I used to take the Amtrak every day from Union Station in DC to Penn Station in Baltimore. Friday evening trains were always full of people who brought dinner onboard. The food smells were awful--there is a reason Amtrak's Cafe Car only sells bland food. Being in a train without air conditioning and the smell of curry permeating the air sounds like my own personal hell.
India overall is a very fragrant country. That's the word I would choose that is more neutral/positive compared to "pungent".
It sounds like you have a very sensitive sense of smell and you would not do well in India.
But for others - if the point of travel is to have new and novel experiences, and your senses being the primary entry point for experiences, India is the most intense sensory experience I've ever had - the smells, the sounds, and the sights all combine to overwhelm.
As would be expected with a developing country of over a billion people, not all sensory interactions are positive, but with the bad comes far more good, and a worthwhile distinct experience.
> But for others - if the point of travel is to have new and novel experiences, and your senses being the primary entry point for experiences, India is the most intense sensory experience I've ever had - the smells, the sounds, and the sights all combine to overwhelm.
Sounds like something a westerner visiting India would say. For people from there (my family is from nearby Bangladesh), a train is just a way to get to a business meeting or to visit family. I don't imagine Indian commuters--in general--appreciate the food smells any more than American commuters do (it's always the vacationers who bring smelly food onto the Amtrak, not the regular commuters or business travelers).
In fact I'd wager that's why the "rich food culture" of the trains has "vanished." What the author sees as the lamentable loss of some cultural phenomenon, most Indians probably see as a laudable step toward modern comforts.
> In fact I'd wager that's why the "rich food culture" of the trains has "vanished."
Not by a long shot. Reduced? Certainly. Vanished? Certainly not. I think the author of the OP is writing based on her limited experience, with the Mumbai chef also chiming in under a similar condition.
> most Indians probably see as a laudable step toward modern comforts.
"...most Indians probably see this as a laudable step toward modern comforts...", a comment from someone who is not an Indian, while I see a few following comments by Indians (seemingly) who fondly reminisced about the experience. Its funny, the conviction that over a billion people of a different country/culture would see the world like you would.
Besides, "modern comforts" are there for the taking if one wants it. One can always travel first class in these trains, where you have multiple tiers to choose from ranging from air conditioned private cabins to A/C car coaches. Otherwise, you can travel the other classes and tiers where you get a chance to explore what is talked about in the article. To each his/her own.
Edit: I think the author is speaking about the experience in the cheapest 2 classes of Indian railways. Here are the fare class codes in Indian Railways [0]. There are at least 6-7 other tiers of fare classes above these.
I have fond memories of my aunts making dried fish curry (my dad is from a part of Bangladesh that makes this: http://bengalicuisine.net/2010/lotiya-shutki). It's delicious, but you can smell it cooking in an apartment building from outside.
> Its funny, the conviction that over a billion people of a different country/culture would see the world like you would.
I think there is a tendency for people, often westerners but also Indian elites (and the author of this article is definitely one of those), to romanticize aspects of life there that I don't think ordinary people will be sad to see go.
anyway, the fish dish that you mentioned ( i.e. "Shutki")is kinda on the extreme/fringe side of Bengali cuisine. its not adored by many people. heck even my own parents do not like it. although me & my siblings love it!
Soo.. as an Indian who has traveled a lot in Indian trains, the smell of food never bothered me. There is something to be said about Indian food though - by very nature it smells different compared to say western food.
Spices - oh boy tons of spices. They mask lot of smells that you would otherwise find pungent - like garlic or onion. I have been stuck in Mumbai metro where someone was carrying a sack of peeled garlic - boy was that horrible.
So while I obviously can't speak for everyone - smell of food is last thing that will bother me while travelling in Indian railways. Sweat, dirty toilets etc though... they are something else.
Haha.. the brilliance of the "staple" article can only be realized by nostalgia. If you've experienced what she said - in India, in your childhood, among the then open-and-freely-mingling people - you would not compare it to a DC to Baltimore ride. Or any train ride in the Western world.
I personally related to every bit of that article. Used to go from Ahmedabad in Gujarat, to Chennai - in Navjeevan express that takes 36 hours, every other summer. Thanks to this author, I just relived that memory :)
Used to do DC to Wilmington. My travel companion and I never noticed the dinners. But we had one of those little travel mini-bars with two martini glasses and a shaker with room for some cheese and crackers. We traveled home in style.
I cannot fathom why some people are so annoyed by the smell of food, which is of course a necessity of life. It seems like the kind of thing people CHOOSE to be annoyed by because of some imagined sense of politeness.
Regardless, I suspect if you were in train packed full of people from various socioeconomic backgrounds on a hot day, the smell of food would be the LEAST offensive scent on offer.
Really? It's annoying because you are captive. Have you not been on a plane and people near you take out their Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonalds? You can't exactly open the window. That doesn't bother you in the least? Most people don't find the smell of fast food in close quarters enjoyable.
Sure, although I don't consider music a necessity of life.
I find the smell of certain things, like old cooked broccoli or kale, to make me want to vomit. But if a passenger on the train was eating it, I don't think it would disturb me nearly as much as endless music that interrupts my concentration. I don't see how these are in the same boat, even though the music is merely annoying and the smell of putrid greens makes me want to vomit.
