The Hindu Business Line : Mumbai's lifeline

Amidst the tangle of potholed roads and swirling flyovers, Mumbai's rail offers the quickest passage in a mega metropolis, giving the city its primary unit of orientation.

Despite Mumbra's reputation as a communal hotspot, the hill just across the road from its railway station is usually quiet on the upper reaches, save for the odd bunch of rock climbers. Behind the hill, towards Navi Mumbai, is a small lake said to have quenched the thirst of steam locomotives during the early days of Mumbai's railway.

Now, however, it is a forgotten lake, with the electric-run suburban trains no more relying on the hydraulic power it once provided. From atop the hill one sees the fast track speed away, headed to a tunnel, a blob of darkness before the dive into Mumbai's madness, from Thane.

As with most big cities, Mumbai reminds you of a black hole. A view of the complete picture is best availed of from afar. Too close and you are sucked in, the benefit of perspective squeezed out of your mind. Likewise, the city's rail system is best viewed from the sky, when the aircraft enters the approach funnel to Santa Cruz, emerging from clouds atop the Parsik hills, onto a huge grid of concrete buildings and tin roofed slums, split by north-south swathes of bare earth with what appears to be steel worms crawling all over the place.

Welcome to Mumbai's suburban rail network, with its serpentine corridors being veritable urban arteries. Amidst the tangle of potholed roads and swirling flyovers, rail offers the quickest passage in this mega metropolis, giving the city its primary unit of orientation.

Everything from house rent to property value is fuelled by proximity to the train's halts, with the stations teeming with crowds even at night. Crowds, including both commuters and those for whom the train, its path and stations en route, form the sole shelter in the country's biggest city.

The stations and tracks spawn their own life. From CST's cobblers and troops of urchins, to the drug addicts near Raey Road, the bards on the trains, the destitutes peeping out from dark shadows below rail bridges, the fruit sellers squabbling for space in the vendors' compartment, the dabbawala and his long tray packed with executives' lunches, the youngsters who jump expertly onto moving trains, the mentally deranged woman crying her heart out on the train to Belapur to the wide-eyed stranger perplexed by the unforgiving pace of it all.

The perception of this madness is at its most pristine when one is yet a stranger or a mere visitor to the town. It gives you the bloodiest insight on the little value placed on something as precious as human life. Youth taunting death as they stand atop trains dodging overhead electric lines, the occasional spectacle of suicide, a mere minute's stop to extricate from steel someone who got run over, a bleeding human beside the track awaiting help from the nearest station.

Consider this: 1,818 people died on Central Railway alone in 2002. Till June this year this mammoth steel "worm" had claimed the lives of 706 people and injured another 635.

The network stops for none, though its momentum can be jammed during a bandh or a bomb blast that directly targets it. Not for long though. In what appears to be the flash of the eye, both the city and its gigantic suburban rail network hurtle back to normalcy. A momentum, itself a prisoner of Mumbai's peculiar geography, gives this network an importance of its own... with lakhs of commuters rattling on in the trains at high speed in a steel age version of The Matrix.

Mumbaikars still remember the commuter riots of 1995, for no reason except that their travel schedules were disturbed. Conversely, when the city's northern suburbs went without water, residents took the quickest route to redressal by blocking local trains.

And yet these speeding trains' relentless march is not without its interesting or poignant moments. They contain hundreds of people lost in the magic of the written word... be it a book, magazine or a newspaper. Others grab their quota of 40 winks and yet others seem to stare out of the window at nothing... their eyes almost blank, after a stressful day at work. But against these quiet commuters are also those who come alive in a game of cards, just banter or by singing bhajans.

There is any number of stories, some of them legendary, about kind gestures made to people who are nothing more than co-travellers. Such as the note given to a weeping journalist, which consoled her that trying one's best and not being recognised on the job, is, but a part of life.

Or the innumerable occasions when amidst the relentless onslaught of the monsoon, slum dwellers, who live beside the tracks, come spontaneously forward to offer ladders to allow marooned passengers to disembark from stranded trains. Or, the time that the mega-tonne iron network was stopped in its tracks by a unique Mumbai phenomenon — that day of deluge on land and high tide at sea. Hard to believe, but this iron creature of pugnacious looks and peeling paint is actually fragile, belching smoke during a mechanical break-down. You, its occupant, then get out, shake your head at its pitiable plight and hop on to the next train. It is after all, the only way home for most Mumbaikars.

But the Mumbai suburban trains' shortcomings are few and far between. What cannot be denied is that they are islands of relief in a commuting life otherwise choked by jam-packed road travel, which at peak-hour rush brings to life the real meaning of the phrase `packed like sardines'.

Did you know that Mumbai's suburban rail network is among the world's biggest and busiest, ferrying at least six million people everyday on almost 2,200 train services? It stops for a few hours at night, but otherwise maintains a rigorous round-the-clock schedule over 350 km of suburban track, a train roughly every five minutes on the Central Railway's segment and one every three minutes on the Western Railway route.

So relentless is the flow of the Mumbai train that newcomers to the city are prone to struggle with the commuting rule book. One's first peak hour-trip to Bandra may end in Andheri and that to Andheri at Borivili, particularly if the train boarded was the infamous fast to Virar. In due course, you pick up onboard rules, prepare for a Borivili exit from Andheri itself and learn that in order to enter or exit a compartment, all you have to do is join the right human tide. Fighting the wrong one hurts both body and soul, as you will find at your peril!

Very soon, the rules of this network and the concrete jungle it traverses, become your bible. But the black hole's pull does not end there. They say, space-time curves near and beyond its lip. It is often said that in Mumbai time stays, the city stays, but what withers away and becomes a pulp, is you yourself. Literally so, at peak hours a 12-car rake meant to carry 2,200 passengers ends up with 4,500 on board. In this melee, anything remotely linked to individuality or ego gets firmly crushed. A great leveller, it drives home the city's reality in a stiff dose of sweat, breath, grime and noise. And when it becomes a routine, holidays from Mumbai's whirlwind pace gradually turn difficult, as you spend days just easing the metro's clamour out from your head.

Picture by Paul Noronha

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