The Urban Lifeline

Local Trains .I will be indebted to them for the rest of my life for carrying me to and fro for the past extremely important five and half years of my life and God knows how many more to come! I believe that using this mode of transport requires you to possess special skills. It is an art which you can master eventually with experience. I still vividly remember the day when I travelled in a crowded train with my mother and brother for the first time and how petrified I was by just looking at people around me on the station and in the train, endless ,limitless, incalculable! Thanks to my mother who successfully dragged me out of the train when my legs were on the platform and my head still somewhere inside just when the train was about to start again! The experience was quite traumatic but after five and half years I have a different take, a fresh perspective about this wonder. 

 Trains can be fun. Especially in the second class shopping becomes easier, it is entertainment coupled with wide range of products that you can come across under one roof. Hairclips, ear-rings, rings, cosmetics, nail-paints ,food-items , folders, pouches, purses, posters, safety pins, dress materials, fruits, vegetables, chocolates, thread and needle, almost all utility items at the cheapest rates ever! If not anything else atleast your eyes remain occupied most of the time judging what is better and wondering about the other person’s choice. I must admit that some of these sellers are superlatively talented and often sound rhetoric! I am absolutely amazed at the speed at which they can talk and repeat it unceasingly! Beggars use trains as a way of making livelihood. Some of the eunuchs are dressed in the most fashionable and trendy way surprise you by speaking in English. If you shell out some money impressed by the entertainment that they provide, they bless you with the most strange words .The most recent one that I got was, “hailaa!!!pehli baar kisi college ki ladki ne itna diya. Bhagwan tujhe pass kare aur tujhe salman jaisa koi accha chikna pati mile (then you wonder if you really did the right thing!!!!) 

 Train travel teaches you a lot of things. Couple of them would be : 

 1] Patience: Even if someone is standing on your leg, someone else is pulling your hair, your bag is in some entirely different direction, you are gasping for breath, fighting with the heat, the train has stopped in between and nothing other than eyelids can move, my friend there is nothing you can do about it but be “PATIENT” and as calm as you can be in that situation! 

 2] Co-operation : It is the key to your existence and survival in the train if you want to get down at the desired station because it is not you but the people around you who decide your fate, you don’t have to do much, just move with the crowd, before you know it you are inside or outside the train. Nine or twelve coaches carry such a mixed breed of people with different temperaments and from different strata and sections of society. 

A day of travel without a single argument is rare. Travelling in the peak hours is often frustrating. Abuses hurled at each other of different types and languages according to the class of the coach are omnipresent in the air around the train. People manage to read, eat, sleep(snore with their mouth open amongst the hustle and bustle), talk, knit sweaters, listen to songs. Most of them are aimlessly wondering, some smiling without a reason and ofcourse how can I forget to mention the bhajan groups which with their “chiplya” and “zhanja” sing diligently even if the suras don’t accompany them. You can never feel lonely in a train. It feels as if the whole world is moving with you .

My favorite place in the train is at the door. Standing right at the door, moving in the direction of the train, staring at the never ending tracks, having all over you the wind so wild, so unrestrained, you feel as if you are flying. Monsoons are an icing on the cake when you cut through the rain and droplets touch your face, you feel ecstatic!