Isaw some tiny tea-glasses in a stall last Sunday, while waiting for my niece to join me for breakfast at the Airlines Hotel.

They were made from some new eco-friendly material, quite different from the ones I remembered. But something about their size and shape took me straight back to the Second Class compartments of Indian trains when I was a child.

And almost immediately, I could hear it.

“Chai, chai, chai, chai…”

The chaiwalas, the tea vendors, would walk through the compartments carrying those tiny glasses in their stands, their voices travelling ahead of them. I didn't even drink tea then, but I remember those glasses. And that familiar call.

It's extraordinary how something so small can open a door to a time so far away.

There were five of us travelling, Baba, Amma, my two brothers and me, and Second Class was simply how we travelled.

Our journeys from Madurai to Bombay were quite an undertaking. We took the overnight Pandian Express, a metre-gauge train to Madras, and then the broad-gauge Dadar Express onwards to Bombay. Egmore station is a name that has stayed with me, although I can no longer remember the details of changing trains in Madras.

What I do remember is the preparation that went into those journeys.

At one point, we didn't even have suitcases. We had metal trunks, and not just any trunks. They had to be of a particular size, small enough to slide beneath the railway seats. Our luggage was definitely chosen with the train in mind.

Then there was the holdall, the tiffin carrier, the picnic basket, and the thermos with its little tap from which we could pour ourselves a drink.

And, of course, there were the coolies, the railway porters, unmistakable in their distinctive red shirts and turbans.

Before we could even reach the train, there was the business of negotiating how much they would charge to carry our luggage. Baba, my father, would handle that. There would be the usual back and forth, the porter naming his price, Baba offering something less, until they eventually reached an agreement.

Baba never haggled particularly hard, though, and Amma, my mother, invariably thought he could have brought the price down a little further. That would lead to a small argument of their own.

And then we were off.

The coolie would gather up our trunks, holdall and assorted belongings and head through the crowded station towards the train. Amma would grab my hand, while my brothers scampered after Baba.

We children were dressed for it, my brothers in their shorts and me in my little frock. It was hot. Wishful thinking that it might be cooler inside. The ancient ceiling fans seemed to generate considerably more noise than air.

The first train was mostly about getting ourselves and our belongings settled for the night.

The trunks were pushed beneath the seats, and out came the holdalls. These were large, sturdy pieces of canvas with flaps, almost like open sleeping bags. In preparation for the journey, we would spread them out, arrange the blankets, sheets and pillows inside, fold the flaps over everything, and roll the whole thing tightly, securing it with belt-like straps.

There were five of us, so there had to be bedding for five. You simply didn't travel overnight without a holdall. How else were you going to sleep on those hard railway berths?

Even our rubber chappals, the slippers we wore to the bathroom, were wrapped up and tucked inside.

Once aboard, the holdalls were unrolled, sheets spread across the berths, pillows arranged, and the compartment began settling down for the night.

When it was time to sleep, the backrest of the lower seat would be raised and secured in place to become the middle berth. I always loved sleeping there. There was barely enough headroom to sit upright on the lower berth once the middle berth was up, but I could stretch out on my stomach, prop my chin on my hands and stare out of the window.

As I remember it, my brothers took the upper and lower berths, while Baba and Amma slept on the opposite side. We shared the coupé with one other passenger, though I no longer remember exactly how everyone was arranged.

I was always an early sleeper, so it wasn't long before I settled down for the night, the train carrying us towards Madras. I loved this sleepover, but the real excitement, for me, began with the second train.

We boarded the Dadar Express during the day, and suddenly there was a whole journey ahead of us to enjoy.

While the adults were busy arranging the luggage, we children had a much more pressing concern.

The window seats.

There were three of us, and we had five seats between us, arranged on opposite sides of the compartment. That meant two coveted window seats, one on either side, and three children determined to claim them. The negotiations began before the train had even left the station.

Meanwhile, the vendors were making their way through the compartments, calling out their wares. Biscuits, snacks, drinks, newspapers, magazines and comics. They had climbed aboard from the station, hoping to make a few sales before the train departed.

I had to have my Chandamama, the Indian children's magazine filled with illustrated stories, folklore and adventures.

