Mumbai local trains can make a man out of you!!! Not that you will lose your precious cherry. That will be awkward, messy and invite the ridicule of many. It will make you a man by getting you a black eye and a few battle scars on your face. It gives you lessons on aggression, discipline, basic recklessness, advanced foul language, impeccable punctuality and an unhealthy disregard of stench.
This is how the story of my first ride on a Mumbai train goes. Two of my friends and me hop on a train first class. We had bought tickets which are worth 9 bucks each thinking those were first class tickets (FYI, First class tickets are worth 40 bucks each). As our luck would go, the ticket checker also got on the train and we were his first meal of the day. On our first ever ride we ended up paying a thousand bucks as fine.
After I got myself transferred to Mumbai I got the true experience of a Mumbai train. I generally take a train from Vikroli station to Dadar where I take another train to reach my destination. So one day I end up taking a train whose last stop was Dadar itself. When we were about to approach the station I head towards the exit and stand by it acting like a ‘true Mumbaikar’. I didn’t even bother to notice that the other people had suddenly huddled near the other end. I also didn’t bother to notice that the platform was unusually crowded with people waiting to dash into the train. What happened next will be easier for you to visualize if you have seen this common scene from every zombie movies possible. Here it is,
There are innumerable zombies (People getting on the train) trying to barge through a narrow door to grab the hero (me) and the exhausted and disgusted hero (still me) is trying get out of their clutches. While the heroine (other fellow passengers waiting to get down) just smile at the hero’s foolishness.
Trust me, it is that way. Not that I couldn’t have avoided it like other passengers of the train who safely huddled in the other end, made their way out after the carnage has subsided. But then it is a part of the learning process.
It is definitely a funny sight when you see these people getting on a train. Of course you have to be anywhere but not on the train to enjoy the sight. Sometimes it gets so crowded that while a man is somehow standing by the door holding a pole, another man will stand behind him holding his waist with toes barely on the door’s edge. After sometime hanging by the door becomes such a habit that even if the train is empty with places to sit all around the only man on the train will stand by the door.
Now days, even I get off from a moving train just before the mob barges in. It does save me a whole lot of time and I also have an actual first class ticket now.
