I Age, I Change

So I have missed another day in my Life 365 Marathon...And as usual I have reasons too. But who cares? Now, but there is another thing I am not sure about. I'm not sure if I will catalogue this post under Life in the City - My Series on Mumbai. :) Perhaps I should, perhaps you can tell me once you get to the last full stop of this post? 

Yesterday, I had to go to Fort for a meeting. For all those non-Mumbaikars, Fort is that part of the South Mumbai that could make a time-travelling English tourist feel vague strains of familiarity. The buildings are largely the way the British made and left it. If you are a tad imaginative, you can piece together how the area around Flora Fountain, now locally known as the Hutatma Chowk (for a martyrs' monument that has come up next to it), would have looked during its days of glory. Like everything else, most buildings have gone to seed, but businesses, big and small continue to operate out of it. The lanes are narrow, much like the cobblestoned paths of London. The cobblestones are long gone to be replaced by the tarred Indian roads, however, the leafy tree lined avenues would have been witnesses of the centuries past.

I rarely take a taxi once I get down at the Churchgate station - that is by the way, the last stop on the Western Line of the Mumbai local train network. Just as the train is pulling into the Churchgate station, my heart always skips a beat. This is a part of Mumbai that has changed the least in the twelve years that I have known it. Hmmm, on second thoughts, there is little that can afford to be changed.

The flats in these regions are humongous by Mumbai standards and pretty well-maintained from the inside. Incidentally, I have never understood how Mumbaikars can be house-proud but not necessarily building proud. So you could see several dilapidated looking buildings desperately needing a coat of paint, with residents that read like a Who's Who list. Step inside their parlour and you wonder if you fell through a hole like Alice of the Wonderland fame.

There's an old world charm about everything here, the Jehangir Art Gallery, the Kala Ghoda area, the Sassoon library and the crumbling Old Watson's Hotel - said to be the oldest surviving cast-iron building. It has collapsed a couple of times in the recent past, but then Indian ingenuity keeps the building in the survivor's list. Walk farther down and there are the majestic buildings of the Bombay High Court and the University of Mumbai. The hawkers that have encroached the walkways of most of the Victorian era heritage buildings are like a rude-jolt back into modern day reality - reality that the core of South Mumbai might look better preserved than its more recent suburbian offshoots, but a severe toll has been wrought by migration and population explosion on the leafy boulevards of the city.

Now I wonder if it is only the city and its infrastructure that appears crumbling and peeling with age. The train I took to go to the city would easily be over three decades old. There are newer swankier ones that ply on the same line, but these older ones, with the rusty springs poking uncomfortably out of the worn out seat cushions still continue to be in service. The stations that serve seas of humanity every day show evidence of massive wear and tear. In Andheri and Jogeshwari - two stations I use most, I know a few steps that I need to be careful on. If I keep place a foot wrong on those worn out steps, I could very well be slipping down the whole set of stairs uncomfortably. Age and lack of maintenance - the question is when do you shut down the station to undertake maintenance? If the Andheri station is shut off for renovation, there would be bigger riots - people would rather continue using crumbling infrastructure than suffer the inconvenience of taking a longer route to the next station!

As I walk towards the building where my meeting is scheduled, one final thought makes me chuckle so hard that I'm sure several people did turn around to check for the source of that strange noise. I have walked these very streets as a rookie in Mumbai. Then the heat did not bother me as much and travelling light was the mantra - the insouciance and irreverance you may say of the young and free-spirited. This time however, the thought of taking myself to Fort alone, required a lot of enforced mental conditioning. I had to convince myself of the importance of the meeting and the need to be there personally than get it done on skype! Once convinced, my preparations to leave began at about 12 and by the time I'd left home, in my bag, was a bottle of water, a small box of munches (just in case I got hungry on the train), an umbrella for the trek from Churchgate station to Fort and a book to ensure I get in some constructive reading done during the one-hour journey!

I was never this well-planned, I was impulsive, fun and all-over-the-place. I feel like a peeling Mumbai now...I age and I guess I change too!!

Life in the City - Another Day, Another journey

Chapter 3 - Travel - A Way of Life  
Have you ever lived in a city that has a local train system? If you have, you would have witnessed what I write. If you haven't, close your eyes and imagine it. 

Every morning, during what Mumbaikars refer to as peak-time, there is a great spectacle to be witnessed. For this, you need to identify a busy local station - say Andheri. Then you hunt for the foot over-bridge that ferries thousands ( and this I say conservatively) across the railway lines that bisect Mumabi into East and West. On either sides are railings that allow you to crane your neck to check whether you can still manage to scramble on to the 8.35 Churchgate slow or the 8.40 Virar fast with just seconds to spare before it pulls out of the platform. Find a comfortable spot, where you are least likely to be jostled hard.( Psst, it is kind of impossible to avoid being cursed or rudely glared at for appearing immovable when the whole over-bridge seems to be in a permanent state of fluid motion). However,once you have found that sweet spot, wait. It won't be long. Trains move in and out of platforms in Andheri every other minute. When the next train pulls in, hold your breath. 