Then there were the comics. I seem to remember the tales of Akbar and Birbal, the Mughal emperor and his famously witty adviser, and Mullah Nasruddin, whose humorous stories were full of clever twists. And, of course, Amar Chitra Katha, the illustrated comics that brought Indian mythology, history and folklore to life.

A new magazine, a few comics, and an entire day stretching ahead of me in which to read them.

What more could I want?

The engine let out its long loud whistle and the wheels started turning slowly.

We were off.

The vendors hurried towards the doors, jumping off as the train began to move. The platform began slipping past our windows, the people standing there grew smaller, and we were now truly on our way.

Ahead of us lay hours and hours in which there was nowhere else we needed to be.

We played Hangman, hand-clapping games, word games and antakshari, the singing game in which each song begins with the last sound of the previous one. We wandered through the compartments, watched people come and go, and returned again and again to the window.

There was always something to see.

The countryside changed as we travelled. Fields gave way to towns, towns to open stretches of land. There were little stations whose names we barely noticed, people waiting on platforms, and lives we glimpsed for a moment before the train carried us past.

On one journey, I sat there for hours, my face turned towards the open window, watching the world go by.

Eventually, I turned around and took off my glasses.

My face was black with soot from the engine, except for two perfectly clean patches where my glasses had been.

I looked like a raccoon.

Somewhere between the games, the windows and the changing countryside, there were the meals.

We had to carry enough food for the long journey. Our picnic basket was complete with plastic plates, knives, forks, spoons and napkins, along with the tiffin carrier and its stacked metal containers.

Amma would pass the food around while the countryside moved past our windows. There were rotis, the Indian flatbreads, and other things that could be eaten without making too much of a mess. Bread, butter, cheese, jam, fruit, and I seem to remember boiled eggs that we could turn into sandwiches for breakfast. Perhaps tins of baked beans or sardines too.

I don't remember food being served on the trains we travelled. When we wanted to buy something, it was bought from the vendors, or Baba would get off at the station and buy it from a stall on the station itself.

Sometimes the train stopped only briefly. Every once in a way, at a longer stop, I was allowed to get down, walk along the platform and see what was being sold. That was very exciting!

As we approached the ghats near Lonavla, the train would stop for an additional engine to be attached to help it negotiate the steep gradient. It was a long stop, and one we children particularly looked forward to.

Baba would take the three of us down, and we would place a coin on the railway track. Then, standing well away, we would wait for the engine to roll slowly over it.

Once it had passed, we would rush back to retrieve our coin, now flattened by the enormous weight of the engine.

What a treasure that little flattened coin was! And what fun we had!

There were so many little rituals that were part of those journeys, things we looked forward to or simply did every time we travelled. One of them was unwrapping the rubber chappals that had been carefully folded into newspaper and tucked away in a corner of the holdall. Those chappals had one particular purpose. They were for trips to the bathroom.

Oh, those bathrooms!

Steel everywhere, cramped, and certainly not the cleanest or sweetest-smelling places. And then there was the challenge of keeping your balance as the train swayed from side to side, accompanied by that incessant katakat, katakat, katakat, katakat of the wheels on the tracks.

And if you weren't careful, you could lose your footing just enough for a chappal to slip off and disappear straight down the toilet hole, onto the railway tracks below.

Baba always told us, “If you lose one chappal, throw the other one down too. At least whoever finds them can use the pair.”

And, well, Baba had told us what to do. So when one of my brothers did lose a chappal, he dutifully threw the other one down after it and returned to the coupé barefoot. Nasty, if you ask me.

There were countless little moments like these, woven into the long hours of travelling. Between the games, the books, the meals and the unexpected adventures, the hours seemed to fly by much faster than the hands of the clock actually turned. And before we knew it, we had reached our destination.

Years later, I began making those journeys with my own boys.

Second Class had given way to Second AC, the air-conditioned sleeper coaches. Our most travelled routes were Bangalore to Bombay on the Udyan Express, usually with Amma and Baba, and Bangalore to Delhi on the Karnataka Express, where it was generally just the boys and me.

In the early years, when both boys were under five, the three of us shared a berth. Children that young didn't need their own tickets, so there we were, making ourselves comfortable in whatever limited space we had. As they grew older, we each had our own berth, and those journeys were a riot.