Food on a train isn't a necessity of life either. You aren't going to starve to death if you can't eat your fish and broccoli on the train.
Constantly feeling the urge to vomit doesn't disturb your concentration, but music does?
I'm confused how you can't see the commonalities between the two examples. In both cases, a person does something which disrupts many people in a shared space.
Smell is very subjective. What you consider terrible others might consider intoxicating.
If there is one thing I learned from moving to the American Midwest is "to each their own." Everybody has their own palate, tastes, wants, and dreams. Nobody is "wrong" and keeping an open mind is always the best policy.
I can almost guarantee that if you're traveling in a non-AC compartment in India, the windows stay open. People only close them before sleeping at night, because when trains invariably stop at its scheduled stations, the passengers don't want to run the risk of thieves grabbing valuables through windows.
There are some smells of certain cuisines that I absolutely detest (fish curry, garlic, etc.) but I can't recall ever being bothered by the smell of food in these compartments. I can recall being bothered by the smell of diesel fumes if the car happened to be close to the front. What drove me quite mad was this, "all culminating in a boisterous game of cards or round of antakshari". Ear plugs don't help much.
Western and Indian trains without air conditioning aren't the same -- in the Indian ones (at least 2nd AC and below) the windows can be opened, and often are. The wind blows away everything but the faintest aroma of cooking food.
She held out a plate to me, which I shyly refused. Go on, she urged me. "Food is never food unless you share it with others, no?" she said. I accepted and found love at first bite.
I also remember a hearty Punjabi woman we met on another trip. She sighed at my mother's humble offering of idlis. "I can never make such soft idlis at home," she said, as I bit into her fragrant alu paratha (a flaky, potato-stuffed Indian bread), wondering why anyone who could eat such manna every day would ever want an idli.
These food exchanges would invariably extend into detailed introductions, exchange of family histories, discovery of common acquaintances, all culminating in a boisterous game of cards or round of antakshari (contest of Hindi movie songs) and a final promise to keep in touch.
There's something very beautiful about complete strangers interacting and engaging deeply with one another, free of any selfish desires besides that of companionship. There are many things I love about today's world, but that sense of camaraderie does seem diminished these days.
To pick an easy target, smartphones mean you can travel for 3 months and still talk to your hometown friend every 5 minutes. Everyone is sharing their moments with their e-friends, instead of with others actually living that moment too.
Well in rich countries you have govt to take care of you when something goes wrong. In countries like India you have to depend on the magnanimity of strangers, so its in you best interest to make friends.
our professions and interests have diversified a lot over past couple of decades so the chances of running into a stranger who has similar interests to yours are lower.
This one is prbly just me, I am afraid of talking to women and be accused of sexual harassment which these days can be just spreading your legs too wide.
I am not saying ppl necessarily do this consciously at an individual level but talking about culture as whole.
We visited India last summer. We had been warned by other travelers, blogs, and even the Indian Railways employees, that we should stay with the higher class cars. When getting tickets from Agra (where the Taj Mahal is) to go north, they were one short for our group, so I volunteered to stay by myself in the lower (sleeper) class.
We got on the train around midnight, and I stumbled around looking for my berth. Everyone was asleep. An IR employee, who was genuinely happy that I was there, helped me find the spot. I was paranoid and alone in a train car filled with strangers.
The next morning, I felt like a fool for feeling that way. I awoke to find my 5 other cabin-mates sitting around the small central table, quietly talking so as not to disturb me. Suddenly we were all talking, even though I spoke almost no Hindi and they spoke almost no English, and they were all feeding me delicious home-cooked food that was unlike anything I had ever had. That experience was a demonstration of the power of technology to connect people in unexpected ways as well - we were showing each other maps of our home towns, pictures of my family and city, and translating hindi words on a smartphone as we made our way through rural India. One of my favorite experiences of the trip only happened because I couldn't get the ticket I wanted.
I think it's easy today to live in our own walled gardens, and being so connected means we don't need to move outside of them often - we'll just see our friends' posts, watch the stuff in our Netflix queues, and read the articles that we agree with. But, I still believe that sense of camaraderie with strangers is still there, based if nothing else on the fact that so many people crave it. We just have to move outside of our comfort zones and find it.
It's worth considering why you were advised to stay in the higher class cars. It could be classism and segregation, or there could be a higher incidence of theft and you got lucky. Or who knows.
A Norwegian woman I worked with was in India as a kid because her parents worked for UN.
IIRC she told us how a woman, after staring at her for a while leaned over and pinched her face to check if a kid could really be that pale or if it was some kind of paint or something.
She also remembered being pulled in the hair because people wanted to know if it was real.
That said, this was something like 30 years ago and today after reading this discussion I wonder if she was just really unlucky or what.
My sister is a white, blonde girl, and she did a volunteering program in India 2 years ago, some remote village in the middle of nowhere.
She said that basically everyone in the village came over to touch her skin and hair, because they have never seen such a pale person(and blonde hair).
I had the same happen to me when I was 2, living with my mother while doing her dissertation in Chihuahua, Mexico in early 70's. Everyone wanted to pet me.
I can definitely see this happening today, but I wouldn't consider that anything malicious, just very different culturally. I'm from the US, and wouldn't even be considered blond, but at some of the monuments it was like being a celebrity, and tons of people would want to take pictures with me. This happened perhaps 100 times in our one month there, and it was really strange at first.
