Food and fitness are two major obsessions of the 21st Century Indian, and contrary to what they may seem, the two are no longer mutually exclusive but often go hand in hand. Today, much of our food comes as free — no, not free of cost — but sugar-free, oil-free, gluten-free, fat-free. The tea we drink is green and the bread we eat is brown. As for the egg, we are meant to eat the white and discard the yellow.
The obsession with eating healthy appears to be bordering on madness. Sometime ago, a very good friend of mine returned a dosa at Saravana Bhavan because he had forgotten to instruct the waiter that it should be prepared without oil. “Don’t worry, I will pay for it,” he assured the waiter, “now bring me another dosa , oil-free.” Since I didn’t like the idea of the waiter taking back the ‘oily’ dosa, I offered to eat it — apart from the four pieces of idlis I had ordered.
My idea of eating healthy is different. If you think the oil in the dosa is going to clog your arteries, eat idlis instead: why ruin the health — and reputation — of the dosa by depriving it of the oil/ghee? But how long can you go on waking up to idlis or plain rotis? Even the supposedly-healthy poha gets boring beyond a point.
That is why I love long train journeys, because they give you a break from the monotony of healthy eating. Once upon a time, I would even make the most of short journeys. Back in the 1990s, when I often took the overnight train from Kanpur to New Delhi, I would invariably leave home without having dinner, much to the anguish of my mother. The idea was to eat at the railway station: poori and alu ki sabzi — the small leaf-bowl containing the sabzi balanced on a stack of hot pooris served along with a green chilli on a piece of newspaper. The challenge was to extricate one poori at a time without toppling the sabzi — much of the delight lay in meeting that challenge — and eating it before biting into the chilli.
Coming back to long journeys — imagine you are travelling from Chennai to Kanpur on the Cochin-Gorakhpur Express — just imagine the variety of station food you have at your disposal: hot idlis in Chennai, hot biryani in Vijayawada, hot dal pakoras (my favourite) in Sevagram, hot alu bondas in Itarsi, hot alu-poori in Bhopal, hot samosas in Jhansi, hot gulab jamuns in Orai (a small station not far from Kanpur).
All this is apart from the train food, which includes the unending supply of vadas and cutlets and samosas, fresh out of the pantry car, not to mention the meals. In fact one of the most joyous moments for me during a long-distance train journey is when the attendant comes to take orders for the meals and lists out the choices I have — even as the train is dashing through green fields or rocky terrain.
Train food is so different from airline food. The plane food reeks of refinement, and the portions are much smaller than what you expect after seeing the pictures on the menu card/brochures. Whereas on a train, not only are the portions generous but also the food bears the smell of the soil you are passing through.
My favourite train food is the breakfast. I always order two sets of breakfast for myself: bread-omelette as well as bread-cutlet. Both are usually served with French fries and green peas. The omelette includes the egg yolk, the potatoes and the cutlets are deep fried in oil, and the bread is buttered — and delightfully white.
