Aditya Kulkarni

My first real experience of the 'Mumbai Local' was travelling with my brother to Chembur some years ago. While coming back when the train arrived at Vashi, I was half asleep and at the door, waiting to alight. Da said "chal, we get down here", so I did. I stepped out, but evidently forgot to notice that the train was still moving. I remember rolling over quite a few times, and when I had finally stopped, everything around was still shaking. The shocked and confounded expression of Dada's face was something to look at. I got away with a fractured hand, and Da carried around that harrowed expression for the next couple of days.

I spent my college years travelling on a bike, so my first week at Wcities was a real eye-opener. I noticed that the only difference between the first and second class is the occasional waft of deodarant instead of sweat. The level of gossiping and bitching is certainly on par with the women's compartment, if not more. For the first few days, I had to stop and ask at least a dozen people before taking any overbridge or boarding a train, more so owing to my confusion over similar sounding names like Govandi-Bhivandi and Gurgaon-Girgaon-Goregaon.

It's also pretty irksome to have a window seat. The once on, once off strategy played by the rain means that I have to open, shut, then again open the window for the whole route. To avoid that, I put on my earphones and play dead i.e. act as if I am fast asleep, with sound effects. And it works most of the time…Hell Yeah! Being a regular commuter now, I have also developed a seventh sense, which is the art of gaining a place to sit in a crowded train. It basically involves the following 4 skills:

1) Observation: As soon as you enter the compartment, pick a corner where the probability of people getting off at the next few stations is high. This takes around a week's practice but in the end, it's all worth it.
2) Judgement: Observe and deeply study the body language of the people sitting. They tend to get a little shifty before getting up, maybe because they had worked hard to sit down in the first place. Also, they either start looking for their bags or an empty gap between the crowd, big enough to slip through.
3) Persuasion: Once your target is locked, stare at the person shamelessly and persistently until he/she relents and gets up.
4) Reflexes: Quickly step up and try to wiggle into the half empty space. Never wait for the fellow to stand fully as you may lose the opportunity to a more enterprising person.

In case of an argument, some people are really hesitant to throw punches and get into a fight, so to protect their honour, they get into a duel and start verbally abusing each other until one of them gives up or alights at a station. The other fellow is then the clear winner and begins ranting about his karate skills (relieved that it didn't end up as fight club). But occasionally, you do get catfights which keep the whole compartment entertained for a good 15-20 minutes. Last week, a fight broke out at Kurla because one fellow accidentally poked the other in the face while boarding. I found that particularly funny becuase Kurla reminds me of stampeding cattle and there's no way you can get in the train doing gentlemangiri. The fight calmed down, but not before one guy slapped the other in the face. After 10 minutes of calm silence, the other guy realized that he had been slapped, so he jerked his head, gave a loud hysteric war cry and charged like an angry bull. He was restrained by the others, but still kept shouting at the top of his lungs and finally, the Railway Police had to intervene to sort it out. Now that's definitely better than reality TV.

Nowadays, I occasionally jump out of a moving train without fracturing my body parts. Travelling by the 'Mumbai local'…it's fast, it's fun and highly addictive, once you get used to the brazen madness.

More posts

• Space Beer - January 5th, 2010
• Coke and Mentos - October 29th, 2009
• Career choices - July 7th, 2009

Trackback URL