These days travel has totally changed; it has become essential only and with many restrictions. My mind wandered to those times when I was young, back home with my parents. Come summer, or Diwali holidays and we would be off on a journey. Not all train journeys had a dining car and sometimes we couldn’t get food on the way so usually the food was made at home and packed. Few things were quite common in each traveller’s food packets, puris or parathas, potato veggie– nicely done, a little crisp, and as I remember, we would always have a container of homemade yoghurt along with mango or lime pickle.
The destination wasn’t the only important thing, it was also about the process of enjoying the journey with a nice, tasty home cooked food and sometimes shared with fellow travellers over a game of cards or similar.
I remembered peeping out of the windows and looking at the lush green fields passing by and on the bridges over the rivers and looking into the far arid lands.
Coming back to our food packets, the puris would be made with the wheat flour and spiced up with cumin seeds, turmeric and chili powder, with salt to taste.
Each family would have a different recipe and it was a lot of fun to exchange the food around. There would be some dry savoury snacks like chiwda, toasted and fried peanuts, bengal gram, salty and sweet diamonds which we refer to as shankarpale, and ganthiyas -the chickpea flour spirals and sweet treats too, like the ladoos (the sweet balls made with different flours, sugar/jaggery and ghee) and sukhadi made with wheat flour. The list goes on…. Not everything was taken, it was always a mix and match of snacks.
Usually, my mother would always have the rice and yoghurt with lime pickle. Those days, as I think of now, were not my favorites, but now that is what I remember the most! She would add milk to the cooked rice and then a little yoghurt was added and salt to taste. Sometimes she would temper it with cumin seeds and chili in ghee. In fact, with the warm temperatures, usually the yoghurt gets too sour so this was a nice hack; as the time passed, the yoghurt would set, and the rice yoghurt combo tasted great.
Then there would be parathas or as our Gujarati neighbour would call theplas. These were sometimes added with vegetables like fenugreek or spinach and with condiments like cumin, coriander, sesame seeds, sometimes garlic, it all depended on one´s tastes and preferences.
Soon we grew up, and dining cars started making appearances on most of the track, so we would order food. Waiters would come take the orders and deliver the food.
Then of course we have had vendors selling food at the stations and the customary chai, that is tea. There would also be bhajias or gotas (vegetable fritters) and then vada pav – the Bombay burger. In fact, each city has a typical speciality and that would be sold at the platforms.
Later, ¨Shatabdi¨ train especially from Mumbai to Baroda started, where the ticket fare would include food too. So, then we were served starters like vegetable patty / cutlet or vegetable samosas, followed by the main meal (there would be vegetarian or non-vegetarian options) and then dessert, which would most of the times be an ice cream; butter scotch, or cashew nut and raisins.
As times have gone by, we have travelled in trains in different countries and different types. It has been monorail in Kuala Lumpur or long-distance high-speed train in Germany. And then the trains in Switzerland, where it´s said you can set up your watch to the train timing – they are never late!
“…what thrills me about trains is not their size or their equipment but the fact that they are moving, that they embody a connection between unseen places.” So rightly quoted by American author Marianne Wiggins
Closer to home now, we have enjoyed the travel from Helsinki to Vaasa; and going to the restaurant car and enjoying the warm food has its own charm.
Coming back to our travel food – sometimes it is sandwiches and rice, sometimes dhoklas (steamed mixed lentils squares) or Idlis and chutney. The green chutney sandwiches made with fresh grated coconut, coriander (finely chopped the leaves and the stem, the stem carries the aroma of the plant and so it needs to be used judiciously). Green chili, just one chopped, a spoonful of cumin seeds, four garlic cloves chopped, salt to taste and little sugar, put in the mixer blender. Add a little lime juice for that flavour. Just this chutney spread on the buttered bread slice works well.
“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey” so aptly put by Pat Conroy
Engineer by education, passionate photographer &
food enthusiast from India, presently based at Burling- ton,
Canada is happy to contribute this column
which combines her love of food & photography.
Seema Ganoo