I did also have people touch my arms and look at me with big grins on their faces. If you're not from a place where touching a stranger is acceptable, this can understandably be quite shocking until you get used to it. There are so many people in India that you'll find people with a wide variety of different customs and social norms.
I'm black; I remember (white) people being amazed at how my hair felt before I kept it really short. A black woman I knew who lived in a wealthy Detroit suburb where they were the only black family related to me (while laughing) how the neighborhood kids were so fascinated that the color on her children's hands didn't wipe off.
This is all in the last 30 years or so in the US. People meeting different people is a good thing, don't take it negatively.
I was fortunate to have lived in a fairly diverse community (military town, lots of different people, although the city is very much almost majority-hispanic), and one of our family friends was a tall black police officer. To a toddler exposed to many different people, I never gave it much thought--except the hands, of course, when he'd pick me up to show me the lights and siren on his motorbike. (It's maddening how stupidly enjoyable children find certain loud noises.) The young me was oddly fascinated with the lighter color of the palms of those of African descent, and how similar--yet different--they were to my own.
As the years passed, I never really gave it much thought until a friend of mine from high school looked at my hands once when we reconnected some years later and asked me "Why do white people have such pink palms?"
He was teasing, of course, so I had to relate my own experiences. We shared a good chuckle.
Sometimes it's heartening to consider that our differences can be advantageous as a vehicle for bringing us together. It's rare (sadly), but it's also a very beautiful thing.
Thanks for reminding me of this, even if indirectly! Good memories.
I don't think those are mutually exclusive. It would make sense that a classist/segregated society would both cause and be reinforced by elevated crime rates in the lower classes. Less legal opportunities for the lower classes to make money, and if they were poorer they'd have a more desperate need for immediate wealth than the upper classes, so that would make crime more attractive for them on average. And reports of those crimes would be a reason for the upper classes to justify their classism/segregation to themselves (ie: "of course those people just can't be allowed into polite society, look how dangerous they are") and lead to them enforcing the segregation more strictly. And that's not even taking into account selective prosecution/policing by law enforcement.
> It could be classism and segregation, or there could be a higher incidence of theft and you got lucky
I can only speak from my personal experience, but I would attribute it more to the former. The advice I generally heard was that you should stick to the heavily developed areas, near your hotel, etc. We were abroad for about 4 months, and I always felt safest outside of the touristy, "nice" areas. Especially in India, you'll find many scammers (sometimes entire organized teams of them!) in the areas where there are lots of tourists because that's where all of the money is. But, I found that by walking often just a few blocks away from these areas you would be alone as a foreigner, and there wouldn't be mysterious people with excellent English following you around and trying to "befriend" you. I was definitely noticed, but people would be smiling, or shouting "hello!", or waving. I never felt threatened.
I felt very fortunate that I learned this lesson; we also met many people in India who had barely left their hostels because they were so stressed and afraid of dealing with the scammers who waited at all hours of the day and night in those areas. When they made it out they didn't go far: they went to the tourist-friendly places that could be found on TripAdvisor, but these places were also teeming with scammers. I think a lot of people end up missing out on India because of this and not liking it.
We were very lucky and none of us dealt with crime the whole trip. Of the travelers we met who had had stuff stolen though, it was in touristed areas, especially on beaches while they weren't paying close attention to their stuff (and/or very drunk).
There could be lots of reasons . . . some of which are mentioned in this thread. Other possibilities include that they are aware that many or most western tourists will not be comfortable in the lower class cars, and they are genuinely trying to help. Or, maybe they view the foreigners as rich, and are trying to make as much money from them as possible.
For perspective, in the US, the largest (gross revenue) category of personal care products is shampoo. In India it's skin lightening products.
Though also for perspective, a few years ago the NYC-Boston intercity bus gray and legit markets briefly merged. Before Greyhound then used political and pr hardball to repartition them, which also resegregated them by class and race. Upon hearing I took these cross-over "Chinese buses", I heard a lot of "oh, they're not safe" (the pr campaign), and once, from a professionally-dressed black woman travelling Greyhound, a comment about "dirty Chinese".
As others have noted in previous flame wars, classism revolving around European/Anglicized (the old colonial big state & its vestige) vs Native is quite big in India (in pretty much every avenue). I usually translate "Hindutva" and other such emotive tag words in contemporary propaganda into this hidden unspoken framework (that's not to say most such representatives aren't vacuous idiots).
The title is a bit misleading - I thought salt was the food which was being described as vanishing :-)
I am not going to disagree with any of the other commenters. (After all, it has been said that everything you think is true about India - the exact opposite is also true somewhere in India)
The question of trust is an important one, maybe even more than the issue of an economy which is developing (and hence making people more insular) - people on HN may not be aware, but there was a time (admittedly quite a few years ago) when there would be literally a news article every single day about the "biscuit bandits"- people who offered drugged cookies, which are usually called biscuits in India, and made off with the victims' valuables.
I just searched online for "biscuit bandits" and found this ironic story - although I don't know if it is true.
(edit: Changed funny to ironic. To answer webtechgal, I meant funny in an ironic sense. The problem had been going on for many years when this person who worked in law enforcement was victimized. If it is possible to dupe law enforcement in this way, one can only imagine how challenging it is for the regular folks)
No offense, but if you were at the receiving end of things, you probably won't find it funny. This (the 'biscuit bandit' thing - though I'm reading it described thus for the first time), has been a menace plaguing gullible travelers on India trains for many years now.
