Train, oh you biggest moment provider of Bollywood!

Of all the locales that Bollywood has used to enchant and mesmerise us, nothing comes even remotely close to the train. This gigantic metallic invention has moved beyond its basic intent of providing transportation utility. For us, cinema lovers, it is all about cinematic moments. Here are some of those for you to relish.

Sholay
A sleepily moving goods train, that creates a bond between a ‘by the book’ Inspector and a crook pair of Jai and Veeru. It also develops teamwork and respect for each other. Surrounded by ruthless dacoits the three rescue themselves and the train. In a legendary moment, Veeru practically turns the train into a speeding unstoppable juggernaut that smashes the wooden blocks into pieces. He later even woos his tough to get lady love by drawing parallels between her personality and a speeding train.

The Train
One of the Indian cinemas most underrated thriller hits. This one was simply named as ‘The Train’. Most of us remember it for the smash hit “Gulaabi aankhein jo teri dekhi”, but it had a thriller screenplay. A series of murders take place on a train and Inspector Shyam, a supreme in form Rajesh Khanna investigates, only to shockingly discover that all clues point in the direction of the woman he is in love with, torn between love and duty he relentlessly pursues the woman till an intriguing twist in the tale hits us. Don’t miss it.

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge
There have been screen moments of romance but nothing will ever match Raj giving his hand to a panicking Simran, ensuring three things, one she gets the euro rail tour, second Raj and Simran gave us our most glorious on-screen romance on train ever and the fact that Yash Chopra laughed all the way to the bank. DDLJ’s biggest brightest moment, including my favourite “palat palat” call from Raj, takes place in and around this legendary train.

Inkaar
If you have not seen this 1978 kidnap of the wronged boy story. You have not watched India’s numero uno kidnap drama. It is on the train that Inspector Amar, played by the swagger of 1970s Vinod Khanna, gets his first clues of the pure cold blooded pyscho that he is chasing.

A money bag is dropped from the running train as cops click photos of a woman standing with a kidnapped child near a railway bridge. A high voltage background score as the train zooms away while the cops helplessly watch the woman drive away with the cash and the kid. Pure thriller moment it was.

In fact, the main baddie also walks into the final trap of the cops after a train moment. He is about to board a train to escape the law forever and just before that he gets a letter from the cops and gets down from a moving train.

Chennai Express
The purists hated it, but the movie’s half length occurs in a train and the makers named the movie after it and they wooed the audience. The train was lucky for Shah Rukh yet again, though Deepika stole the show with her Chennai girl act.

It had some well-plotted popcorn-comedy moments like TC being thrown off the train and in one of the most brilliant on screen spoof of DDLJ moment SRK unknowingly helps the lady and her huge built kidnappers to board the train had audience entertained. This train incidentally gave Rohit Shetty, the king of popcorn thrillers, his biggest hit till date.

Jab We Met
Before the bug of intellectuality bit him Imtiaz Ali used to make cinema which was worth the price ticket, ‘Jab We Met’ was one of them. A dejected depressed directionless son of a recently dead tycoon, Aditya walks into a train to escape his problems and runs into Geet, an absolute over the top loud mouth Punjabi girl.

As they rub a little bit of themselves on each other one of the most lovable entertaining sequence develops, where Geet repeatedly gets off the train and Aditya tries to get her back on the train. It is a must watch.

By:Rahul Deo Bharadwaj