My first mumbai experience.
A week after I had joined first job of my life, I was already having a mid-life crisis. Being "productive" for eight hours a day was killing me. So finally when Saturday came I felt like Brits must have felt when Japs decided to bomb Peral Harbour. I spent the whole day planning my weekend excursion. (not weekends, saturdays are not off for the lesser mortals like me.) Ofcourse I had no clue about the city so I decided to ask a collegue who is a Mumbai local, which are the best places to witness mumbai's so-called night-life. With my friends' recommendations came a map, amateur sketchings, if you may, of Mumbai's train lines. Now where i come from when you draw a map it is usually showing the turns that he should take, not the train stations! Finally, the enormity of Mumbai started sinking into me and I realised that anywhere I would wanna go is pretty much two hours and three trains away. Whoa! I asked my friend, exasperated, what does he do on sundays? My friend smiled enigmatically and explained to me he is from mumbai. He spends his sundays at home. Despite much discouragement from almost everyone I knew, including my mother who decided to call me when she heard about my grand plans, I decided to undertake a journey to the heart of "cool" mumbai- Bandra. My journey would be from Thane to Bandra with a quick change of trains at Dadar. Clock struck five o'clock and I
was up and ready to go. People came from farflung departments to wish me goodbye and goodluck. As I mounted the auto, one of my more cheerful friends slipped a story about how he had seen a man being beheaded by local train. But it was too late to change my mind. I willed myself into leaving.
As I entered into train station all I could see was people. Not people with automobiles, not people shopping, not people in a concert. Just people. People standing or walking. Columns of people were moving in diffrent directions but what freaked me out was there were no ends to the columns. If you climb up a pole and look all you will find is the column following another column.(or so I
thought). Disillusioned, I wanted to run back to the safety of my company guest house. Only the image of me spending another boring evening infront of TV gave me enough courage to thrust myself towards ticket counter. I will say this about Mumbai train people, no matter how overcrowded their stations may be these guys know how to give out tickets. There about thirty people standing infront of me in the ticket line and within record time of eight minutes I had obtained my ticket. Now all I had to do was board the train. Now getting on the train when it reaches platform is something that cannot be described only be experienced. I cannot think of a single example to describe it. Suffice to say only thing that will screw your sense of privacy more than boarding a Mumbai local train will be public group showers.
Anyways I somehow got in the train and miraclously even found myself a seat. Seats infront of me were occupied by two lovers obviously not affected by all the activity around them. Next to them sat an old uncle-type who had a face that could belong to a postman or a munshi. He tried to engage me into a conversation about the government, but when I continued to nod a like a moron, after a while, he gave up. Few minutes later the free world lovers started whispering in each others ears and the boy started rubbing the girls' thighs. The postman uncle sitting next to them clearly took it as a insult to himself. I noticed his lips, which resembled
donal duck's lips, started quivering. This comedy went on for a while till finally the lovers got off. Realising the next station was mine I started panicking again. But somehow postman uncle sensed my misery and decided to help. I have no idea how I got off the train and crossed the multitude of masses but five minutes later I found myself on the platform following postman uncle while he told me where to catch the next train. And then just like that my saviour/indignant-citizen was gone. Anyhow I got off the next train in Bandra which was pretryy easy (now that I was a pro), and my journey was complete. What happened in Bandra is a whole different story. Rest assured I travelled back home the same night and have my head intact (to the dismay of some).