The shatabdi experience

I had an experience of travelling by the Shatabdi express from Chennai back home after attending a family event. It has been several years since I travelled by this train. It's a kind of a mirror image of the transformation that India has gone through. The passengers now seem to be an eclectic mix of IT yuppies, doting ' mamis', spoilt brats, the oh-so-cool-to-travel-by-train posh types and the day in and out business men. The interiors are in itself a surprise with a  pleasant decor something one does not associate with our trains which are normally look like a welding lab project output from a local scrap dealer with some coconut mattresses thrown on top for comfort.

The windows are large, two seats long with an optional drop-down sun shade. Seats are admittedly comfortable and the overhead luggage carriers at a comfortable height made of toughened glass and plastic. The meal drop down trays are adequate with a slightly clumsy water bottle holder. Overhead lighting was pleasant and more than adequate for reading or working.

As a reflection of the upwardly mobile middle class, it is not uncommon to see laptops being unfurled in almost every row. And forget about ipads being the in-thing.... Kids nowadays seem to own laptops solely for the purposes of serious gaming... My princely toy back then used to be a wooden bus   pulled by a string.. yours truly was now busy  with Angry Birds and e-books :-)

Way to go, Indian Railways !

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