By Jaanu

My penchant for documentation of real life began quite early, at the tender age of 5 or 6. My family and I were off on a cross-country pilgrimage of India, to commemorate the life of my wonderful grandfather. It was an unforgettable trip, the only time I can remember my whole family traveling together. We crossed the length of India, going from Rameshwaram in the far, far south— where the Hindu god Rama was said to have built his floating bridge to Sri Lanka— all the way to Agra, home to the Taj Mahal, Shah Jahan’s iconic and probably unbeatable tribute to his wife.

As we embarked on this epic journey, my mom had a special gift for my brother Navin and myself: our first journals. If I’m not misremembering, I would have just finished kindergarten with the exceptional Mrs. Covino at the time; I certainly was eager to practice writing. Our mom encouraged us to document the strange and beautiful things we were seeing, so we could remember them. With this, we got a second gift… the joy of writing on trains.

Sleeper trains were our primary means of travel, and I remember passing the hours at least a couple times by trying to write. At the time, journaling was an endeavor that required all of my brainpower, and photos exist somewhere capturing my small, furrowed brow and firm grasp on a pencil as I labored to describe the India we were seeing with my vocabulary of the time (N.B. my current vocabulary is still insufficient to describe India).

But there’s something incredibly awesome about writing on a train. Seeing the landscapes speed past the big open window, especially on an Indian train with fresh air gusting in, makes for a very vivid and enjoyable experience. Music can be distracting during work, but to me, the sounds of nature never are. The rushing wind, the rustling trees, and the manmade creak of the rails is so inspiring… When I’m on the train I just want to pull out pen and paper and write.

I am far from the only person to associate trains with creativity. The genre of travel writing is an enormous one, and at least part of that charm must be attributed to the romantic nature of train travel. Many literary greats were known to write about trains. One was Agatha Christie, Britain’s most prolific mystery writer, whose frequent train journeys inspired the bestseller Murder on the Orient Express. The French novelist Jules Verne made them a central plot device in Around the World in 80 Days, often sending Phileas Fogg and his loyal attendant Passepartout rattling along new surroundings by express train. Author Paul Theroux is perhaps best known for his 1975 travelogue, The Great Railway Bazaar, which documented an international train journey which isn’t too far from Fogg’s. 40 years later, British novelist Paula Hawkins published The Girl on the Train, a creepy psychological thriller with the best-selling premise of a commuter whose daily view from the train allows her to keep tabs on people along the route.

The demands of university life tend to prevent me from spending whole days writing. To me, the train is both relaxing and quietly productive. 🚂