Sunrise With Seamonsters
“It was the imperial vision on a grand scale; it tested the ideas and inventions of engineers. India was the proving ground for the Victorian imagination: the railway builders sewed together the entire subcontinent with a stitching of track.
It was self-serving, of course; it was, from the beginning, a commercial enterprise, and after the Mutiny the railway with its fortified stations and tunnels was part of the military might of the Raj—the long march and the relief column were supplanted by th...e troop train. But it had a humane side. It was not, as in East Africa, only an expedient for moving minerals and farm produce to market. The railway was the blood-stream of the Raj, and it affected nearly everyone. It linked the centers of population; and the cities, which until then had been identified with their temples and forts, became identified with their railway stations, Howrah with Calcutta, Victoria with Bombay, Egmore and Madras Central with Madras. It involved millions of people, it required immense paperwork, the clipboard, the manifests in triplicate, the endless chain-of-command from Director to Sweeper—so it suited the complexity of Indian life, and it was an institution of limitless subtlety.MoreLess
It was self-serving, of course; it was, from the beginning, a commercial enterprise, and after the Mutiny the railway with its fortified stations and tunnels was part of the military might of the Raj—the long march and the relief column were supplanted by th...e troop train. But it had a humane side. It was not, as in East Africa, only an expedient for moving minerals and farm produce to market. The railway was the blood-stream of the Raj, and it affected nearly everyone. It linked the centers of population; and the cities, which until then had been identified with their temples and forts, became identified with their railway stations, Howrah with Calcutta, Victoria with Bombay, Egmore and Madras Central with Madras. It involved millions of people, it required immense paperwork, the clipboard, the manifests in triplicate, the endless chain-of-command from Director to Sweeper—so it suited the complexity of Indian life, and it was an institution of limitless subtlety.MoreLess
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