With millions of people traveling each day on thousands of routes across the length and breadth of the country, it is happy hunting grounds for the culprits. In some cases, people end up losing their life savings. Sad, shocking, but true all the same, even today.
> The title is a bit misleading - I thought salt was the food
Yes, websites that append their branding slugs to article titles are a bit of a pain. We've got a list of them that get removed automatically but I'm not sure if NPR's food blog rates an inclusion. Edit: once a year is often enough. Added.
Me too! I read the title, and thought something like "rich people food with lots of salt/sodium is vanishing from the IR". Made no sense. Understood only in the second paragraph :)
Every western country went through a similar transition in the last 20 years with a generation remembering the days when kids would bike to their friends house, people knew each other in neighborhoods even in large cities, and communities just felt tighter.
It remains to be seen whether this is reversible and we can still bring it back, whether we actually replaced it with something better (replacing few strong social bonds with many more weaker bonds), or even whether it's just artificial nostalgia that ignores the poverty, discrimination and segregation of the past.
I biked to my friend's houses when I was a kid, but any more it seems like the suburbs are just too spread out to make that practical for a lot of kids. The traffic is also fast-moving and unaccustomed to looking for road users who aren't also in cars.
Suburbs also used to have sidewalks, which made it easier and safer for younger children to explore a little. It just seems so bizarre to me to see newer ones with either sidewalks only on one side or the street or no sidewalks at all. I remember being very young and forbidden from crossing the street, but I pretty much had free reign of the sidewalk on the block I lived on.
Maybe there's something about me then because I hate it when strangers try to talk to me on a plane or in line (I'm in the midwest of the USA so no so much train riding going on here).
Maybe it is cultural, maybe it is because I'm an only child, maybe it is genetic, or some combination of all of them (probably) but this article sounds like a nightmare to me.
I don't want to hear about your kids. I don't want to hear about your favorite sports team. I don't want to hear about your political views.
Thats patently untrue. The US is actually very big on small talk and causal chatter. You can't really make a blanket statement about a country the size of the US. New Yorkers will strike up a conversation with total stranger without thinking twice. In the deep south it would be considered rude to not say hello if you were passing someone on your block or street.
This reminds me of my flight returning from San Jose, CA to the upper Midwest, my current home. Within a few moments of my choosing an aisle seat, someone (who I later found out was from my hometown) joined me in the neighboring middle seat and immediately struck up a conversation. It was about his recommendation of a book I had in my lap that he had previously read. It was then that I realized this type of occurrence hadn't happened throughout the time I was in CA, and was a welcome reminder of home. Perhaps it was just coincidence that a stranger confronted me on my flight home, but I certainly have perceived people here to be a good deal more willing to talk to strangers and seemingly less aloof.
More generally, the Friedman-esque "flattening" of the world has made a lot of things less special. It wasn't immediately obvious to me what we were losing at the time, but I now have a certain nostalgia for a time, just a couple short decades ago, when you could find things in your travels (foreign and domestic) that you couldn't simply order online or, at least, find on eBay. Souvenirs make so much less sense and feel so much less special when you don't need to travel to get them.
Of course, I do not view the past with such rose-colored glasses that I cannot understand that these goods have a wider market than ever and are accessible (both in terms of affordability and physical access) to more people than ever. The businessperson in a small village somewhere sure isn't sad that their market has become effectively infinite.
After all, many lament the bygone day of air travel when seats were comfortable and service excellent without realizing that they, like me, would not have been able to afford to travel by air at all 50 years ago.
To bring it full circle, it sounds like the author is recognizing that, while that world of nostalgia is lost to her as she is now able to travel by air due to increasing wealth, so too a poorer generation of Indians is now able to afford to travel by train (home-cooked meals or not) when before they could not travel at all.
It does feel weird to see that the world's souvenirs are largely made in China. I like my lamps I bought in Istanbul, but I could have bought not just a similar lamp, but quite possibly an identical one, online.
While these issues are in part true, I think part of what maintains the allure of still going abroad or at least away from your current city is the discovery of what you want. Everything on the planet may just be a few clicks and a credit card away, but there are lots of things you don't realize you want because you didn't know they existed. Going and experiencing other cultures can help shape this. For a simple example, I never knew I wanted a cezve until I went to a place where they were more commonly used. Can I buy a cezve in the US? Absolutely, but I likely wouldn't have since the odds of someone using one to make coffee in the US is far lower.
That's just a minor example, but it's representative of the allure that travel can still bring and what it ultimately brings - the chance to see and find things you didn't know about before. Souvenirs that aren't from shops labeled "Souvenir" still are usually much more unique and difficult to acquire without actually going to the source, and even the same activities just done with a different mindset or with a different cultural attitude can make all the difference.
That's a wonderful point. You still get to experience the culture -- what is popular and what makes a place unique, and what works well in that place.
Often when I travel, I take note of things I like and wish to buy, but remind myself not to make an impulse purchase; I can always buy it once I get home, if I still want it -- and not have to carry it with me for the next 2 weeks!
I think perhaps that very thought process is the reason I began thinking of travel as less "special".
