The authorities have recently decided to shift my
workplace to Mumbai, a city significantly bigger than Navi Mumbai. This obviously
added to my glamour quotient, for I travel to what Mumbaikars refer to as Town:
in other words, I am part of the crème de la crème of the office-goers in this
city that seems to remain alive round the clock and calendar.
But.
This affected me in two ways. First, I had got
attached to my previous office. If you do not get why this bothered me, think
of it this way: how will you react if you suddenly find out that Arsalan — the
greatest of all pilgrimages in the history of mankind — has suddenly been
serving biryani on bright blue plates? They will still serve the same manna
from heaven, but will it taste the same during your first few trips?
Of course, I have a new office to get attached to and
attach files to emails from. This pun would have thrived if I carried an
attaché case to work, but you cannot get a touch of everything in life, can
you?
The other aspect
is more significant: I have to travel to work.
This may not
sound very threatening for the uninitiated. I know people for whom travel is
biryani. There exist people who travel every day to work and take leave to
travel to random destinations and return from travel to travel to work every
day again and derive happiness out of the entire process.
Yes, there are
people like that.
I am not one of
them. I used to walk fifteen minutes to work.
Walk. Not
fifteen minutes in a vehicle of any sort. Walk.
That has changed.
My biryani is no longer cardamom-free. And I cannot guarantee that this will be
my last mention of biryani.
Obviously I will
have to shift base, but that will take time. As for the interim period, I have
to travel.
And it has to be
by train. If I take the road — especially in monsoon, that selfie-inducing
obnoxious time of the year — I will probably develop a bedsore of sorts.
No, it has to be
by train. That bit I figured out after a day and a half of taking the road.
***
I know the tense
is not consistent here. Blame it on the train journeys.
Note: When I say ‘tense’ I mean that past-present-future
thing, not the state of mind you develop when the Arsalan angel tells you they
will have to check whether there is mutton in the kitchen).
***
Where was I? Ah,
Mumbai local trains. I am no stranger to them. They are powerful,
authoritative, and omnipresent. I am aware of the advantages — speed,
consistency, and availability, and more. They are the heart of the city, and
more. Maybe they are even the lungs and kidneys and pancreas of the city as
well.
However, the
train also comes with a massive, humongous drawback: they are incredibly
crowded during office hours.
How crowded?
I used to think
Sealdah is crowded. It is. I have let trains pass Sealdah, casting futile, respectful
glances, maintaining a safe, reasonable distance. No, I would never have
managed to permeate that phalanx.
It is different
in Dadar. My first attempt involved buying a ticket, going up the footbridge,
and casting a futile, respectful glance at the platform, maintaining a
safe, reasonable distance. I took a taxi that day and reached probably the next
month.
That was what I was up against.
Mumbai Suburban
Railways have three main lines. The first two are called Western (it is in the
west) and Central (just east of Western). One may expect the third, the
easternmost to be named Eastern. But the City That Never Sleeps decided —
perhaps on one of those sleepless nights of hers — that Harbour Line would be a
more appropriate name.
I live in
Sanpada. My nearest station is Vashi. There are people in Vashi whose nearest
station is Sanpada. This makes perfect sense in this part of the world, so my
opinion is as relevant as that humble bowl of raita next to biryani.
Vashi is on the
Harbour Line. The station nearest my office is Currey Road, on Central Line; it
is also approachable from Lower Parel, which is on Western Line.
In other words,
I was doomed.
If you look at
the map, you will notice that the Harbour and Central lines meet at Kurla, and
later at Sandhurst Road, Masjid, and CSMT, as CST is called these days. The M stands for
Maharaj. The full name reads Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus.
Indeed, that literally
translates to Emperor Shivaji Emperor Terminus. Before you say something on
redundant words, you remember the irrelevance of the raita, don’t you?
Where was I? Ah,
Kurla — the station that caters to approximately the population of New Zealand at
any given point of time in office hours. If the entire population on Kurla
Station at 9 AM decides to yell in unison, they will probably produce enough
energy to create an earthquake in Mars.
But I had to
change trains at Kurla. There was no other option.
The first bit
was easy. Since Vashi is one of those ‘marquee’ stations, trains often start
from Vashi. This means that on a good day you may be able to travel in
first-class with both your legs inside the train. Fine, I exaggerated a bit,
but you get the gist.
Unfortunately,
trains do not start at Kurla. They pass through Kurla. And when
they halt at Kurla, 43,224 people get off and are immediately replaced by
another 72,163. Of course, these are merely eye-estimates and may have been off
by a couple of digits or so…
***
Okay.