There is usually a reverent, almost automatic hush that lasts barely a second or two as the local slows down in its approach towards the platform. Ignore those that I shall call as 'Leapers', they who have no patience for the train to come to a halt, but jump out while it is still in motion. 

As the train grinds to a halt, it will appear like a worm freshly trampled upon- its innards, black, impossibly thick and sluggish mass oozing out on to the platform. A bird's eye view is highly recommended. Every day, Mumbai's trains unloads its burden of humanity and you feel you heard the train heaving a sigh of relief...Oh wait, that was you, releasing that breath you'd held in, all this while.


The choke that you feel as you wait to leap on to a train or off it, with a waiting crowd already three-person deep is something most detest...but stay away from it and you long to do it just one more time - for there is a sense of camaraderie even while people compete to sit on the curving edge of a bench-seat which has already seated its maximum of three. And then there's the rare faint smile or nod of recognition to look forward to, though you have never exchanged a word with the Elphinstone lady or Churchgate teacher ( so named because she always gets down at that station).


Those who call Mumbai home spend the better part of their day and therefore in sum total, their lives travelling - to study, to work, to meet friends and family. That's how life in the city becomes a set of repetitive acts, performed with strangers every day, in a manner that leaves you just another black head that formed the thick ooze of humanity on the railway platform. 

In under a minute, that choking platform turns vacant, few stragglers hang around, the black dots dispersed. And from my perch on the foot over-bridge, the wait for the next train begins..I want to witness that sight again, I want to revel in that feeling that I have the leisure to stand and stare while Mumbai breathes around me. 


(Photographs by Gregor Thomeczek, 2011)

Happy Deja Vu - Packed like Sardines!!

Exams!! Can you imagine having to take a 3.5 hour long one after years of writing little more than scrawling your name across a paper or occasionally taking copious notes at a 15 minute press conference? Well, that's the reason for the lull in my 'post'-production - that's a cheap tribute by the way, to my erstwhile specialisation in broadcast journalism and video production!! So now, that my travels through the countryside have wound up, did you think I gave up travelling for good? The snowfall did keep me in Brighton for longer than I thought..and then the exam and submissions... But this week, I went back to London... The visit was prompted by the arrival of a close friend from India...But this visit of mine once again reminded me of the bustling metropolis I left behind.... On a Saturday, try getting into a tube on any line of the London Underground. If you want to grind out your misery, try the Northern Line - (psst...it's said to be the oldest line on the map, and does it act out its age or what!!). Well, it's most often truncated in fits and bursts between weird and funny sounding stations like Angel and Mornington Crescent - and for those who have to make a journey there, guess what the London Rail people say under their breath of course as they make repeated announcements over the public announcement system " Well tough luck, try the bus stops, they are quite close to the exits of the station. You will get to your destination - eventually.." I had to make my way to Old Street from Victoria...two different lines...and trying to move from one to the other is like trying to march to two different tunes alternately... Hmm...for those who don't know London it's kind of difficult to understand what I mean...See from Victoria which is on Victoria line, you need to swap at some point to the Northern Line and if you don't decide your stop right ( Psst.....again...I never get it right automatically!) you might just have to hop out and get on another train, coz the line forks into two and there is no knowing which line you stumbled into...they all meet up at some station though!! Ok, here's a map just to give you an idea...Mind you, the intention is not to confuse you, so just look at the different colours..that's how many lines can be possibly hoped...Mumbaikars aren't you thankful there are just three lines to worry about in our constantly abused but misused system??? So some back-ing and fro-thing ( well, literally so that I'm not accused of resorting to Indian stretchable time!) I make it.... Now the truth is I tried to find an Indian equivalent...say like having to go to Charni Road in Mumbai from maybe Vashi in Navi Mumbai...Hop lines and all that jazz?? But frankly, I'd do the London tubes...it's better explained and the surge of humanity is more polite and does not shove...though the surge of humanity on a Saturday evening is no less than Mumbai peak time.. And considering that I'm just of proud Indian-standard height which is nothing to write home about...a measly 5 feet 3 struggling inches, here I was standing in the crook of someone's armpit looking through the enlarged nasal passage of yet another one, trying to rescue my butt from something poking out of the 'lady behind me's shopping bag....and that's when it hit me....Deja Vu!!!! How many times have I done this merging my self into the faceless population on a train journey in Mumbai?? Well, lost count...and here was my count register in the United Kingdom beginning with a similar experience...With one big difference...In India, I can suss out train stations with my eyes closed...gut instinct and then the distinct smell of different localities - like the smell of glucose biscuits as you cross towards Vile Parle and the distinct 'only Kurla muck special' on Central Line...But here in London, I crane to catch a glimpse of the little flashing messages of which stations approach, even as my ears try to pick out the announcements over the din... The new Mumbai local trains have installed an audio-visual system for announcing stops...I never appreciated it then...I do now...Miss the train journey from Andheri to Lower Parel...and the occasional traipse through South Mumbai to Nariman Point... How many would walk out of an extremely crowded train after some difficulty wriggling out at the stop before the doors closed? I'm thinking not many British...but one Indian was... Made me feel just at home.....London tubes have begun giving me happy Deja Vus....especially when you travel packed like Sardines...