I think this whole article is a click-bait or over sensationalism. The culture that the author alludes to, authoritatively declaring it to have 'vanished', has not vanished by a long shot.
If one were to take ten random train trips longer than 6 to 8 hours each, I bet not one will turn out to be sans signs of the rich food culture. In all probability, it has reduced, but certainly not vanished.
> authoritatively declaring it to have 'vanished', has not vanished by a long shot.
I agree with you completely. Indians are quite guilty of giving really weird ideas of India to outsiders. I mean, the culture is vastly different from western culture, as it is, but adding a thick layer of nostalgia or romanticism will only make their expectations more fantastical.
It is pretty clear that the middle classes rarely take long train journeys any more. Poor people tend to be traveling for work rather than for holidays. So inevitability there are more individual travelers than families and people are (wisely) more cautious.
The phrase "middle class" is misleading here[1]. If you are talking about people with IT industry jobs, they certainly have enough disposable income to spend on flights or cars. Even lower income migrants travel home for major holidays, much like the author herself did when she was young.
>In my childhood days, we could walk up to any house on the street in the middle of a cricket game and demand water. Often we would get rose sherbet or lemonade instead of plain water.
I had the exact same memories of traveling by train in Russia. Food, food, food everywhere, at each stop. Unfortunately it's all gone now (after decades upon decades) due to new sanitary requirements under Putin. I don't remember getting sick or heard about anyone getting sick from the food. It was always the highlight of each trip, even if your family's bringing food (usually wrapped in foil) you still get out and try piroshki and pirogi on the way.
Like everything else there are grey areas here too.
As a child we were taught food is scared because people put efforts into it over years. In fact we uttered a prayer that meant "Food is God and consuming is worship." But I strongly disagree with that when people talk about food in train.
I travelled in the general/sleeper classes often and so many times people would generously offer food and then steal your belonging because the food was spiked. A lot of families would carry their gas stoves in the train and fucking cook food in the running train which is a fire hazard. It was as if these people would not eat outside food for one day.
People fought, got violent when confronted.
Today most trains have pantry cars and an amazing food culture of railway stations that changes every few 100 miles. I would say enjoy that.
The author said India's vast rail network [...] the world's largest. I was certain China had more rail so I looked it up. These stats are from 2008, so China has no doubt advanced even further...
China has 78,000 "route kilometers" and 154,600 "total kilometers" of track. (The US and Russia have more) India has "stagnated" at 63,000 route kilometers.[0]
China has 578,000 freight wagons, 44,000 coaches and 18,300 locomotives, whereas India has 22,5000 freight wagons, 45,000 passenger coaches and 8,300 locomotives.[0]
Indian's railways carry only ~22% of the freight carried by the China.[0]
In 2007 India moved 750 Million MT of freight while China moved 4.5x that (i.e 3,300 Million MT).[0]
India does move more people, but they count intra-Mumbai commuters as rail passengers, whereas China does not count subway commuters (which would probably be greater; since there are many large cities with subways).
One subtle point that is being missed (from the comments I read) is the concept of sharing food with strangers. When I came to the US from India (many years ago), I used to surprised that my American friends would just open up a pack of chips and start munching away. In India, it would be expected to at least offer the chips to the people around you.
I am from India and I can tell you that there are 2 things that I find in India are very much unique and exotic.
1. Indian culinary skills are something very rare. I have travelled around of the world and seen the culinary skills everywhere, nowhere I have seen such a great usage of spices and variety of dishes that can be produces with mixing different ingredients. You can have variety of Roti's or parathas(which are indian breads) by combining different ingredients with breads. Most people know the India has so many languages and the dialects change every 100 miles, but only few foreigners know that it is true for food as well. Each state has its own set of foods. The food habits in North, central, south, east & west are completely different. There is so much to explore when it comes to food. we not only have diversity in religion and languages but also in food.
2. The train journeys in India are most exotic. There is no where in this world(im talking about developed countries), where you can have open train cabins. Just take a long cross country train journey and you will feel more satisfied and contemplated in the end. You might feel a bit uneasy about so much crowd around you, but just forget everything and look outside the window and see the passing by mountain and the setting sun. You will feel satisfied and have the best sleep in your life in that train journey, if it happens to be an overnight journey. This is when you will realize there is peace in the midst of all the chaos.
84 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadI used to take the Amtrak every day from Union Station in DC to Penn Station in Baltimore. Friday evening trains were always full of people who brought dinner onboard. The food smells were awful--there is a reason Amtrak's Cafe Car only sells bland food. Being in a train without air conditioning and the smell of curry permeating the air sounds like my own personal hell.
Anyway, good read.
It sounds like you have a very sensitive sense of smell and you would not do well in India.
But for others - if the point of travel is to have new and novel experiences, and your senses being the primary entry point for experiences, India is the most intense sensory experience I've ever had - the smells, the sounds, and the sights all combine to overwhelm.
As would be expected with a developing country of over a billion people, not all sensory interactions are positive, but with the bad comes far more good, and a worthwhile distinct experience.
Sounds like something a westerner visiting India would say. For people from there (my family is from nearby Bangladesh), a train is just a way to get to a business meeting or to visit family. I don't imagine Indian commuters--in general--appreciate the food smells any more than American commuters do (it's always the vacationers who bring smelly food onto the Amtrak, not the regular commuters or business travelers).