So there I was, armed
with a first-class monthly ticket, an umbrella, and a paunch (among other
accessories).
I had to brave
what Mumbaikars have been braving since time immortal: change train at Kurla in
office hours.
The first phase
went without much hassle. Twenty minutes of standing is about half of what I used
to do in physical education classes in school — albeit without the cell-phone
trilling provokingly in my pocket.
Then came Kurla.
Or rather, then came Abhishek, if you look at things from Kurla’s perspective.
One has to cross
over to another platform to change trains at Kurla. There is a footbridge for
that. I was foolish enough to assume it would be a cakewalk.
As things turned
out, I did not cross over to the other platform. I did not need to. An ocean of
humanity hurled me up the ramp. A second one shoved me towards the staircases
that led to the other platform. For once I thought I would trip on my way down,
but there was too much humanity around me to lose balance.
I was there before I could figure out exactly what was going on. All I had to do was turn twice.
I waded through
people to reach the section designated for first-class passengers. In case you
are not aware of what to look for, it is a metal pillar painted in yellow and
red to match the MCC tie, blazer, and hat.
Then I prepared
myself for the war, the real showdown, my Valhalla.
***
My ears were the
first organs to sense the arrival. The sound was unmistakable.
Unfortunately,
mine were not the only ones: 72,163 other pairs also picked up the sound.
They were on the
edge of the platform before my ears could transmit the message to my brain. I
had lost the first battle.
There was no way
I could make it to the compartment. My only chance was the platform-change
drill, but in this case everyone was in front of me.
The train left
without me.
But I did not
leave without a train. True, I had lost the first battle. But I had also
learned a lesson, a very, very crucial one: Mumbai office-goers thrive on
aggression, speed, fitness, and dexterity, none of which, unfortunately, is a part
of my armoury.
So I decided to
take time out.
What were my
strengths? How could I put them to use to outdo these commuters and put at
least one foot on the compartment?
Would puns do
the trick? They came to me, one by one. I kept telling me that I could train
myself to compartmentalise my flow of thoughts. I could not afford
to let my resolution to be derailed. I needed to establish a platform
in this realm of commuters.
No, no, no: it
would not work. It seemed extremely unlikely that people would make way for me
if I keep uttering these one by one.
There had to be
a Plan B.
Could it be
cricket history? Would they peacefully let me board the train if I lectured
them on Lord Frederick Beauclerk?
No.
What about Plan
C? What else was I good at?
For someone who
never went to a typing school, I can type reasonably fast. Unfortunately, I use
a desktop at work and was not carrying a laptop, hence… hey, what if one of
them carried a laptop? What about a typewriter?
No, no, no.
Douglas Adams?
Woody Allen? The Ray family? Asterix? What would it be? Map-pointing? Giuoco
Piano? What? Would wolf-whistling work? What about touching the tip of my nose
with my tongue?
I moved on from
Plan D to E to F and beyond. Panic struck when I moved past Plan U — what if I
ran out of letters?
Another train, complete
with twelve compartments and 72,163 passengers, had passed by in the interim
period.
Then came that
Eureka moment that had once made Forbes launch into the Indian market with an
assortment of vacuum cleaners and water purifiers over a decade back.
At about a
quintal, I weigh about twice the average Mumbaikar. My mind raced. What was it
they had taught me? Momentum was mass times velocity, was it not? If the
Mumbaikar moved at twice my pace, I could counter him with twice his mass.
And I had twice
his mass. And some velocity, which would actually put me at an
advantage.
And when it
comes to mass (I am not discussing churches here), dexterity does not matter. No,
it does not. And I it had dawned upon me — exactly how to make mass count over
dexterity.
So I prepared
myself. How to go about it? Use my knee? Elbow? No. Go headlong. Think of
yourself as a bull, a buffalo, a grotesque, ghastly minotaur, albeit a hornless
one.
I knew they
would go past me the moment they would hear the train arrive.
They did exactly
that.
I smiled. I knew
what I was going to do.
They scrambled
for the door. I ambled for it.
Then, as an entire
garrison attempted to squeeze itself into one gate, I acted.
I took a couple
of steps and pushed myself, almost headfirst, into the back of the frailest
individual I found.
He stood no
chance. My mass, combined with my more-than-zero velocity, propelled myself
inside the compartment. The man enjoyed the collateral benefit of being thrust
into the compartment as an inseparable entity, but that did not matter.
I was there. Physics
had got me there. Mechanics had got me there. Decades of red meat, oil, carbohydrates,
and sugar had got me there. Utter disdain for physical exercise had got me
there.
I had finally
found my biryani.
***
Hang on, is it Monday
train day already?
