Mumbai ... a city with the usual hustle bustle .... busy life, an organism that lives through the night and swells through the day without a fraction of rest ... its system tuned to be a living cell that lives and lives and till eternity, of whom I am proudly a part of.... thriving within its ecstatic lifestyle, with mixed emotions a cosmopolitan city with people and ambience filled with a linkage of religion, language, caste, classes and masses of people... but every aspect of all the above seem to woven into a single chain of the Queen’s Necklace......
Mumbai is famous for a number of things... but the one thing that is overlooked when mentioning about Mumbai is its Local trains.... since I joined my Professional college I have been gradually engulfed into this network of lifestyle in the locals here..... the most intriguing aspect about the locals here is that a train which is designed to take a specific load of people actually carries about 50, 000 people everyday to and fro from the far interiors like Ambarnath, Kasara, Karjat, Vasai to the heart of the city where the major chunk of commercial offices breed within Masjid, Grant Road, CST, Churchgate....
Mumbai’s local train service is divided into three categories... Central railways, Western railways and The Harbor Line.....the central railways are the most used and heavily crowded as they have a major population coming from the outskirts like Ambarnath, Kasar, Titwala... and moreover even most of the outstation trains are oriented on the same tracks, most of which go down south and a few up north and even northeast.... the Western line brings equal amount of crowd from all over the suburbs and vomits them at Churchgate.... even a few outstation trains have access through these tracks especially the very famous Rajdhani express to Delhi, trains to Gujrat, Rajasthan....the Harbour line caters to the masses plying form Vashi, Panvel areas to CST....
In between this dense network of routes and rails, there has seldom been a mishap of any kind compared to the one’s being heard happening all around the country, except for the accidents caused by people to themselves in inevitable and purely human and cause of their discrepancies.... that proves the efficiency of these electrically motored bodies that carry loads that are far beyond their load bearing capacities but still ply with utmost care and safety...
Its therefore inevitable to proclaim that local trains are the cheapest and safest and fastest mode of travel if one intends to do so living in Mumbai.....
But yes .... now comes the experience factor.... if u are inexperienced and an amateur then u ought to face the consequences.... I don say its always bad... but its fun.... its like learning to walk and run in between giants who push and pull...well, when I dig into my retrospective moments the only differences I can recollect is that, way back I used to get frightened to even climb into one of those., with my mom pushing me and following me into the train and at times it so happened that she used to be left out and screaming on top of her lungs that, I stand at the so called Dadar station and she will be just there within 10 minutes.... now that’s a different aspect about my being brave in such situations at that tender age... hehehehe jokes... but newayz...!!!!!
Now I can only identify a few aspects is that when I used to travel by 1st class, in those lavish, afternoon abandoned, amidst classy females with none who were without a mobile phone, I felt like bliss... a place where ’’please do not put your leg on the seat’’ was found to be so prominent enough to be ignored.... and the police havaldars who were summoned for the protection of the women in the 1st class compartments found solace on the cushioned seats to sit, sometimes lie down and go deep into their deprived slumber..... huh... what a situation.... newayz.... then u have the school kids who take the unwanted privilege to travel in the 1st class to only bring those occasional frowns and scorns on the faces of heavily make up laden maidens off to their high class jobs...n I remember my classmate guyz christen this 1st class compartment to be a video coach, now why so .. u know n I know; n god knows!!!!
Then after I lost my privileges to travel in the 1st class due to reasons unknown to my laziness to fill up the concession form in college... started to travel in the 2nd class.... a completely different world, where here the women show empathy, while there in the 1st class they reflect apathy... during situations when I happen to dangle out of a heavily crowded local.... thats when I realized, even if the women in 2nd class shout and yell on top of their lungs they are more concerned than those traveling in the 1st class with high heels, that if u happened to be under those in between the rush and push its difficult to yell at, coz in such a predicament u don whose heels are hurting you..... So u end up becoming blue till the next station arrives....
The most interesting and irritating features during travel are like, if ur seated especially on the windward side there is a tendency of u being victimized by hundreds that gush in from the major stations asking u, ’’kidhar’’ and I am expected to answer Kurla.... n then they say, ’ seat meine pakda han’. n I sometimes get so irritated that I feel like answering, ’’ last stop’’... n in spite of u conveying the stop and they booking their seat, they will enter the small gap between the seats making it difficult for u urself to elite n thereby as a result of this I normally used to miss my station and then getting down on the next station victimizes me of yet another tragedy of confronting the KALA KAUWA... THE T.C. who is so apprehensive to be watching people elite and instead of checking their tickets are actually interested in personal gains......
Whoever says whatever about this entity umpteen times I am alwayz in favor of local trains, not b’coz of its crowd or the way people are treated once inside or coz of the nuisance of beggars but its only coz in spite of all this there is this feeling of individuality and independence, nobody bothers about anybody, enter and exit with minimal restraints from unavoidable constraints... but its a mode of transport that is cheap and 100% fast coz I have experienced it since the last 5 years continuously everyday being a rigid link between me and my daily life patterns....there may be number of issues regarding the safety in local trains after dark or even in afternoon abandoned 1st class compartments, some things cannot be overlooked but they can also not be solved just by energy wastage from a single average human body, it will depend upon everyone in and around to recognize such problems and so the needful , but unfortunately my words sound like a letter by a commoner in the editors column of a daily news paper.
There may be many who may not comply with my conclusion but still, there are thousands like me in mumbai who rely whole and soul on the locals that are indeed a Blessing in disguise, in situations where u need to reach ur destination and u cant afford to miss the 8:03 fast local even if u know that there is gonna be a 8:05 just following it...
Happy traveling and Enjoy the fun!!!!..