Towards bullet speed…
Awaken at 5 am, Take the 5:45 am bus to reach the railway station on time for the 6:11 am local. Like clockwork, I followed this routine every single day for 2 years straight. Missing the 6:11 am local train would mean scuffling with and through the pouring crowd for the 6:21 or 6:23 one. A few minutes made tremendous difference as the number of commuters multiplied every second exponentially.
Taking the 6:23 local would mean getting mauled for the next half an hour, balancing yourself precariously by the train door or finding yourself an unfavorable spot below someone’s armpit. Height certainly has it’s advantages in the Mumbai local. So, I jumped out of the bus and sprinted like a maniac across the foot over bridge for platform no 4 every single morning. Thankfully my tryst with crowded buses and overcrowded trains soon stopped as I went away for a peaceful hostel life.
An average Mumbaikar spends 3–4 hours commuting everyday. Many of them work someplace in offices in South Bombay but stay somewhere in the outskirts. Blame the skyrocketing real estate rates. Compare a decent apartment in South Bombay to one in New Jersey/LA/Manhattan. I am not kidding when I make this point. So, for a layman it is a game of survival every single day. Most of them start their day fighting and squeezing their way through life and the bustling crowd for that little square inch space in the train or to find their footing in the bus only to make it on time for their daily bread and butter.
Even after the infamous Mumbai blasts of 2006, most Mumbaikars were up and about soon after. They took the same trains, visited the same train stations that had been bombed to smithereens for they could not let fear come in the way of survival. Many narrated tales of how they had fortunately missed the bombed local or disembarked just before it was blown off. People who made it out alive simply thanked their lucky stars, took it in their stride like many of their other life tragedies and hopped back into it to fight it out another day. The newspapers like after every tragedy, applauded the spirit of Mumbai. While I think, it isn’t so much the spirit of the layman as much as it is compulsion.
In one such instance, my cousin a student then got badly mauled in the crowded train, lost his footwear in the tussle, drenched himself and his drawing sheets in the torrential downpour and ended up alighting on the wrong platform way away from the intended one. To add insult to injury, he was then accosted by the ticket checker. An irritated him used the down time in the station master’s office to dry out his soaked worksheets. He wasn’t so concerned about being penalized as much as he was about the rain spoiling his several days of hard work. So, that is how it is for most people. A feat of survival.
Trains in Mumbai have an ecosystem of their own.
People from all walks of life forge lasting friendships, their rendezvous spot being exclusively the train bogie. There are bhajan groups, the loud rhythmic tinkering of the bells and the chanting which can be heard mixed with the blasting horns as the trains whoosh past a platform. There are students doing their last minute test preparations, ladies dedicatedly wrapping up their households chores(sorting out the veggies) or knitting on their way back home to make up for the lost hours.
There is an unwritten code of conduct you need to meticulously abide by. Where to stand and sit, how to stand and sit, enter and alight. Any deviation is not taken very kindly to. Hence anyone new to the City of Dreams will initially find it super overwhelming and any Mumbaikar visiting an other city will find it very obviously annoying when the same standards of commuting are not met with.
When people debate about there being work from home options or a hybrid work culture post covid, I am of the opinion that it is a welcome change. It saves on the company’s cost and the employees their expenses, not just in the monetary sense but in the time spent and the unnecessary exhaustion accompanying it , provided it is the kind of work that you can do from home. Why be stringent about rules that have no value addition?
As kids we commuted a lot by trains for long journeys like any other middle class household. It is only in my late teens that I flew for the first time. The commute would last a good three days in toto. There were no catering services those days, so we carried packed food(podichoru) from home for the entire duration of the commute. Somehow the same podichoru would be a pass any other normal day, but the taste buds would have been sensitized a few notches more on board. I still commute by trains occasionally. However, by now I know of a few who have lost their life or limb to a wrong footing here and a careless move there and the very thought of commuting by rail today gives me the shivers.
I am waiting for the those faster and safer bullet trains to replace the existing ones. The current washrooms have questionable hygiene and so do the linens. The one making it to the top of the list of questionable hygiene would be the people using the facilities. The last time I recently travelled in one, my mother caught Influenza on the way back and I had to spend several sleepless nights tending to her. How about we simply replace those thick difficult to maintain dusty blankets with easier to maintain thinner ones. The AC can definitely be turned down a few notches. Nobody wants it to feel like the Tundra in there. It will not just save on energy and cost, the thinner blankets will work just as fine.
I came across one of these videos(of Japan) where their super efficient bullet trains have these plush washrooms where you are provided with a smart card for shower facilities. You swipe while entering the shower and the clock starts counting down. You get a few minutes to do your job and the water supply automatically stops when the clock ticks 00:00. The lavatories should be like the in flight ones fitted with vacuum thus minimizing water requirement. Some style and efficiency is good. Doing up the interiors slightly rather than making everything look like a run down government office is good for the soul.
Train journeys are a really enriching experience much more than taking a flight. Hence the need to turn it into a pleasant experience so much that people take the railways out of choice and not because they have no choice.
I was elated to see that Africa inaugurated it’s first Indian made train. I am even more excited for Vande Bharat. It is high time we revamped ours and made ‘Made in India’ a brand to reckon with.
Sasta bhi, acha bhi…