The boys always had their little backpacks, filled with treasures. Colouring books, storybooks, games, snacks, and all the things that could keep two little boys happily occupied for hours. They were never the sort of children who ran screaming through the compartments. They had their own little worlds to explore, and there was something rather wonderful about having all that time together, with nowhere else we needed to be.

Then there were our journeys from Delhi to Dehradun on the Shatabdi Express, when we went to visit Jum Phupi. Those were different. We travelled in the AC chair car, sitting upright for roughly six hours rather than settling into sleeping berths. But those hours seemed to fly by, partly because there was always something coming around to eat or drink.

The highlight was, without question, the tomato soup.

You knew it was coming before you saw it.

First came the smell, wafting through the compartment, announcing the soup and the man carrying it somewhere behind.

And then came his voice.

It wasn't simply “tomato soup.” There was a lehja to it, a particular accent and inflection - an intonation, a cadence. The voice rose, and somehow the word “soup” stretched itself into two syllables.

“To-ma-to sooo-oop!”

Even today, the boys and I can say “tomato soup” in exactly that way, and immediately we know where it comes from. It can still take us straight back to those train rides.

And perhaps that is what I love about travelling by train in India. So much has changed over the years, but the feeling of being on a train, of sharing a journey with people whose lives briefly become intertwined with yours, remains remarkably familiar.

A year or two ago, after a long gap, I deliberately chose to travel by train again. I could have flown, but I wanted the train. And I absolutely loved it.

There is a particular camaraderie that develops in a railway compartment. People begin by settling into their seats, arranging their belongings, perhaps exchanging a few polite words. Then, as the hours pass, conversations begin. Someone shares food, someone tells a story, and before you know it, you are hearing about a family, a wedding, a son waiting at the other end of the journey.

There was a woman travelling with her daughter. They were planning an elaborate wedding and were on their way to buy things for it. Before long, we were listening to the plans, the shopping, the preparations, becoming part of a conversation about a wedding none of us would attend.

Then there was an older Gujarati woman travelling to visit her son. She had brought food. Lots of it. And, as happens so often on Indian trains, she began sharing it. As she passed the dhokle around, we listened to the stories of her oldest son, her daughter in law, and nodded our heads pleasantly.

Decades after those journeys with Amma's tiffin carrier, here was another woman opening her food and offering it to people who had been strangers only a few hours earlier.

Nobody needed to hurry the conversation along. There was nowhere else to go, nothing to rush off and attend to.

The train is moving, but within the compartment, life seems to have slowed down.

Because I was travelling Second AC, it meant four berths instead of six, and no middle berth. The berths were padded now, a far cry from the hard ones of my childhood. And because it was an air-conditioned compartment, the railway supplied the bedding. No holdalls to be packed, carried, unrolled and put away.

I had reserved the upper berth - I spread out my bedding and made myself comfortable. With my little computer, a charging point and a reading light, I had everything I needed to work, read or simply settle down for the night. We had curtains too, which we could draw to separate ourselves from the rest of the compartment and create our own little cocoon.

And what made this journey particularly lovely was that I was in a women's-only coupe. Four women, each travelling for her own reasons, each with her own destination, sharing this little space for a few hours.

We had chatted, shared food and become acquainted with little pieces of one another's lives. Now, as we settled into our berths, we could retreat into our own worlds, knowing that the others were just beyond the curtains.

For those few hours, we became a sweet little interdependent, independent unit. Yes, an oxymoron, but that's exactly what it was. Together, yet wonderfully free to be on our own.

And while we read, worked, slept or simply watched the world pass outside, the train carried us all towards our separate destinations.

There is something precious about being able to slow life down, even for a little while. To sit by a window and watch the world unfold, to share conversations with people you may never meet again, to have hours ahead of you that don't need to be filled with anything at all.

We spend so much of our lives trying to get somewhere faster that we sometimes forget the pleasure of simply getting there.

A train gives me that time. Time to look, to listen, to think, or to do absolutely nothing. Time to experience the world as it passes, rather than rush past it.

And that, to me, is a luxury.

A plane gets me to the destination.

A train gives me back the journey.