THE GRAVY TRAIN

We came back from Goa by train, on the Coromandel Express, also known as the Konkan Kanya (Daughter of the Konkan). It took about 12 hours to reach Mumbai, and, for the the better part of the day, we were gazing our fill at the lovely passing-landscape, or filling our tummies with food served on the train.

Our compartment was next-door to the pantry car, and we were relentlessly plied and supplied with food and drinks of various kinds, at various times.

There was tea, there was coffee, there were the usual Pepsi and not-so-usual piping hot too-red tomato soup. A man came and took orders for lunch, reeling off from an extensive menu: Chinese fried rice (veg and non-veg), biriyani (ditto)….We chose a chicken biriyani (chicken, rice and a boiled egg cooked together…though the rice seemed to have refused to be cooked with its non-veg mates!) and a fish-thali (dish of rice, pomfret fish curry and pickles, all cooked separately, accompanied with salad).

We also had sugar-sweetened dahi (yogurt) out of earthen pots, fried fish pieces served in unusual rectangular trays made of coconut leaves (I put one in my bag – minus the fish, and fishy-smell– for keepsake), and platters of freshly-cut watermelon. We drank kokum sharbat (a sour-spicy drink) to wash down the enormous quantity of grub, giving the sol-kadi (another sour-spicy drink) a miss.

Replete with lunch and landscape, we afternoon-dozed till the Alibaba’s pantry-door opened once again with vendors tempting us with idlis, dosas, and meduvadas (South Indian delicacies). Spoilt for choice, we had sabudana-vadas (fried tapioca cutlets) and upma-sheera (a spicy and a sweet preparation of semolina served side-by-side).

Then there were a flurry of orders for dinner (almost before the sun had set in the distant speedily-left-behind horizon). We had to take home the eclectic packets of chilli-chicken, chicken noodles and alu-paratha (greasy wheat-potato pancakes), because though we alighted at Dadar station, the food settled heavily in our tummies, as immobile as the traffic on Mumbai’s streets. A rude-food reminder of the end of our light-hearted holiday!

But the journey aboard the Curry-mandel Express was definitely one to cheer (and chew) about.