If you are filthy rich, please stop reading. This article is not for you. You’ll say it’s a piece of shit. Simply because you’ll never understand it. Simply because you never felt it. Travelled by a local train in ’Aamchi Mumbai’? No, na? Still reading it? Thanks.
Travelling by a local train is the first thing that majority of my city fellas and I do after our morning chores.
Reach the station, and if we have a season pass or a coupon, good for us! Else we behold the long queues at the ticketing counter, and experience our heart sink. And then experience our heart flutter, for actually these queues move quick! A wacko start? Lots more lies in store!
Reach the platform, and we see a facility which no other railway in the world can provide - automatic entry and automatic exit.
First of course, the automatic entry. We don’t get worked up when an overpacked train arrives. Cool, aren’t we? Just stand in front of one of the doorways, and we are whisked inside before we say ’Wow’.
There’s a bit of risk in the very beginning when we’re hanging out. Soon, we feel safe when we see passengers perched up on the roof! Does anything come without an element of risk?
Once inside the coach, we’re provided with a host of options. After sometime of hanging out, if we’re still alive (just joking!), a musician emerges from nowhere and plays such melodious tunes, that we will feel like jumping straight out of the train.
But we use the easier way out and tip him a coin instead!
Okay, now tell me when did you play musical chairs last? Nostalgic memories of this game evolve, and we see and most probably end up playing it ourself! Every 90 seconds flat, people dash to see who gets his posterior on the wooden plank first!
Having got a seat, sorry, wooden plank, before we’ve looked up to read the tantrik babas and sex clinics blatantly advertising their services, we feel someone drooping on your shoulder! Unfortunately not a babe (if we are a guy) or a hunk (if we are a gal).Time to pull out our Deo, it’s a fast asleep stinker! Tsk, Tsk!
Feeling hot. Not ’that’ hot! How can we experience ’that’ in a sardines can? Most fans don’t work. The rest vibrate more than they cool.
A natural reaction. We look up to see the passengers standing in front of the wooden plank where our bottom is. Wish we hadn’t. We are greeted by a shower, courtesy the toil-n-labour sweat of the passenger between our legs!
Haven’t we nearly reached? Why should we get paranoid that how we’ll manage to alight. What’s the damn auto exit for? It will take care of us, throwing us out onto the platform!
We check our wallet, watch, earrings, necklace and mobile. If all has held, we say ’cheese’! If not, we only curse our luck!
The return journey is of course an action replay.
We pick up our favourite eveninger and the headlines read ’Stone hurled at a 25 year old in a running train: Loses eyesight’!
Tomorrow is NOT another day! Do those who cannot afford cars, taxis and rickshaws have a choice? BEST? Forget it! Who wants to spend double amount of time everyday?
And hey, ’crorepatis’! Please don’t sympathise with us. WE WILL LIVE. After all, ’jeena isika naam hai!’
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