9:01 FAST - Part 1 - Living Mumbai 6

“I had to catch the 9:01 fast other wise by boss will kill me today.”

“My boss is on leave so I will probably catch the 10:15 Slow nobody comes before me.”

Mumbaities are obsessed with the above number. The number depicts the time of local trains.

The Mumbai locals and Mumbai BEST buses, the two lifelines of Mumbai. Its amazing that the business, the heart beats, the people are heavily dependent on these two modes of transport. Unlike Delhi, which has huge number of private cars, Mumbai depends on these two means of transport.

The Mumbai locals are an amazing entity. A cut above the rest. They are old, ugly, uncomfortable and still amazingly efficient and actually they serve their purpose very well.

The Mumbai locals cut across the heart of Mumbai. You have the Western line, the harbour line and Central Line. You have thousands of people cramped into small boxes and traveling to and fro from work. I started traveling on local alone when I was out of junior college. I had my college near Grant Road. So it was a long journey. But starting from Borivali was an advantage as Borivali is the starting point for many trains.

The local has its own set of rules. I don’t know about Central or harbour lines but Western line sure did. It was expected that people sitting from Borivali give up their seat at Bandra (That’s half way to Churchgate). The same rule will apply at the opposite direction but the station would be between Bandra and Andheri. The fourth seat has to be occupied. The fourth seat is the only difference between 1st class compartment and 2nd class compartment of the local. 1st class does not have a fourth seat. Actually neither does 2nd class. But the trains are so overcrowded that even if the tip of the ass gets to seat is considered good enough. Then there are those Bhajan groups and rami group, who have the whole 2 seats for themselves (sometimes even four seats).

If you are traveling to Andheri, you have the Andheri train or the worst the borivali train but you never, I repeat never get on a Virar train. Why the hell do you want to get on a Virar train when you want to go to Andheri. Then there’s the rule of getting down before the train stops or else everybody will push you out.

The best part of Mumbai locals are getting in and getting out. It should work on the simple principle that the number of people getting in should be equal to the number of people getting out. It does not happen that way. It’s a miracle that the human body can shrink, fit and is very flexible to occupy every available space in the compartment. In school they told us that liquid takes shape of any container it is kept in. I think they forgot to add the Human body. How could they know? They didn’t have Mumbai locals then.

To be continued……………