This is the right answer. It took me a while to hack it as there is not much documentation on videoJS
videojs("example_video_1", {}, function(){
// Player (this) is initialized and ready.
var aTextTrack = this.textTracks()[0];
aTextTrack.on('loaded', function() {
console.log('here it is');
cues = aTextTrack.cues();
console.log('Ready State', aTextTrack.readyState())
console.log('Cues', cues);
});
aTextTrack.show();//this method call triggers the subtitles to be loaded and loaded trigger
this.play();
});