Season ticket:The Mumbai Local Train: Blog # 62

Season ticket : The Mumbai Local Train

           

            A local train is a world in itself. You will get to meet all sorts of people. It is a vivid cross section of all the demographies of a city.

            To begin with, there is the class divide – First and Second class. People who get in to first class become bonafide snobs. There is a sense of a misplaced entitlement.

        In the peak hours, the compartments will be packed to the rafters and in the middle of that, some people would want to read the newspaper (which includes me J ). They fold the paper in to 1/8th and read it!

     There are those who are perpetual sleepers – sitting, standing, lying down, leaning over others et al. If you take a regular train and if the perpetual sleeper get in a station before you and get off only after you, chances are you wouldn't find that person in the awake state – Ever!

          How can we ignore the famed foot board travelers? They should be given a subsidized ticket. Even if the whole compartment is empty, they will stand only at the outer tip of the foot board.

                The only kinds who are irritating - those who play loud music. That too, in those Chinese cells which give you a lasting headache.

            The IT crowd will be peeling off their touch screens with the headphones firmly plugged in their ears oblivious to whatever is happening around them. The manufacturing crowd will be looking down on them – about 6 or 7 of them together in the same striped shirts with the company’ s logo on the pockets.

            Those belonging to the intelligentsia-who reads a hefty book, replete with all the long looks outside and a pensive appearance to go by!

            With some, dare you make even a second long eye contact they are ready to pounce up on you with their words of wisdom which doesn't stop until you get down!

            Some people decidedly look out of the window, with a vengeance. Come what may, they won’t look inside the train.             

Then there are the college groups who break in to their own song n dance sequences – Gangnam style!

There are seat hunters who watch the seats like a hawk. They will hunt others down if any one even makes the slightest effort to move towards a free seat.

         There will be some hapless new timers who keep on asking their neighbor whether their station has arrived or how far their station is J.

          At the major stations, enter the vendors who can put any Opera singer to shame with their decibel levels.

And all these come with the fine print when you buy a season ticket J.
                                    
                                                                                                                          Arun Babu                                                                                                                       

                                                                                                                                

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