin those days the journey was almost better than the destination itself my sister and i would leave bangalore during the summer to spend our holidays in kerala since we had to go all the way to kannur the only way to get there by train was to take the island express our compartment would be decoupled at ottapalam and then attached to the madras mail the next morning our highlight was the meals served at night and the incredible appam and stew served as breakfast in shornur as we alighted in kannur all dark from the soot from the steam engine we would be grinning with delight the flat bed comfort of a firstclass intercontinental flight pales in comparison to a long lazy summer day spent on a hard wooden seat watching the green paddy fields shimmering along the malabar coast on a train you shared intimate thoughts with people who were strangers on a platform just before they sat next to you you shared simple meals and delightful conversation and we were richer for our experiencewe chased them with hockey sticksvinay pathak actormy most memorable journey is the one i took as an ncc cadet to a military camp in himachal pradesh from ranchi we first took the train to delhi from there to amritsar then on to pathankot where army trucks took us ahead there were 90 of us with about four teachers as chaperones we planned to play ludo and the goonda gang decided to sneak along cigarettes and beer one of the guys wrote down the names of the 100odd stations that we crossed in his diary we used to tease him saying the tt is at it again at saharanpur around 10 pm a woman with two men and holding a baby tried to come into our bogey and even as we stopped them the train began to gather momentum the men took out knives to threaten us but our hockey sticks were a match for them at our first stop in amritsar we showered in our swimming trunks with a pipe on the tracks we had the day off