Looking back I don’t recall any one memorable train journey. There only are memories, scattered, vague, powerful nonetheless.

Since it’s been a while that I took a train, there is a constant longing to leave everything aside and sit on a train to see all the unexplored places. That perhaps is not meant to be.

Why this longing though, I really don’t know.

The memories, as I said, are vague. The trains of childhood were ordinary, nothing fancy; the travel options were first, second and third class. Our first preference was first class. Even though some trains did have the air-conditioned compartment called parlour, it was not for our class.

It is difficult to imagine a train journey without a station which was the most happening place -- with platforms, overhead pedestrian bridges crisscrossing above the platforms and connecting them, and hardened coolies running from here to there.

A station was a microcosmic representation of the city. All I remember them now is as bustling places with lots of people, food and book stalls; a bigger station like Lahore used to have more than one book stall where newspapers, best-selling digests and religious books sat comfortably with high literature. Multan station had the additional Hafiz Sohan Halwa to carry home. The waiting rooms I recall were dull big barren rooms, incapable of generating an interesting tale.

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There invariably was someone to drop you to the station (fathers in most cases) right till the train started moving amid the sound of whistle and final goodbyes. It was only then that the coolies who had carried your luggage and adjusted it close to you would disembark.

Trains were connected with a slow pace of life. The colour coding was permanent. The passenger trains were green, the luggage trains (maal gaaDi as we used to call them) a shade of maroon and the coolies everywhere wore red gowns and head gear. Life was simple.

The coding got all mixed up and confusing over time as life became faster. I understand there now are trains in blue and white, air-conditioned coaches a norm and wifi a given. And there is hot food on trains. Yet, the romance hasn’t waned.

Back then, as a child, I wasn’t as keen on reading as looking out, if I was lucky to get the window seat. The journey from Lahore southwards began with slums that surround the train tracks. I saw children playing or squatting near the tracks to relieve themselves, men or women at work, men in groups playing cards and an odd old man on his hookah. Then came fields, villages in the distance, and small stations the train didn’t stop at. While going up north from Lahore, to say Rawalpindi, the few tunnels in the mountains, that turned everything dark for a few seconds, were the highlight.

If the window was far, there was no choice but to look at fellow passengers. People do come real close in a train compartment for that short stretch of time.

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Back in the 1970s and ’80s, people used to bring their packed food along. As the train moved on a little, the tiffin boxes were opened and the entire coach started smelling of parathas, pickles and omelette. Soon it was time to fill our cups out of the thermos filled with steaming cardamom tea.

Amid offers of food sharing, conversations began that seemed unending.

There was constant influx of men and women into the compartments: vendors selling their fare, beggars and, at least once during the journey, the uniformed ticket collector who scared me no end. He often got hold of someone travelling without ticket or found some other problem. There were blind singers using the name of God to beg for alms, moving from one dabba to the next.

I have distinct memory of the cold drinks sold in a tub full of ice, boiled chick peas in masala and the sudden arrival of a basket of boiled eggs (Garm aandey was the loud refrain) on a cold winter evening like manna from heaven.

Often the train would stop in the middle of two stations because there was "a cross". It meant our train had to stop to give way to another one coming from the opposite side (some signal magic prevented a head-on collision). The passengers in the fast train as it approached looked at us with a sense of victory; or so it seemed to me.

Once, I remember, the train stopped in the middle of some wilderness. It was pitch dark as one looked out the window. There was apparently a breakdown and people started getting off the train out of sheer boredom. It stopped there for God knows how long.

Another time, when the train stopped suddenly between two stations, the cause of commotion became known soon. A man had stepped in front of the train, a preferred method of suicide then. I don’t remember losing my sleep over the incident. Childhood is good that way.

Inside the train, what fascinated me most was the chain (it was more of a lever than a chain though) in every coach that could be pulled to stop the train at once. I don’t think anyone ever did that. The warning in Urdu -- saying that anyone pulling the chain unnecessarily would be fined a hefty amount, I think it was Rs200 then, and handed over to the police -- did the trick I guess.

My biggest fear was that a loved one (men/boys in my family were too fond of getting off on stations) would be left behind as the train started moving. Pulling the chain to have them back on the train was obviously out of question.

Trains have a strange sense of nationalism attached to them. A train journey in the mind is about one’s own country. Trains in Europe are distinct from ours in the subcontinent, despite the colonial connection, and remain unfamiliar at best. The faster trains are the most forgettable. Close to home, it is through its functional and effective railway that I want to explore India, a country designated as ‘perpetual enemy’. The world’s most stunningly beautiful journey has to be the one from Colombo to Kandy to Nanu Oya, the station nearest to Nuwara Eliya -- slow, breathtaking and surreal.

This article was published in The News on Sunday on June 04, 2017 under the title Amid final goodbyes.