When you live in Mumbai suburbs, conversations about the local train is bound to happen. This post is about what I learned from my five year mumbai local travel.
Years back I met an old man at Dadar station waiting for a train, he asked me a question which I couldn’t answer, “How many years do you wish to live?” It was random, I was standing beside him, both of us awaiting the train when he turns to me and asks the question. I look at him bewildered. The train arrives, he smiles and walk towards it. He perhaps asked me so looking at my weak health or me being on phone the full 10 mins we stood beside each other, I am not sure.
I am used to eating in train. A year ago when I was eating breakfast, I had a bit and was keeping my tiffin, when an aunty beside me who was dug in her phone all this while turned to me and said “finish it” I looked at her, smiled and offered her “you finish it” came her reply. I finished my breakfast for the first time in a while, that day.
Both these incidents were random but spoke volumes to me and hence close to my heart. Though, everything about the local train is not a feel good experience. There is a clasist feel present where in everybody in first class coach judge people by clothes and looks and fight if they feel that a person belongs to second class coach.
The Mumbai Local did teach me balance, practically balancing on one foot and in life too. Giving an elderly person seat, providing a helping hand to a stranger, helping someone with basic needs like water, helping a pregnant lady etc, these small acts of humanity occur in the same space where as I said above people don’t behave properly to people of lower work status or who seem too different than us. There has been a balance of good and bad experiences on the train.
One important thing that Mumbai Local has made me understand is how different men and women are. The way men manage the seats in the train and the way women do it is so strikingly different. Men do not claim seats; they stand and after a while of travelling say half hour, men standing sit. Women claim seats and sit accordingly. I have no clue why both do it so differently but thanks to this I know, men and women think different. People who wish to study gender, kindly note and help me find answer to this.
Something that saddens me though about local train is the behavior of the educated illiterates. Why I call them so? Who are they? The ones who are educated, might have jobs too and still get up from seat to throw trash out of the train door, or out of the train window. Any of you guilty ones reading this, please stop doing it. Anyone know who does this, make them stop, please!
The more I think about my mumbai local journeys, the more I feel blessed of being a Mumbaikar who travels. In a jam packed local train the one hanging at the door envies the one who is a step inside, the one inside envies the one standing comfortably inside, the one standing inside envies the one sitting comfortably and the person sitting wonders how they’ll manage to get down. Isn’t this how we feel about life? Don’t you have that one person you feel whose life is better than yours? We as humans always feel that the other is in a better shape than us, when the truth is, we are at the same game of life, dealing it in our ways and its upon us to make the most of what we have.
Local train journeys have taught me enjoying and respecting the journeys more than destinations. We all wish to reach somewhere, become something, but it’s the journeys that make us what we are.
If you are reading this, I hope you stop, smile and pat yourself for the journey you have lived so far. As John Lennon said it, life is happening to us when we are planning everything else.