In fact I'd wager that's why the "rich food culture" of the trains has "vanished." What the author sees as the lamentable loss of some cultural phenomenon, most Indians probably see as a laudable step toward modern comforts.
Not by a long shot. Reduced? Certainly. Vanished? Certainly not. I think the author of the OP is writing based on her limited experience, with the Mumbai chef also chiming in under a similar condition.
> most Indians probably see as a laudable step toward modern comforts.
I don't think so. Some? May be. Most? Doubtful.
Besides, "modern comforts" are there for the taking if one wants it. One can always travel first class in these trains, where you have multiple tiers to choose from ranging from air conditioned private cabins to A/C car coaches. Otherwise, you can travel the other classes and tiers where you get a chance to explore what is talked about in the article. To each his/her own.
Edit: I think the author is speaking about the experience in the cheapest 2 classes of Indian railways. Here are the fare class codes in Indian Railways [0]. There are at least 6-7 other tiers of fare classes above these.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Railways_coaching_stock...
I have fond memories of my aunts making dried fish curry (my dad is from a part of Bangladesh that makes this: http://bengalicuisine.net/2010/lotiya-shutki). It's delicious, but you can smell it cooking in an apartment building from outside.
> Its funny, the conviction that over a billion people of a different country/culture would see the world like you would.
I think there is a tendency for people, often westerners but also Indian elites (and the author of this article is definitely one of those), to romanticize aspects of life there that I don't think ordinary people will be sad to see go.
anyway, the fish dish that you mentioned ( i.e. "Shutki")is kinda on the extreme/fringe side of Bengali cuisine. its not adored by many people. heck even my own parents do not like it. although me & my siblings love it!
Spices - oh boy tons of spices. They mask lot of smells that you would otherwise find pungent - like garlic or onion. I have been stuck in Mumbai metro where someone was carrying a sack of peeled garlic - boy was that horrible.
So while I obviously can't speak for everyone - smell of food is last thing that will bother me while travelling in Indian railways. Sweat, dirty toilets etc though... they are something else.
I personally related to every bit of that article. Used to go from Ahmedabad in Gujarat, to Chennai - in Navjeevan express that takes 36 hours, every other summer. Thanks to this author, I just relived that memory :)
Regardless, I suspect if you were in train packed full of people from various socioeconomic backgrounds on a hot day, the smell of food would be the LEAST offensive scent on offer.
I don't know where you got your "most people" supposition from.
I find the smell of certain things, like old cooked broccoli or kale, to make me want to vomit. But if a passenger on the train was eating it, I don't think it would disturb me nearly as much as endless music that interrupts my concentration. I don't see how these are in the same boat, even though the music is merely annoying and the smell of putrid greens makes me want to vomit.
Constantly feeling the urge to vomit doesn't disturb your concentration, but music does?
I'm confused how you can't see the commonalities between the two examples. In both cases, a person does something which disrupts many people in a shared space.
If there is one thing I learned from moving to the American Midwest is "to each their own." Everybody has their own palate, tastes, wants, and dreams. Nobody is "wrong" and keeping an open mind is always the best policy.
I can almost guarantee that if you're traveling in a non-AC compartment in India, the windows stay open. People only close them before sleeping at night, because when trains invariably stop at its scheduled stations, the passengers don't want to run the risk of thieves grabbing valuables through windows.
There are some smells of certain cuisines that I absolutely detest (fish curry, garlic, etc.) but I can't recall ever being bothered by the smell of food in these compartments. I can recall being bothered by the smell of diesel fumes if the car happened to be close to the front. What drove me quite mad was this, "all culminating in a boisterous game of cards or round of antakshari". Ear plugs don't help much.
Western and Indian trains without air conditioning aren't the same -- in the Indian ones (at least 2nd AC and below) the windows can be opened, and often are. The wind blows away everything but the faintest aroma of cooking food.
I also remember a hearty Punjabi woman we met on another trip. She sighed at my mother's humble offering of idlis. "I can never make such soft idlis at home," she said, as I bit into her fragrant alu paratha (a flaky, potato-stuffed Indian bread), wondering why anyone who could eat such manna every day would ever want an idli.
These food exchanges would invariably extend into detailed introductions, exchange of family histories, discovery of common acquaintances, all culminating in a boisterous game of cards or round of antakshari (contest of Hindi movie songs) and a final promise to keep in touch.
There's something very beautiful about complete strangers interacting and engaging deeply with one another, free of any selfish desires besides that of companionship. There are many things I love about today's world, but that sense of camaraderie does seem diminished these days.
Why do you think this?
our professions and interests have diversified a lot over past couple of decades so the chances of running into a stranger who has similar interests to yours are lower.
This one is prbly just me, I am afraid of talking to women and be accused of sexual harassment which these days can be just spreading your legs too wide.
I am not saying ppl necessarily do this consciously at an individual level but talking about culture as whole.
We got on the train around midnight, and I stumbled around looking for my berth. Everyone was asleep. An IR employee, who was genuinely happy that I was there, helped me find the spot. I was paranoid and alone in a train car filled with strangers.
