Trains, Planes and Pedhas - Vikram Vij and His Family Chicken Curry

Photo used with thanks to Sean Neild

Chef Vikram Vij, patron of Vancouver's famous Vij's Restaurant, Rangoli and Railway Express, and I share a fascination with Indian railways and their ubiquitous blue and red trains. Mine was honed through years of travelling around India with my family, and my own adventures on the trains from Delhi to South India. Vikram's, on the other hand, was all about the food.

"Were the pedhas worth it?" I asked him, after he recounts a particularly hilarious train story. "Yeah" he says, laughing, "but if I had missed that train, I would have lost everything, so maybe I need to rethink that answer". Vikram was travelling from Mathura to Bombay, and decided, underestimating the stop times on the train, to head to a nearby pedha shop. Pedhas, for the uninitiated, are deliciously milky, soft, fudgey Indian sweets that melt in your mouth. He got his pedhas, but as he approached the train station, realised that his train was pulling away from the station. As he recounts, "I ran, so hard, yelling, and finally managed to jump on to the last carriage of the train, where I waited till we got to the nest stop, so I could get to my seat". This story is familiar to a lot of us Indians, who love our railway food and drinks. From banana podis when approaching the Konkan coast, to vada pav in Mumbai, hot chai and lassis everywhere, everyone has a story about a near missed train incident. But in the end, the pedhas or the bhajiyas or the vadas are always worth it.

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