On 7 July 1896, as Bombay was recovering from the plague, Marius Sestier, a French cinematographer, screened six short films at the "whites-only" Watson Hotel. Among the films shown was "L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat" (Arrival of the Train at La Ciotat), a 50-second, silent documentary showing a steam engine pulling a train into La Ciotat, a town near Marseille in France. Reports say several audience members panicked and ran for the exits when they saw the locomotive hurtling towards them on the screen. Though it is anachronistic to read too much into such events, the coincidence of cinema—a miracle of the modern industrial age—descending on the Indian subcontinent as a scary train is too delicious to ignore. Historian Ram Guha, in an article for "The Telegraph" in 2004, identified the railways and Hindi cinema as two of the eight reasons India has survived despite challenges. Both have fed, in many ways, into the national imagination.
One of the earliest films to exploit the adventure of train travel was the 1936 thriller "Miss Frontier Mail." Directed by Homi Wadia, it starred Fearless Nadia (Australian-Indian actor Mary Ann Evans) who had already established herself as an action star in "Hunterwali" (1935), also directed by Wadia. But even before its release, "Frontier Mail," as it was initially called, ran into trouble with B.B. and C.I. Railway, the company that operated the train, which ran from Bombay to Peshawar. The company had allowed Wadia to shoot on their train, and he had put a picture of a train crash on his poster.
"In 1936, the Frontier Mail train was the height of glamorous modernity, its name synonymous with speed, sophistication and the adventure of the railways," writes film scholar Rosie Thomas in her essay, "Miss Frontier Mail: The Film That Mistook Its Star for a Train" (2007). The railway company was not keen to associate their service with a crash. Wadia conducted a nationwide poll to quickly add "Miss" to the title.
"By identifying its leading star with the train, the film attempted to define the modern nation. While the train symbolised speed and modernity, Nadia, often dressed in masculine clothes and beating up male villains, is in some ways a modern woman," she writes.
If "Miss Frontier Mail" imagined the breadth of the Indian nation before independence, "Jagriti" (1954) used the metaphor of a train journey to imagine the diversity of the post-colonial country. Directed by Satyen Bose, the film stars Abhi Bhattacharya as Shekhar, a schoolteacher who takes his students—all boys—on a train journey across the country. Their discovery of India is accompanied by the song, "Aao bachchon tumhe dikhaye jhanki Hindustan ki/Iss mitti se tilak karo tum, yeh dharti hai balidan ki." Written and sung by Kavi Pradeep and set to music by Hemant Kumar, the song imagines the geographical extent of the nation and its history.
By the early 1970s, the trauma of the Partition had somewhat abated, and trains became sites of other emotions—love or separation. The one actor who seemed to strike a chord with songs featuring trains is Rajesh Khanna, starring in at least three such classic songs. In the 1969 film "Aradhana," directed by Shakti Samanta, Khanna's character woos Sharmila Tagore with the song "Mere sapno ki rani kab aayegi tu?" With lyrics by Anand Bakshi and music by S D Burman, the song is sung by Kishore Kumar. Khanna hangs out of an open jeep, singing and trying to attract the attention of Tagore, who is travelling in the Darjeeling toy train.
This sequence was referenced in the song "Kasto Mazza", from Pradeep Sarkar's 2005 film "Parineeta," where the film's protagonist, Shekhar Roy (Saif Ali Khan), remembers his lover, Lalita (Vidya Balan), while travelling in the toy train in Darjeeling during the song.
The two other train songs from the 1970s featuring Khanna are "Hum dono do premi" from "Ajanabee," directed by Samanta, and "Zindagi ke safar mei guzar jaate hai jo makam" from "Aap Ki Kasam," directed by J Om Prakash. Both films released in 1974.
Another actor who seems to love trains greatly is Shah Rukh Khan, whether it is "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge" (1995) or its recreation in "Chennai Express" (2013). His spectacular dance on a train in "Dil Se" (1998), hi-octane action sequences in "Ra.One" (2011), or more recently in "Pathaan" (2023)—SRK and trains seem to be made for each other.
Aditya Chopra's "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge" is most notable in this list. The film's first half is a train journey through Europe. Early in the movie, in what is now an iconic scene, as the film's female protagonist, Simran (Kajol), runs towards the train at a London station, Raj (Khan) hangs out of one of the doors and offers her his hand and pulls her into the train. That's how they meet; that's where their story begins.
The train, however, is also a metaphor for freedom. Simran comes from a toxic home with an overbearing father (Baldev, played by Amrish Puri) and DDLJ's central conflict is between Simran's desires and her clash with patriarchy. In the climactic sequence of the film, as Raj and his father are leaving the village in Punjab, defeated in their plans of convincing Baldev, Simran pleads with her father to let her go. And when all seems lost, he releases her with the famous dialogue—"Ja Simran, jee le apni zindagi."
Nearly three decades later, this may seem like a nod to patriarchy. But in DDLJ, Baldev is completely transformed at the end, from the patriarch who subdued everyone's desires to his will to acknowledging his daughter's desires. Yet again, Raj, hanging out of one of the train's doors, pulls a running Simran into the compartment. The magic of the scene—and I still remember the endless cheering in the cinema halls—is no less than the one in "E.T." (1982), directed by Steven Spielberg, where the cycles suddenly rise into the air during the climactic chase sequence. In DDLJ, there is no telekinesis—it’s all love. And hope in newly liberalised India.
And what better symbol of speed, modernity, freedom and adventure for Simran—as it was for "Miss Frontier Mail"—than a speeding train defying the limitations of space and time?
Uttaran Das Gupta is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist. He teaches journalism at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat