Trains of Thought

 

1) In 1974, this 28-year-old politically left-leaning engineer was on his way home to India from France. During his journey on a train, he struck up a conversation with one of the passengers "about the travails of living in an Iron Curtain country." He was interrupted by some policemen as they thought that he was criticising the communist regime and dragged out of the train and left in a small room without food or water for 72 hours, then thrown back on another departing train and released in Istanbul. His treatment purged him of any affinity he had for the left and would ultimately help make him one of India's and the world's most successful capitalists. Who is He?

2)______ ______ first popped into her head during a long, boring train trip. What if, she wondered, a child rode a train that took him away from the confines of the boring adult world, to a place where he had power, both literally and metaphorically? By the time the train arrived at her destination, she had outlined several of ____ ______ adventures. Fill in the blanks.

3)This station comes on way to Pretoria from Durban in South Africa. A very famous or rather infamous incident changed the course of history. What incident or what station?

 

     
     4) He popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and me were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner." When he was in the train, he started drawing different sized circles until it became the form of a mouse. "Let's try Mortimer”, he asked his wife. She said, "How about _______?" And thus, _____  ______ was born!

 

    

   
  5)Which train going from Paris to Constantinople did the Compaigne Internationale des Wagons-Lits et Grands Express Europeens, run by the Belgian entrepreneur Georges Nagelmackers, operate in Europe in the early part of the twentieth century?  

      

                                   

     And a funny train complaint letter for you all which led to the provision of toilets in Indian Railways (P.S It's an actual letter) !