Delhi is too far away!

The pre-internet days were characterized by a naiveté that fills us now with disbelief. Access to information was difficult. It is all too easy today, with everything- from booking tickets to ordering food, just a click of a button away. Back then, we gambled with the limited information at hand. Often, we blundered and bungled and none better illustrated than this episode dating back to the late 1970s.

School was coming to a close and the summer holidays were about to begin. One day, my father grandly announced we were going to Delhi for vacation. He had got tickets for us to travel by the Jammu Tawi Superfast Express. To us staying in erstwhile Bombay, Delhi was a distant planet. We presumed a journey to Delhi would take 2 days by train, perhaps a lot more. 15 days before the trip, it was a shocker to get a postcard from our uncle in Delhi. He asked if we had noted an important point- the train was to reach Delhi at 1:30 in the night! Needless to say, it threw the entire household in a tizzy. How could a train starting from Bombay in the morning, reach Delhi that very night? Wasn’t Delhi too far away? That’s when we rushed to borrow the railway time-table handbook from a neighbor.

It was too late to cancel and rebook the tickets. Given that it took a fortnight for postcards to travel back and forth by snail mail, there was time for just one way communication. My father wrote to my uncle that the plan stays unchanged. The rest was left to chance and a lot more to bravado. Elders worried if it was safe to reach Delhi at such an unearthly hour. The rest of us had better things on our mind- we could not wait to be on that train to Delhi!

I remember that train ride as if it were yesterday- forehead pressed to the window and eyes glued to the landscape that rushed past! With only the fabled Rajdhani Express for competition, Jammu Tawi was one of the fastest trains. It sped with the roar of a possessed spirit and had just 4 stops- Surat, Vadodara, Ratlam and Kota. In the dead of night, we pulled into New Delhi station. Did uncle receive that last postcard? Would he be at the station? What would we do if he went missing? Our fears were set to rest, Uncle was present. If he was flustered by our cowboy-like travel plans, he did not show it and quickly took us under his arm. As we drove through the hushed streets of Delhi, there was a feeling of total amazement! Just this morning, we were at home in Bombay, and now, here we are, in Delhi!

"Dilli abhi door hai", Delhi is far away, may have a proverbial connotation, but we actually believed so! In retrospect, we chuckle at those earlier versions of ourselves, as if they were distant characters enacting out life's drama on some prehistoric stage! With our cell-phones today, we can track the movement of trains and travelers. Travel plans can be nailed down to the minutest detail. But we miss a crucial point. It has actually come for a price. A wayfarer on the highway, will he ever know the joy of that unchartered trail in the woods, with a surprise at each step and a suspense at each corner?