A Guide to Food in the Dhanbad-Alleppey Express

This is for those travellers who get bored of the food from the pantry in the Dhanbad-Alleppey Express of the Indian Railways. It is not that the food from the pantry is not good. It’s just that it could become boring to you very soon.    

I’ve not covered the Dhanbad-Ranchi section as I’ve only experience of travelling from Ranchi onwards.

First of all, the train does not stop for much time at Ranchi so that one can something from the Birsa Munda Food Plaza which serves quite decent snacks and meals. We usually have our lunch at the Birsa Munda Food Plaza before entraining the train at Ranchi. 

Dinner – Day 1: The train reaches Rourkela around 6:30 pm. The schedules stoppage is for 30 minutes. This allows you to make a dash outside the station where there are umpteen road side eateries selling from dishes varying from dosas, parathas, noodles, idlis etc. There is also a Baskin Robbins outlet nearby. This time I opted to buy dosas and we did not regret about the option. I was also surprised to find quite a lot of the pantry staff of the train hanging around these wayside eateries rather than eating from the pantry. Says a lot about the 'quality and taste' of these wayside eateries. 

Breakfast – Day 2: You would have just left Orissa and starting the day long travel across the state of Andhra Pradesh as day breaks. For breakfast, there is the option of trying out the stuff from the pantry or waiting till station named Bobilli which arrives at around 7 am. The best stuff available here is the vada which tastes yummy with sambhar and chutney. The idlis were a bit too hard for me.

Lunch – Day 2: Here again you can opt for the lunch from the pantry. I opt to wait for a station called Samalkot which arrives a bit late in the afternoon from where you can buy lunch packets being sold by ladies in the platform. I wonder if they belong to some Self Help Group. One lunch packet is enough for a sumptous for 2. This time, one packet was priced 80 INR.

Dinner – Day 2: Here if we need to have a culinary experience other than the pantry food, we would need to buy food from the Comesum Plaza in the 1^st platform at Vijayawada. The train stops for 20 minutes which is more than enough to buy dinner from Comesum Plaza. There is quite a lot of variety available. We had brought Rumali Roti, Vegetarian Thali (one ordinary and one special).

Breakfast - Day 3: The best bet for breakfast is the dosas at Jolarpettai. We ensure that we've some empty plastic vessels to take the sambhar and coconut chutney separately. 

Lunch - Day 3: There are many options. You can opt to have lunch at any of the stops from Erode to Palakkad. If you want to have curd rice which is one of my favorites, you'll need to search for it in either Erode or Tiruppur. It is available in Coimbatore too, but only in one part of the platform . . . usually towards the engine. 

There is a long stop at Shoranur around 3 pm. Which gives us ample time to rush to Platform 6 and have a sumptuous feast of ice-creams from the Amul outlet. 

Of course, dinner usually waits for us at home. We would be almost fed up of non-home food by the time we reach Alappuzha. 

Unwanted food . . .

Today morning, we were wondering at the huge number of jackfruits which was there in front of our home at Othera. There was hardly any demand for the fruit and they were falling and rotting on the ground below the tree. 

One could only watch it. No market and too much for any family to have. We were on holiday . . . so there would be a higher demand. But, not enough demand for even 10% of the fruit on the tree. 

So, it was falling down and rotting . . . 

In India, plentifulness in the midst of poverty and hunger is not something new. Especially, stories of grain rotting off in the Food Corporation of India godowns are very commonly heard in almost all states of the country. 

I've seen how vegetables and fruits are discarded as the prices they fetch are too less for the farmers. We've had instances for vegetables being sold at throwaway prices in our neighbourhood at NJH.

And then, we lament about the malnutrition and poverty in the country.

If one goes to buy a jackfruit in the market in Ranchi, it is never less than 30 INR per kilogram. 

But, the fact is that there is no buyer for the fruit when someone wants to sell it at the site of cultivation. 

