The auto rickshaw won’t go further. A jam has cropped up in the thin lane connecting the main road to the Kanjurmarg station. Kanjurmarg, a railway station on the central line, where only slow locals halt for passengers heading towards CST or Kalyan on either directions. It is said that this city moves on local trains, also being called the lifeline of this place. Yes, I am in Mumbai.
The lane needed repairing; rain water had made it worse. Yesterday night it had rained here. Monsoons have arrived. People here are much fearful of heavy rains as Mumbai gets flooded very soon. How can we forget that hapless year of 2005 when that immense flood rocked the city of Mumbai to its core. Recently, I heard a debate in some news channel about the governmental spending on this issue. It is said that nothing much has been done for it since 2005. People here are much courageous it seems. Government is equally ready to give them a chance to prove their valor. May be due to this the quite popular radio jockey’s are often heard saying, “Mumbai, enjoy the rain”.
A train had arrived at the station. I could see people rushing out, most of them are office goers, a mixed crowd of men and women; averagely aged around 30, moving briskly out of the lane. Most of them must have got late to their office, like me.
Today is yet again a humid day, although monsoons are here but humidity doesn’t seem to fade away. I reached the station’s over-bridge and glanced on the train display on platform 2. The next local-train to CST is after 5 min. I started climbing the stairs, a bit slowly than yesterday. Sometimes I run through these stairs when I see the train coming; many a times I think to cross the tracks without taking the over-bridge. Daily I see people doing that. Yes why not they are the courageous lot. They ought to do it. Yesterday I had to run and still I missed the train. Maybe if I could have gathered some courage to cross the tracks, I could have made it, but I am new to this place, yet to get accustomed.
I got down at the platform, made my way to the 1st class zone; they have distinctively indicated it by yellow and black stripped marks, easy to locate even in a heavily crowded station. I made this 1st class pass after I lost my mobile in a 2nd class bogie, got pick pocketed. Well, that is some 10 days ago. The next day I was checking out the features in my new mobile, a cheaper one this time. The guy must have been skilled, the one who took away the mobile from my pocket, the over- crowded bogie must have surely helped him but still it needed perfection. And as we know, practice makes a man perfect.
Train is arriving and I could see from a distance, people hanging out from the gates, some of them dangling out with just one hand holding the top porch, swinging in the wind along with the train and enjoying the morning breeze. Train arrived at the platform, only a few got down and much more hustled in. I could hardly move a feet inside the gate; it was all jam-packed.
I was carrying my laptop in a school bag and had hanged it in-front of me, this new way of carrying a bag, I had learnt here only. I saw some 4 persons behind me; the last two were almost hanging outside. The one ahead me was middle aged, fat and a short person. He was shouting at the guy in front of him, maybe the guy had unknowingly pushed him or stamped on his feet, whatever, and this gentleman thought that it should be properly returned back along with some abuses.
Generally in such a jam-packed bogie when you are stuck in between, nothing much happens inside your head. Its starts to happen when someone starts moving out and you have to make place for him. You search for every other alternative to place yourself in such a way that the guy moves out as well as you maintain your comfortable way of standing. Many take it as a chance to move inside and get to some better place; better in the sense, where they can find peace in standing, read newspapers or novel. But some are so skilled that they can do it without moving inside. Something similar had resulted in getting me pick-pocketed.
I was naïve and could hardly manage myself in that condition, reading newspapers or novel was a farfetched dream. Anyways, as I had nothing to do, I watched people, various people, what they said, how they said, how they laughed, how they shouted, on whom they shouted and what did that person said in return.
Everyday this 1.5 hrs of journey, I come across numerous faces. Be it the auto rickshaw driver or the people waiting in the platform or the ones I see in the train. Something which is common to all of them, something that generates a sort of vibe, something that is so fine tuned into their system that it is difficult for a person to imagine what I am talking now, if he or she had never been to Mumbai. Is there something with the city, I don’t know. They say that Mumbai never sleeps. Well, I don’t know much about it as I used to sleep. The earliest I had seen Mumbai was somewhere around 7 am and the late somewhere around 1 pm, and at both the times it was the same, except, that one was morning and the other was night.
It is said that now Mumbai is home for around 2.5 crore humans. But it’s a staunch question that whether all of them are living like humans or not. Forget about the basic living amenities such as a safe and sound home, a descent income and a respectable image in the society. One cannot be assured that he or she will even return home in the evening. How can we forget the frequent bomb blasts in the local trains, the incessant firing by militants in the railway station, roads and hotels and above all, real unsafe modes of travel. Within just 2 months of my stay in Mumbai I witnessed cases when an electric wire fell upon the railway tracks in the central line causing major derailment of trains, water logging in the railway tracks after just a single shower of the pre-monsoon and other such events.
Life is hard and so are Mumbaikars. In spite of all the above, they don’t forget to put up a smile and play cards in the train, offer seats to older people and answer your queries if you ask any. This was really the most amazing thing I find here. To any query of yours, you will always find more than one reply’s. Well, definitely not being asked to the one who is running after a bus or a train, he may even kick you and run over you. They just need a vada-pao and a cutting to refill them and just like some comic book hero becomes ready for a marathon fight. Sleep, forget it, the less they take the better it is. Generally it is being considered as a waste of time. They will get up early in the morning, prepare themselves and reach a mile away station from their home, in time, just to catch their favourite local train because they will be getting a window seat and their friends will also be travelling in it.
Mumbai is different from the other cities I have been, in many ways. It cannot be categorized in some type as the others can be. It is so varied, so complexed, so busy, so loud, so long and so short that you hardly get a hold of it. What makes it so is its people. Well, personally I don’t relish my stay here. Except the faloda I took on the juhu beach, the kirtan at Iskcon Temple, the serene powai lake of IIT Bombay, the rains in the night when it felt so soothing, the walk through the busy lanes in the evening, the 15 rs full bowl Maggie at the canteen of H5, the gala lunches at my office and finally the cool-cum-dead office culture providing me this enough time to dwell on these non-senses.
...this piece was extracted from the hard disk of my laptop where it was planted sometime during my 2 months stay at Mumbai.
