TRAIN-TRIPPING

I kept staring at those heels as they made their dripping way amidst the croaking flock. Half-coated in human excreta, they were glistening in the toaster-like sun. Looking at her android-like eyes though, I wonder what she ate last night (apologies, Nirvana).

Scraps. Her life must be full of them.

Ever since we learnt to trade and barter, we have always needed vultures like her to consume our remains and remnants. We have always needed scavengers of our kind to sustain our well-bred supremacy. However, these by-products- like brethren often have no outlet to dispose off their waste, bodily or otherwise.

 Irony is seldom a two-way street. 

The arresting thing about local trains in Mumbai is that you see life in all its schizophrenic dimensions while you commute. It could be the pony-tailed child, whose parents got off a station ago, searching helplessly for familiarity with her eyes. Or, a bunch of middle-aged women too liberal and loud with their words. Call it serendipity, call it what you want, but your ear phones will be impaired the day your travelling compartment is infested by female members of the glib set. Poodle talk and house-warming discussions end up replacing your Coldplay dose of the day. If you happen to travel by Class II, you will know them by the ear-pinching squeaks of bragging that will inevitably compare everything from cell phones to complexions to husbands and hunger. Unlike others, practice makes them pick up worse topics to ramble about.

Then there are the bread-earning solitary men who find vicarious pleasure in pushing and shoving everyone in their proximity a good 12 miles before their station is due. They thrive on sadism, however tenuous it is. Making a 5-seater bench overflow with seven bodies sweating like muddy pigs; clamming up the doors on your way out and inside - remain their preferred pursuits. They come in all shapes and sizes – the tie-wielders with baby cheeks and minimum scalp hairs, white-haired men with amplified voices and bellies that make you wonder if they have egested anything they have eaten during their prolonged stay on the planet.

The scavengers too have their varieties – from the thinly balding eunuchs who venture one step short of molesting you for a penny or two, to the physically debilitated men crooning and soliciting in the hope of economic salvation. The sub-species that you spot, also depends to a great extent on the time of day you board a train. Mornings are for the deformed and the deprived. Any time between 12 pm and 3 pm, you can safely expect to meet kids of all age and gender denominations willing to do anything from sweeping the floors to plucking your nostrils. Eunuchs and their poseurs thrive as the city hustles to get home in the evenings.

A recent VIP ad helps understand the anarchy of Mumbai trains better. It is a marker for the collateral damage that progress, without a lack of planning, could result in. All those who end up believing that India breeds kaleidoscopic ways of living should board a Thane-bound train at Dadar at 1800 hrs IST on weekdays. Surviving the glut of masses is akin to purging on every wrong route that the nation has plunged into since Independence. Apply Murphy’s Law to the Indian story of development. And you get a CST- Thane local stranded half-way at Kurla for reasons whatsoever.  

Activities that take place at unearthly hours inside bogies, running or stationary, lend further credence to the diagnosis of schizophrenia for local trains. You could witness the male and female flesh following their carnal urgings. You could find the compartment transmogrifying into the dining table. If you were me last night, you would have found human bodies defecating on stainless steel seats that substitute for ceramic basin. Serendipity is bigger than you think. Doesn’t matter if you hated the John Cusack flick of the same name.