The next morning, I felt like a fool for feeling that way. I awoke to find my 5 other cabin-mates sitting around the small central table, quietly talking so as not to disturb me. Suddenly we were all talking, even though I spoke almost no Hindi and they spoke almost no English, and they were all feeding me delicious home-cooked food that was unlike anything I had ever had. That experience was a demonstration of the power of technology to connect people in unexpected ways as well - we were showing each other maps of our home towns, pictures of my family and city, and translating hindi words on a smartphone as we made our way through rural India. One of my favorite experiences of the trip only happened because I couldn't get the ticket I wanted.
I think it's easy today to live in our own walled gardens, and being so connected means we don't need to move outside of them often - we'll just see our friends' posts, watch the stuff in our Netflix queues, and read the articles that we agree with. But, I still believe that sense of camaraderie with strangers is still there, based if nothing else on the fact that so many people crave it. We just have to move outside of our comfort zones and find it.
I've found that Indian toilets are more hygienic while travelling India, because you don't touch the toilet at all. Just bring your own toilet paper.
A Norwegian woman I worked with was in India as a kid because her parents worked for UN.
IIRC she told us how a woman, after staring at her for a while leaned over and pinched her face to check if a kid could really be that pale or if it was some kind of paint or something.
She also remembered being pulled in the hair because people wanted to know if it was real.
That said, this was something like 30 years ago and today after reading this discussion I wonder if she was just really unlucky or what.
She said that basically everyone in the village came over to touch her skin and hair, because they have never seen such a pale person(and blonde hair).
I did also have people touch my arms and look at me with big grins on their faces. If you're not from a place where touching a stranger is acceptable, this can understandably be quite shocking until you get used to it. There are so many people in India that you'll find people with a wide variety of different customs and social norms.
I'm black; I remember (white) people being amazed at how my hair felt before I kept it really short. A black woman I knew who lived in a wealthy Detroit suburb where they were the only black family related to me (while laughing) how the neighborhood kids were so fascinated that the color on her children's hands didn't wipe off.
This is all in the last 30 years or so in the US. People meeting different people is a good thing, don't take it negatively.
I was fortunate to have lived in a fairly diverse community (military town, lots of different people, although the city is very much almost majority-hispanic), and one of our family friends was a tall black police officer. To a toddler exposed to many different people, I never gave it much thought--except the hands, of course, when he'd pick me up to show me the lights and siren on his motorbike. (It's maddening how stupidly enjoyable children find certain loud noises.) The young me was oddly fascinated with the lighter color of the palms of those of African descent, and how similar--yet different--they were to my own.
As the years passed, I never really gave it much thought until a friend of mine from high school looked at my hands once when we reconnected some years later and asked me "Why do white people have such pink palms?"
He was teasing, of course, so I had to relate my own experiences. We shared a good chuckle.
Sometimes it's heartening to consider that our differences can be advantageous as a vehicle for bringing us together. It's rare (sadly), but it's also a very beautiful thing.
Thanks for reminding me of this, even if indirectly! Good memories.
I can only speak from my personal experience, but I would attribute it more to the former. The advice I generally heard was that you should stick to the heavily developed areas, near your hotel, etc. We were abroad for about 4 months, and I always felt safest outside of the touristy, "nice" areas. Especially in India, you'll find many scammers (sometimes entire organized teams of them!) in the areas where there are lots of tourists because that's where all of the money is. But, I found that by walking often just a few blocks away from these areas you would be alone as a foreigner, and there wouldn't be mysterious people with excellent English following you around and trying to "befriend" you. I was definitely noticed, but people would be smiling, or shouting "hello!", or waving. I never felt threatened.
I felt very fortunate that I learned this lesson; we also met many people in India who had barely left their hostels because they were so stressed and afraid of dealing with the scammers who waited at all hours of the day and night in those areas. When they made it out they didn't go far: they went to the tourist-friendly places that could be found on TripAdvisor, but these places were also teeming with scammers. I think a lot of people end up missing out on India because of this and not liking it.
We were very lucky and none of us dealt with crime the whole trip. Of the travelers we met who had had stuff stolen though, it was in touristed areas, especially on beaches while they weren't paying close attention to their stuff (and/or very drunk).
Though also for perspective, a few years ago the NYC-Boston intercity bus gray and legit markets briefly merged. Before Greyhound then used political and pr hardball to repartition them, which also resegregated them by class and race. Upon hearing I took these cross-over "Chinese buses", I heard a lot of "oh, they're not safe" (the pr campaign), and once, from a professionally-dressed black woman travelling Greyhound, a comment about "dirty Chinese".
Because the advisors get a cut of the train fares, most likely.
(Also see, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B27IBNotwpE)
[1] http://www.finelychopped.net/2015/11/why-breakfast-at-khar-s...
I am not going to disagree with any of the other commenters. (After all, it has been said that everything you think is true about India - the exact opposite is also true somewhere in India)
The question of trust is an important one, maybe even more than the issue of an economy which is developing (and hence making people more insular) - people on HN may not be aware, but there was a time (admittedly quite a few years ago) when there would be literally a news article every single day about the "biscuit bandits"- people who offered drugged cookies, which are usually called biscuits in India, and made off with the victims' valuables.
I just searched online for "biscuit bandits" and found this ironic story - although I don't know if it is true.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/CBI-inspecto...
CBI is like the Indian FBI.
