u/john_wick_909

India has a term like “Army Brats” for children who grew up in defense families… but we never really coined a similar identity for railway families.

And honestly, railway colony childhood was its own world.

I come from a third-generation railway family. I never joined Railways myself, but my grandfather, father, cousins — almost everyone around me served in Indian Railways at some point. Growing up, Railways was not just an employer. It was the ecosystem around which our entire life functioned.

We lived in railway colonies where every house looked similar, every uncle worked in some department, every neighbor knew everyone else, and your entire social life revolved around this one giant institution.

The roads, grounds, clubs, schools, hospitals, institutes, quarters — everything had that railway identity attached to it.

And there was a strange warmth to it.

People today talk about gated communities, but railway colonies were the original Indian community living spaces. Children played together till late evening without fear. Every festival became collective. Somebody’s father worked in operations, somebody in engineering, somebody in signals, somebody in accounts, somebody was a loco pilot, somebody in workshops — but everyone still belonged to the same ecosystem.

One thing unique to railway families was travel culture.

Since everyone had passes, travel became part of life itself. Families casually discussed routes, trains, timings, stations, retiring rooms, concessions, quotas — things that most Indians find complicated even today.

Some of my best childhood memories are of entire groups of railway families booking bogies together and going on trips. Imagine an entire coach filled with familiar people — your parents’ colleagues, their children, shared food, endless card games, tea at stations, random conversations with TTEs who knew your father, and children sleeping on upper berths while trains crossed through the night.

That feeling is impossible to explain to someone who didn’t grow up around Railways.

Railway children often grew up seeing multiple states, multiple languages, transfers, and people from every state and culture.

Even today, whenever I meet someone from a railway background, the conversation instantly becomes personal:
“Which zone?”
“Which division?”
“Railway colony kid?”
“Your father in operations or engineering?”
And suddenly there’s an unspoken familiarity.

So I wanted to ask:

Did anyone else here grow up in railway colonies or railway families?

What were your memories like?

What things do you think only railway kids would understand?

And do you think railway families deserve their own identity term the way “Army Brats” became a thing?

Being an educated cosmopolitan person, I was too much in favor of having an inter-caste marriage.

First, I had the idea of not limiting myself to the silos of caste, believing it's an archaic notion. And I should explore outside caste, because in my opinion, I felt that a new caste will be a new kind of culture, which will be different. New kind of festivals, new food.

So Yes, and I went for an inter-caste marriage. But however, I now come to realize why it was traditional wisdom to marry within caste.

Because, culture, like I wanted to explore new culture, but it is very different. At times, quite incompatible as well.

For example, if I can give an example, was that in my household it is customary for people take a bath and then do the puja, daily puja, and then have food.

She went along with it. But later, she made it an issue that she was not being allowed to eat till it was afternoon.

So yes, the culture does have a bearing on things.

Another example that I think was because of the culture part was the engagement with relatives and friends. We are very outgoing and maintain and honour even distant relationships while it was not done on her side of family

I don’t want to say that it created many issues but it was something that bugged us. And we should have discussed things well in advance so that both knew what each of us was signing into

what people often underestimate is that culture is most visible not in grand ideals, but in tiny daily routines.

So everyone who is pondering, thinking of an inter-caste marriage, kindly consider everything.

And if there are people who have had good or bad experience with inter-caste, kindly let us know. Kindly drop in.

I would like to know about your story.

Thanks in advance for sharing your take on the issue

Happened to visit a friend in Patel Nagar and got caught up in traffic due to weekly market.

Decided to get down from cab and walk to the destination, crossed the lively weekly market.

I think most places in Delhi have this thing on different days

Is that so?

If you have met someone and been talking to him/her. Things feel okish, everything is going great but you don’t feel so good

You have a gut feeling that it doesn’t feel right

Even though you are not able to express it and convey it but something is bugging you slightly.

Listen to your gut feeling, it knows you better than you do.

Don’t think about family, society or the partner. It’ll probably be best for everyone.

I didn’t do it and somehow convinced myself to go through with the wedding, now I regret it and I’m going to do it for a long time now.

Make the right call when you have time, it’s better than regretting later.