Mumbai's local trains

Traveling in Mumbai's local trains is an experience one must have during one's lifetime. Seriously. Where else would you find 100 people squeezed into space meant for two, and still managing to play card games, shell peas, sell jewelry and even sing religious songs? If you live in Mumbai -- or Bombay, as I still prefer to call it -- you have to have traveled at least once in a local train. Or you're not a Mumbaikar.
I recently went back home to Bombay for a month (well, slightly lesser than that, but who's counting?), and managed to travel in the trains. My parents were dead set against it, mind. They firmly believed that after traveling in the CapMetro buses of Austin, I would find it hard to travel in the chaotic locals of Bombay. (It's actually the other way round, but I didn't want to sit and explain all that -- I had a train to catch!). So off I went to Victoria Terminus (VT), now renamed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) during the renaming heydays of the Maharashtra government.
There's a train from the place where I live, Vashi, to VT, every 5 minutes. However, I was planning to go at 9am, and at that time, even getting a meter within the train's radius requires superhuman powers. Determined office-goers, chirpy college kids, bratty school kids -- all of them push, shove, kick and elbow their way to the train, so that the mere mortals traveling merely for the heck of it get thrown all the way to the back of the line. There are three start points for trains traveling to VT on the Harbor Line -- from Panvel, Belapur and Vashi. It's insanity trying to even look into the trains leaving from Panvel or Belapur, so I contented myself waiting for a Vashi train.
It came soon enough. The local train system is super-efficient, I'll give you that! I got in, feeling like a bit of a stranger since I hadn't ridden in one for over a year, and grabbed a seat. Now that's another task requiring some show of strength and cunning and speed and agility. You basically hurl yourself into the still-moving train, and, if you happen to spy an empty seat, you use all your wiles to get to it before another person can. In this case, since I was in the women's compartment, I competed with the women to grab the seat I saw. I managed to beat a plump lady wearing enough jewelry to open up a store, and a sharp-faced skinny woman who gave me the evil eye to the seat, and sank down, and immediately shoved the earbuds of my iPod into my ears and turned up the volume loud enough to hurt so I could block out the curses aimed my way.
The train started moving. I actually felt moved when I saw for the first time in over a year the view from the train window. Right outside Vashi station is the Thane creek. It's a thin body of water stretching from Thane all the way to Nhava Sheva, the port. The train bridge built over it was the first to connect the island of Bombay to Thane district, I do believe. I love the creek, and used to hang out of the train to get a glimpse of it when I was a college student. For some reason, I associate the creek with cricket. A crazy thought, isn't it? I think it's because I used to watch cricket matches live from New Zealand just before I left for college at 7:30am (since the country is 7 and a half hours ahead of India, the matches used to start really early). I used to watch usually till the tea break, and then leave for college, and all the way, I'd be contemplating on the various outcomes of the match, even more so if my favorite cricketer Shane Bond would be playing. I think that's why I associate the creek with cricket.
Anyway. Once the creek is past, there really isn't much to look forward to on the train journey -- except for the antics of my fellow passengers. That day, there happened to be a college girl, a loud woman and her sister-in-law and baby, a tired-looking bai (maid), and the ubiquitous macchiwaali (fisherwoman). These macchiwaalis are quite a race. They are the loudest, most voluble of passengers traveling in the train. They carry with them a straw basket, in which they ostensibly carry the fish, though I've seen the fish only once. These baskets are usually dripping with some kind of gray-ish water, so people tend to give them a wide berth. They dress in that style so typical to the macchiwaalis , with the saris drawn between their legs, dhoti-style. The one opposite me had a paan in her mouth, the juice oozing out of one corner of her mouth, making her look like the victim of assault and battery. She had an enormous red tikka on her forehead, her hair drawn up tightly in a knot. She kept talking throughout, though I'm pretty sure no one was paying her any attention (including me -- I had my iPod going). The college girl next to her shot her dirty looks which went unnoticed. What did not go unnoticed was my iPod -- an iPod is still a rarity in India, at least in the women's compartment of the local trains, and feeling numerous hungry eyes upon it, I clutched my precious possession close to me and guarded it like a dragon.
There are 14 stations between Vashi and VT: Mankhurd, Govandi, Chembur, Tilak Nagar, Kurla, Chuna Bhatti, Guru Tegh Bahadur Nagar, Vadala Road, Sewri, Cotton Green, Reay Road, Dockyard Road, Sandhurst Road, and Masjid. The last one is VT. At each station there is a seething mass of humanity struggling to enter the train. It's actually fun watching -- unless you're one of the hapless ones caught near the door, in which case you get enough abuse to turn your hair white, and numerous threats of bodily harm, most often, to throw you off the train while it is gathering speed. It's all just bark, though. No one, to the best of my knowledge, has ever actually acted out on these threats.
Another interesting fixture in the trains, at least in the women's compartment, is the various sellers who enter it. They are usually young-ish women, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, carrying their wares. The most popular ones are the jewelry and vegetable sellers; but other vendors can do good business too, if they're enterprising enough. Once, one of them actually got me to buy a glue stick from China. I was struggling to file my papers (this was back when I was in college), and a few of them kept sneaking out. The sharp-eyed vendor, a girl not much older than me, immediately came over, and tried to impress upon me the importance in my life of a pale blue glue stick with Chinese letters on it. I tried to convince her that I didn't need it, and she tried to convince me that I did. Finally, just to get rid of her, I bought one for 5 rupees. I threw it in my backpack, sure that I'd never need a questionable glue stick (what if my papers dissolved in it?). Strangely enough, that very week, I needed to glue something together, and the stick actually came in handy. And no, the papers didn't dissolve.
I couldn't listen to any of the conversations, unfortunately, for I had Matt Costa going full volume in my ears with These Arms. But it was fun looking at the animated expressions of the women commuters! They tend to have three types of expressions -- the happy, I don't care for anything type; the indifferent, exhausted type; and the belligerent type. These are the ones you steer clear of, incidentally. If you go and try to make conversation with one of the belligerent ones, you're just asking for trouble.
All this I observed with a half-smile on my face (I was hoping that people would think it was because of the song, not because of them), until the train went past Masjid. Masjid looks like the most ancient station along the Harbor Line, possibly because it hasn't been renovated ever since it was built. After Masjid, the train runs along between some buildings, which gives way to flowery patches on both sides of the track, which gives way, suddenly, to an enormous area consisting solely of train tracks -- that's when you know you've arrived! Then everyone on the train gets in a queue, pushing and shoving, though everyone knows that no one else can get off when the train's halted, and everyone is going to get off at that point, anyway. Pushing is the just part of the fun. It's not serious pushing, mind you -- just some good-natured jostling that's part of the daily Mumbaikar routine.
And when the train halts at VT station, everyone gets off in a rush. This is what happened that day as well -- the entire crowd just melted out of the train, and before I knew, VT was deserted -- in a manner of speaking. I plopped my earbuds out of my ears, and went to find a place to stand where I could wait for my friend. I was chased away by all kinds of people -- the ticket checkers, the food vendors, the passengers, the shoeshine boy -- even a beggar! Finally I found myself an inoffensive spot to wait, and did so, until my friend arrived, watching till then the ebb and flow of humanity with the arrival and departure of the various trains pouring in from all parts of Bombay.
And that's what a ride in the local trains of Bombay feels like!