The train ride as a technological fantasy

In the 1960s and ’70s, the train in India cinema starts to appear as a space of sophistication and luxury. Whether in 'art films’ like Satyajit Ray's (which I mentioned last week), or a full-on commercial Hindi film like the racy Rajesh Khanna-starrer , the upper class railway compartment represents high standards of comfort and hospitality. This is true despite the fact that Ray, ever the realist, has a senior Calcutta executive in express annoyance that he can't even get a beer on the AC Deluxe Express – precursor to the Poorva Express, train between Calcutta and Delhi before the Rajdhani Express came along three years later in 1969. (The fellow isn't entirely to blame for hoping, given how much the train pantry car echoes the atmosphere at one of Calcutta's Anglophone clubs, where no evening would flow without alcohol.) He gets a Coke instead, though the waiter only comprehends when told “Coca Cola”. Still, the service on these filmi trains is polite, English-comprehending and very classy - restaurant-like, in an era when few people ate out often. There is also a degree of fascination with waiting rooms and railway restaurants: Places you could only access as a passenger on the long-distance train network. The murders on the Calcutta Mail in hinge on one passenger being seduced away from the coupe by the prospect of a meal at the railway restaurant with a sashaying Nanda.
MK Raghavendra and others have marked that the train in the 1950s and ’60s often mapped onto the idea of India – such films as Bimal Roy's 1955 , whose nationwide journeying hero I have mentioned in another context, but also nationalist films with train songs depicting children: from (1954) and from Mehboob Khan's (1962).