Travel by the Mumbai Local

Travel by the Mumbai Local

                    Just imagine… Your right hand lying on someone’s shoulder which after around 10 minutes you come to realize belongs to the third person on your right, is holding your bag. Your left hand or to say complete left arm is somehow lost somewhere just like your right leg and in case you try to turn your head to track the two, the hair of the person on your left start brushing your face with the most foul smelling hair oil. You leave that attempt. Then you try to move your hands and legs .. I mean at least you give your brain the order to do so.. so that at least by the movement you might be able to guess the exact location of your organs. While doing so even your brain is so confused that it tries to move your left leg instead of right one and you come to know that the leg is simply somewhere in the air and you are currently in no direct touch to the floor below.
Welcome to Mumbai locals.. at a time around 9-10 in the morning or probably 7-8 in the evening.. The situation is the same except for the sky outside, which is black or white but again it is hardly visible from inside the compartment.
I currently Live in Chinchwad and travel by bus to office and sadly I miss that entire thrill I used to enjoy when I was in college. At that time, I used to live in Thane. My college was in Vidyavihar… at a distance of around 20-25 minutes from Thane by our beloved locals. It would be my pre-decided plan to catch usual 8:15 a.m. local to Vidyavihar. This local used to start from Thane and thus used to have lesser crowd as compared to others which would come fully packed from the stations before Thane. I traveled by that particular local for 4 years of my engineering, as I was loyal to her even she was so… never did late … never got cancelled… never made me repent to make the decision of catching her.
                    The journey used to start something like this…. I, always late for the local to catch would run on the bridge just like a male rabbit would behind a female rabbit… ( don’t ask me why of all I chose rabbit here… but the way I used to jump over the obstacles in between and maneuver my way to the platform number 3 can be compared to just a deer or rabbit.. and since rabbit is good looking one….). So finally for the 8:15 local I used to reach exactly at 8:16. Now again there was a catch here.. the digital clock on the bridge used to show the timing of 8:19 whereas the one on the platform used to show 8:16… Einstein would have congratulated me for running by the speed of light to go into the past… at the end, the local would follow none of the three timings… it used to leave by around 8:17 in my watch.
                    I used to get into the compartment… first class compartment.. although a bit expensive, I used to prefer that one for the reason that first class guaranteed of people who would have bathed at least once a week… which was not at all possible in second class compartments. Getting into the compartment was never so difficult in fact I always used get a good place to stand mostly under the fan which would provide some sort of ventilation if working that too if some air would be able to enter the compartment in spite of the crowd.
The train then used to leave Thane with the slowest speed it could gather. The first station was Mulund, where I don’t know why but people thought every local is the last local and there is no other local that will come on that route. People would run into the compartment just like the animals in the movie Jumanji… I think the director of the movie must have traveled by that local and got the idea of the it… we used to laugh everyday on that style but those Mulund people never left their habit.
                    The next stations would simply go unnoticed as there would be damn crowd already inside the compartment making us almost hugging each other, sleeping on others’ shoulders and at times simply get hair oiled by brushing them with neighbor. I would like to salute Indian Railways for the great social work they are doing of bringing people together… in today’s world where one person even doesn’t talk to other properly without any reason, co-travelers in locals are almost sleeping on each other’s shoulder.
                    Then there used to come our staion..Vidyavihar. Every person even though sure that the person next him is definitely getting down at VidyaVihar would ask, ‘ Vidyavihar?’.. Now this is not a question as such.. as per English grammar, this so-called question has no meaning at all, but the particular word would convey the purpose to the other guy and simply he would nod to it. I still remember the day when a person asked my friend from behind, ‘VidyaVihar?’ and he simply replied, ‘No.. Gaurav’.. the whole compartment burst into laughter…
We never got out of the compartment on our own will. Someone from behind used to push us out or someone on station willing to get into would simply pull us out to make some room inside.
                    This saga continued for 4 years of my engineering. Now it has almost been a year or so, that I shifted to Pune, and couldn’t get any thrill in the journey to office. Last weekend while I was traveling to Thane from Kalyan I experienced same things; it brushed up all those memories of travel… Although my whole body was paining… I felt good somewhere deep within… I was back in my old days… I enjoyed it.
                    People not at all familiar with the life in these Mumbai locals may think me as a complete mad but really try to travel by these for a week or so…you will get used to them and start liking them. This is the place where people can make friends, play cards, exchange feelings, try to catch glimpse of girls in the ladies compartment… and all that in an hour’s time or so.. salute to you Mumbai local….