I hope you remember my post about tomatoes going waste in Daltonganj market. Today late morning, I was at the Othera vegetable market and the cost of 1 kilogram of tomato was 50 INR. 

One solution will be form federations of vegetable farmers who will be able to command a better price and market for their produce. Today morning, I was reading about the Karnataka Milk Federation which is selling it's products under the brand 'Nandini'. We also know the story of Amul. 

Some sort of a federation which would champion the cause of vegetables is something which could go a long way in the marketing of vegetables across the country and prevent the enormous wastage that's happening.  

Hunger and Tetanus - Yet Again

CD, who has been with us for the last 4 weeks ultimately showed signs of recovery couple of days back. The story of the penury that his family faced and which got to be ultimately addressed made quite a lot of my followers writing back to me.

Meanwhile, there was one more tetanus patient, a 7 year old boy, BS who has been having symptoms since the last 8 days and has been on treatment at many places. Dr Shishir who was on duty 3 days back when BS came in diagnosed tetanus and we started off treatment.

Today morning, BS's parents told the nurses that they wanted to take the boy home. The reason, they do not have any money. We had been giving them hospital supply. On arrival, I wrote them a prescription for Injection Tetanus Immunoglobulin which we did not have in the hospital pharmacy. They were asked to buy it from outside.

It was only when they reached one of the pharmacies in Daltonganj, someone told them that the treatment of tetanus could be very expensive. In addition, without our knowledge, the family had not been having food since admission. The father had told one of the nurses initially that they have lot of people whom they knew and they could easily find food.

I confronted the parents. The father started to sob. He told that they have spend quite a lot of money on treatment before they reached NJH. They did not have any money that they did not have any food. Few of the local eateries had given him food for the first couple of days. But, not anymore.

They have somehow got something to eat for the boy. But, the parents had been surviving on water for the last 2 days.

I was stunned. It was about 2:30 in the afternoon. I knew that there should be food left in the mess. I summoned Dinesh. There was quite a bit of rice and dal, enough to feed 2 adults.

I just went to meet the family. The mother and the boy was eating to their heart's fill. It was such a pleasant sight to see. From the way they were eating it was obvious that both the mouths had not tasted food for quite some time.

The father had gone home. I had made a deal with the father that if he gets some vessels to cook food, we shall provide him with the rice and pulses for cooking.

Hunger . . . The issue continues to mock us . . . We may be the Cricket World Champions, we have one of the largest armies, our information technology industry is one of the leaders in the field, our healthcare industry is booming, we are one of the leaders in space and nuclear sciences . . . but the bottom line remains that we have quite a lot of our people who still goes to bed without food on account of overspending on healthcare.

TETANUS AGAIN . . . with HUNGER

CD, aged about 50 years is a farmer in the nearby district of Chattra which was quite far away. CD suffered a small injury of his left foot about 10 days back which he managed by putting some local medications.

Over the last 7 days, CD noted that he could not swallow, which slowly progressed to a stiffening of his back. As usual, he was taken to many a place before he ended up couple of days back at NJH. It impressed me that someone had actually diagnosed tetanus elsewhere and had referred him to us.

After MS, this was the third patient whom we had. We use the WHO protocol for management which we put him in. We had problems putting in a nasogastric tube as his oesophagus had gone into a terrible spasm. Till date, I’ve not been able to do anything about it even after he was put in all the available muscle relaxants.

Well, the reason I wrote about this patient was because of something I missed about this patient. Dr Nandamani noticed that the bystanders had got almost all of their medicines as hospital supply and it crossed his mind that if the family did not have money – did they have something to eat? Well, his hunch was true. The family had not eaten for almost a day after they reached NJH.

He got them something to eat from Raju’s shop. It was sad to see the family sitting in the waiting shed and whopping down the food.

It is unfortunate that even in the midst of the plenty that we claim to have in this country, people remain hungry and would not even open their mouth to tell others that they have not eaten anything for quite a long time.