After ages, I’m on a train again. Vande Bharat, no less—quiet, clean, modern. Smooth chair car seats, big windows. But just before boarding, I was hyperventilating. Will I get the right coach? Will I miss my dabba?
So, I did the most logical thing—hired a coolie for my one tiny suitcase. Poor fellow patiently answered my questions on loop: “Coach yahin rukega na?” “Ab time ho gaya kya?” He rechecked everything on his phone like he was launching a satellite.

And yet, once I settled in, I felt something missing.

I missed me—the little Suvi with wind in her hair, glued to the window seat of a first-class coupe. No AC, just raw, real rail magic. We were five of us—Maa, Papa (the ever-on-the-move fauji), and us three sisters on a three-day journey from Punjab to Bengal. That coupe wasn’t just space; it was home.

The window seat was gold. Two of us grabbed it, the third sulked and waited for a loo break to hijack it. We travelled with hold-alls, a suraahi for water, and our proudest possession—a brand-new colour TV. And food? Oh, Maa had packed enough to feed an army and yet, we happily devoured puris at stations without blinking.

Papa managed it all—tickets, trunks, timings—calm as ever. Maa ran the show like a general. And we? We lived the journey. Not rushed, not distracted. Just present.

Now, I panic with a single suitcase and can’t imagine unreserved travel. But I once sat on my own suitcase near train washrooms for hours—just to catch fleeting moments with my baby girl during PG days.

Funny how we crave speed and upgrades now, but the memories? They were made in the slow, coal-dusted, wind-blown rides. Those chuk chuk trains gave us more than travel—they gave us time.

I barely remember my recent AC travels except for few adventurous ones like one with my gang to Banaras.But the ones where we arrived at destinations with soot on our faces and full of stories? Those live on. By the end of those dusty, coal-stained rides, we’d look like chimney sweepers. But our hearts? Brimming. Our eyes? Sparkling with excitement—new stations, new friends, new stories

Maybe life’s like that too—we rush toward destinations, forgetting the joy of the journey.

Maybe, just maybe, what we all need is a slow chuk chuk ride to remind us who we were… and still are.
—- Suvi’s Scribbles