Narrating Railways through accounts and films

Indian Railways, now more than 160 years old has not only played the role of the lifeline of the nation, but has also been instrumental in diminishing boundaries and as seen not only in documentaries, but railways have been effectively been employed in movies as well as an instrument of reunion of the two lovers, or the start of a new relationship (Azmi: 2007). While many debates range around the benefits to railways, many accounts of people working for the railways have through the means of narrations as seen in the story loyalty by Jim Corbett or during the most traumatic of the political events such as partition, yet again railways have been personified as people who come to narrate stories or during the British Raj they have been used as means to describe the experiences of the people travelling in different classes (Kerr: 2007) or by writers like Bharatendu Harischandra or by our very own nationalist leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru who travelled across the country in the first, second and third classes and observing wide differences amongst the people of different classes. The paper seeks to examine the role played by the writers and nationalists during the colonial era and modern era and how the portrayal of Railways have altered over a span of 160 years from an object of criticism to an object of fantasy