(edit: Changed funny to ironic. To answer webtechgal, I meant funny in an ironic sense. The problem had been going on for many years when this person who worked in law enforcement was victimized. If it is possible to dupe law enforcement in this way, one can only imagine how challenging it is for the regular folks)
No offense, but if you were at the receiving end of things, you probably won't find it funny. This (the 'biscuit bandit' thing - though I'm reading it described thus for the first time), has been a menace plaguing gullible travelers on India trains for many years now.
With millions of people traveling each day on thousands of routes across the length and breadth of the country, it is happy hunting grounds for the culprits. In some cases, people end up losing their life savings. Sad, shocking, but true all the same, even today.
Yes, websites that append their branding slugs to article titles are a bit of a pain. We've got a list of them that get removed automatically but I'm not sure if NPR's food blog rates an inclusion. Edit: once a year is often enough. Added.
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=npr%20salt&sort=byDate&dateRan...
It remains to be seen whether this is reversible and we can still bring it back, whether we actually replaced it with something better (replacing few strong social bonds with many more weaker bonds), or even whether it's just artificial nostalgia that ignores the poverty, discrimination and segregation of the past.
Maybe it is cultural, maybe it is because I'm an only child, maybe it is genetic, or some combination of all of them (probably) but this article sounds like a nightmare to me.
I don't want to hear about your kids. I don't want to hear about your favorite sports team. I don't want to hear about your political views.
Of course, I do not view the past with such rose-colored glasses that I cannot understand that these goods have a wider market than ever and are accessible (both in terms of affordability and physical access) to more people than ever. The businessperson in a small village somewhere sure isn't sad that their market has become effectively infinite.
After all, many lament the bygone day of air travel when seats were comfortable and service excellent without realizing that they, like me, would not have been able to afford to travel by air at all 50 years ago.
To bring it full circle, it sounds like the author is recognizing that, while that world of nostalgia is lost to her as she is now able to travel by air due to increasing wealth, so too a poorer generation of Indians is now able to afford to travel by train (home-cooked meals or not) when before they could not travel at all.
That's just a minor example, but it's representative of the allure that travel can still bring and what it ultimately brings - the chance to see and find things you didn't know about before. Souvenirs that aren't from shops labeled "Souvenir" still are usually much more unique and difficult to acquire without actually going to the source, and even the same activities just done with a different mindset or with a different cultural attitude can make all the difference.
Often when I travel, I take note of things I like and wish to buy, but remind myself not to make an impulse purchase; I can always buy it once I get home, if I still want it -- and not have to carry it with me for the next 2 weeks!
I think perhaps that very thought process is the reason I began thinking of travel as less "special".
If one were to take ten random train trips longer than 6 to 8 hours each, I bet not one will turn out to be sans signs of the rich food culture. In all probability, it has reduced, but certainly not vanished.
I agree with you completely. Indians are quite guilty of giving really weird ideas of India to outsiders. I mean, the culture is vastly different from western culture, as it is, but adding a thick layer of nostalgia or romanticism will only make their expectations more fantastical.
[1] http://qz.com/578793/indias-middle-class-is-almost-impossibl...
Oh how much I miss those days....
As a child we were taught food is scared because people put efforts into it over years. In fact we uttered a prayer that meant "Food is God and consuming is worship." But I strongly disagree with that when people talk about food in train.
I travelled in the general/sleeper classes often and so many times people would generously offer food and then steal your belonging because the food was spiked. A lot of families would carry their gas stoves in the train and fucking cook food in the running train which is a fire hazard. It was as if these people would not eat outside food for one day.
People fought, got violent when confronted.
Today most trains have pantry cars and an amazing food culture of railway stations that changes every few 100 miles. I would say enjoy that.
China has 78,000 "route kilometers" and 154,600 "total kilometers" of track. (The US and Russia have more) India has "stagnated" at 63,000 route kilometers.[0]
China has 578,000 freight wagons, 44,000 coaches and 18,300 locomotives, whereas India has 22,5000 freight wagons, 45,000 passenger coaches and 8,300 locomotives.[0]
Indian's railways carry only ~22% of the freight carried by the China.[0]
In 2007 India moved 750 Million MT of freight while China moved 4.5x that (i.e 3,300 Million MT).[0]
India does move more people, but they count intra-Mumbai commuters as rail passengers, whereas China does not count subway commuters (which would probably be greater; since there are many large cities with subways).
[0] https://streamlinesupplychain.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/chine...
1. Indian culinary skills are something very rare. I have travelled around of the world and seen the culinary skills everywhere, nowhere I have seen such a great usage of spices and variety of dishes that can be produces with mixing different ingredients. You can have variety of Roti's or parathas(which are indian breads) by combining different ingredients with breads. Most people know the India has so many languages and the dialects change every 100 miles, but only few foreigners know that it is true for food as well. Each state has its own set of foods. The food habits in North, central, south, east & west are completely different. There is so much to explore when it comes to food. we not only have diversity in religion and languages but also in food.
2. The train journeys in India are most exotic. There is no where in this world(im talking about developed countries), where you can have open train cabins. Just take a long cross country train journey and you will feel more satisfied and contemplated in the end. You might feel a bit uneasy about so much crowd around you, but just forget everything and look outside the window and see the passing by mountain and the setting sun. You will feel satisfied and have the best sleep in your life in that train journey, if it happens to be an overnight journey. This is when you will realize there is peace in the midst of all the chaos.
The train shakes constantly and AC is too cold in first-class, I haven't slept great in trains.