Published in The Hindu

Without luxury train travel, and without railway colonies, there would be no Sir Cliff Richard

Early this month, Indian Railways came in for flak when it announced an all-veg menu to mark Gandhi Jayanti. But catering on Indian trains has always been controversial. During the Raj, dining cars served fancy food with spotless linen and liveried waiters, but didn’t allow Indians. After Independence, Lal Bahadur Shastri abolished segregated dining but in 1952, started the Annapoorna dining car for underprivileged passengers. The food was of poor quality, and he was criticised. When Lalu Prasad Yadav became Railways Minister, he toyed with the idea of serving tea in clay matkas to indigenise the experience. Later, former railways minister Suresh Prabhu tried to make the catering swankier. But overall, the quality of food on trains has always left much to be desired.

In 1935, the Annual of the East reported that ‘tourist cars are really homes-on-wheels, as they contain in themselves bedrooms, day rooms, lavatories and kitchens. The railway also provides crockery, glassware, cooking utensils and cutlery, which are under the custody of the attendant… All that occupants have to do is to make arrangements for their own catering.’ One also finds royal reminiscences in Maharani Gayatri Devi’s Memoirs (1995).

In trains where a restaurant car was not attached, first-class passengers could order food through telegraph, which would then be readied at the next station. Cooks kept tiffin carriers ready for pick up. The meal would be served on thick white railway crockery as the train pulled away. Bearers would emerge with ‘a tray piled high with exotic curries, dal, rice, savoury side dishes, pickles and chutneys, drinks and delicacies to titillate the most discriminating palates; all with silver cutlery and chinaware embossed with Kellner’s crest.’ Another waiter would pick up the empty dishes at the next station.

A set of several caterers serviced the Railways. As Malcolm Murphy notes in Last Children of the Raj, “Spencer’s served the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway and the North Western Railway, Kellner’s the East India Railway, and Brandon’s the Great Indian Peninsular Railway and the Bombay, Baroda and Central India. Only the BNR, the Bengal Nagpur Railway, did its own catering.”

Kellner’s. It’s a name that flashes every once in a while, as for instance in the short story, ‘First-Class Compartment’, by Satyajit Ray. Hours before his tryst with a British ghost, Ranjan Kundu reminisces about Kellner’s chicken curry and rice, a delicacy he remembered from childhood.

Very few accounts of Kellner’s survive today. G.F. Kellner & Co., Wine Merchants, Agents and Proprietors of Railway Refreshment Rooms, was established in 1855, two years after Lord Dalhousie announced his famous Railway Minute of 1853. It started as a partnership between George Ferdinand Kellner and an Indian businessman, Jonardun Day. G.F. Kellner was of German origin, born in Bohemia, and died at Stuttgart. He spent most of his life in Calcutta, running his food provisions company, which later grew into a railway caterer. Kellner retired in 1878, leaving the firm to his son, George Kellner, and A.J. Bridge. By this time, Kellner’s was running restaurant cars for the East India, Delhi-Umbala-Kalka, and the Kalka-Shimla railways.

Alongside restaurant cars, the proliferation of dak bungalows in railway colonies and other remote locations helped popularise the caterers. Kipling’s tales are often peppered with these establishments, especially those from his stopover in the railway colony of Jamalpur. Writing in 1910, a British administrator attributed the upkeep of Kharagpur, then a new railway colony, to Kellner’s: “Khargpur (sic) is purely a railway colony; and the provision of a dak bungalow, in conjunction with Messrs. G.F. Kellner and Company’s excellent refreshment rooms, will be a boon to numerous travellers who have to visit that place.”

In pre-independence India, mail trains stopped for seven minutes at major stations after every one-and-a-half hours. Kellner’s bearers would bring tea and refreshments and take orders for lunch. Items of colonial railway cuisine — the railway lamb curry, cold meat and chicken cutlets, or fish and chips — are still found today in refreshment rooms of major stations.

Born in Lucknow in 1940, British pop musician Sir Cliff Richard, christened Harry Rodger Webb, has a well-known Indian connection. But his debt to the Railways remains unsung. Richard’s father, Rodger Oscar Webb, was born in Rangoon, in 1904. The Webbs stayed in Burma until 1914, and then shifted to the railway colonies of Allahabad, Howrah and Lucknow. After briefly returning to Burma to work in a chocolate factory, Webb joined the services of G.F. Kellner & Co. in Calcutta sometime during the late 1920s. He worked as a steward on the restaurant cars of trains plying between Calcutta and Dehra Dun. On one of his journeys, he met his future wife, Dorothy Marie Dazely.

When Sir Cliff was born, Webb was managing a railway restaurant in Dehra Dun. This is where Richard was baptised, in November 1940, at St. Thomas Church. Webb was promoted as catering manager at Kellner’s and during his tenure he introduced jazz music to the Indian Railways. The Webbs lived on Dobson Road, today known as Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad Road, near Howrah. In 1945, Richard joined St. Thomas School and became a chorister.

Without luxury train travel, without G.F. Kellner’s & Co., without railway colonies or Webb, there would have been no Sir Cliff either. Do we thank the British for the Railways or do they thank the Railways for the pop legend?

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The writer teaches English at O.P. Jindal Global University, and is author of The Purveyors of Destiny: A Cultural Biography of the Indian Railways.