One of the most successful pro-grams BBC Television has pro-duced in recent years has been a series of travel-documentary films that criss-crossed the globe and were called the Great Railway Journeys of the World. The first series was commissioned in 1979 and consisted of six railway journeys around the world. One of them was The Deccan from India. The success of the programme led the BBC to recommission a second series in 1982 which once again featured a train journey from India called The Line of Dreams. In 1998, once again, there was an Indian journey called East to West.

The Great Railway Journey documentaries filmed in India is the work of one man, Gerry Troyna, who has been the producer and director of all the three films. Once a BBC staffer, Troyna is now an independent filmmaker who has had an enduring love affair with India that began with The Deccan. Why did he choose the Deccan? Troyna recalls: “The decision to go on the Deccan route was born out of a frustration of seeing India in the North only — Taj/Shimla/Delhi. So we decided to go south because of wanting to be different.”

And different he certainly was, in the treatment and conception of the film that is laced with the sparkling wit of the playwright Brian Thompson, the traveller-narrator. With Brian, we embark on the journey from the cathedral-like Victoria Terminus or the VT in Bombay. Taking different trains and travelling in different classes, Brian goes through Pune, Guntakal, Mysore and Ooty finally ending his journey a week later at village near Cochin where the backwaters meet the sea.

“Nothing in the imagination can quite prepare you for the pure shock of India,” declares Brian in the opening sequences. Yet, as he meanders southwards, he comes to marvel at this country, and of course, the Railways.

Perhaps because he now encounters the “real” India of teeming millions — coolies, coffeewallahs, booking clerks, line inspectors, ticket collectors, guards, signal men, waiters, fellow passengers, and of course children. It isn’t surprising that Brian concludes the film by saying: “If ever there was a country in which the common people determine your view of it, then India must surely be that country.” ‘The Deccan’ was showered with plaudits and prompted the Guardian to write that The Deccan had re-invented the genre of the travel documentary.

Then came the second series that con-centrated on the narrow-gauge railways that were, once upon a time, built to serve remote and inaccessible places, linking the ‘frontiers’ to the colonial powers. Titled Great Little Railways, the second series told the story of some of these charming “little lines” and explored the landscape through which they passed while introducing some of the people who either used the railways or help run them. Gerry Troyna chose a perfect journey in Rajasthan — a meter-gauge line between Jodhpur and Jaipur. This journey on the Marudhar Express was called The Line of Dreams.

Compared to the reality of the Western world, where the “little lines” hauled by steam had been long abandoned, it was nothing short of a dream that here in India it not only continued to exist but actually carried passengers to several small towns along its route! Obscure stations between Jodhpur and Jaipur, which normally flash past in a fast train, come to acquire their names and become destinations like Merta, Makrana, Phulera, Sambhar etc.

Travelling this route, Troyna introduces us to characters who seem to live in the world of their dreams. Take for instance, Maharaj Swaroop Singh of Jodhpur who, even while playing cycle polo, seems to be reliving the dreams of his royal past. We follow twelve year old Kailash, the young busker who makes a living by singing in the train, often travelling without a ticket! Although his pockets are empty, his heart is full of Bollywood heroes and heroines. Then there is O.P Dixit, the inimitable Ticket Inspector, who lives out his fantasies of being a detective while apprehending “ticketless travellers”. Between O.P Dixit and Kailash are some of the most endearing sequences in the documentary as one tries to catch and the other dodges, changing compartments in a moving train! We also get to meet Mr. Mandis, a retired Anglo- Indian loco-driver who poignantly reflects on the glorious days of the colonial past and actually says: “I look back to those days like a dream. Just like a dream.” Troyna too, was not untouched by the experience and concludes the film with “India is the oldest dream and the dream lives on.”

In 1998, Troyna got to make his third Great Railway Journey film in India with Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye who takes a journey across the subcontinent in the 50th year of Indian independence. Beginning at the Metro in Calcutta, Ian journeys westwards to Jaisalmer, discovering the legacy of the British as he goes along. After all, the Railways were one of the biggest legacies of the British in India. He travels on India’s most prestigious train — the Rajdhani Express to Delhi and a southbound people’s express to Agra. He also takes a slow train to Ajmer and finally boards the luxurious Palace on Wheels that takes him to Jaisalmer. Besides the British legacy, in his journey from east to west, Ian discovers that this is also a journey that India is taking itself as it arrives at the end of 20th century. As the sun sets over the sand dunes, he says that modern India is looking west beyond Britain to America but feels confidant that if Indians could survive “the Mughal Empire and the British Raj they would probably survive the MTV and the Yuppies too!”

Besides sheer story-telling, one of the most striking features about Troyna’s films is his use of music, which seems to blend and merge with the moving images. This is the result of a creative partnership that he immensely enjoys with the composer. He rarely uses library music although if an indigenous piece has a unique relevance e.g. A.R. Rehman’s Vande Mataram during the 50th year of India’s independence, then he would not hesitate to use it, as he did in ‘East to West’. But usually he prefers to have his music specially composed and this process begins early in the post-production stages of the film. Troyna has worked with some of the leading musicians like David Bowie, Brian Eno and Terry Oldfield amongst others.

This is never more evident than in filming on the Indian Railways — a complex and vast organization, which sometimes finds it hard to cater to the demands of a foreign filmmaker like Troyna. But despite the Railway bureaucracy and its sometimes crazy requests, like filming from a bogey travelling in front of the Palace on Wheels, the Indian Railways have always come up trumps. And in the end, always found a way to work together successfully both for the film and for the Railways themselves.