Every time I travel, from Pune to Mumbai, it is a two hour longer journey than the journey from Mumbai to Pune. In order to get a sitting place in the general compartment, one has to be their at least two hours in advance, as the train that I travel by, is already on the station. So the five and a half hour journey, becomes a seven and half hour ordeal.
Sitting in the stationary train, I observed that the water dispensing booth, boasting of rupees five per liter of chilled drinking water, is never in order. I watch as potential customers come to the booth and are sent off because 'electricity is off'. The usual vendors keep walking through the bogie and the platform, selling chikki, timepass fryums, shelled groundnuts, boiled whole groundnuts, hot vada pau, adrak walli chai, thanda pani and normal pani, shengdana laadu, garam samosa... The aroma of the chillies with the vada pau permeates the air and arouses the appetitie. It is a wonder that these vendors achieve sales by carrying around their heavy wares and manage to survive. It seems like a lot of hard work for petty earnings. And they are quite helpful too. If a fan is not turning, on request anyone of the male vendors will lean up and give the fan a push, if a drunkard is sitting in the ladies' compartment, on request, the male vendors will shoo him off, or push open a window that is too stubborn to be pushed up by the lady passengers. They even dispense currency change, if any passenger requests. Most of the female vendors, carry a little hanging pouch around their waist for the cash and a mobile appears from time to time from the inners of their upper garment. They check the time or converse with some family member.
The beggars' mafia and the drunkards that infest the platform and the train are the unwanted elements. After the train moves on, it is the lack of garbage disposable facilities that bugs me. Left, right and centre, all the disposable paper cups, newspapers soiled with oily vadas and random biscuit wrappers, are blatantly thrown out of the windows of the moving train, with no qualms about abusing the greenery of the western ghats.
As the train journey progresses, more and more people enter and crowd the limited space. A four seat bench soon has six ladies trying to fit in, and the spaces between the seats and the aisle is taken over by desperate travelers, settling down onto the floor. Young children are offered laps of accommodating lady passengers. As I made notes of these observations. the lady seated opposite me asked me what my profession was, and she confided that she was a teacher too. In fact, she had been promoted to be the co-ordinator of the pre-primary section at her school, at the Rajasthani Sabha. I soon found out that, they take parents and students together, when they go for a picnic or a field trip. Another lady, travelling with her three year old, was also a teacher for the hearing and verbally disabled children at the 'Save the Children' at BKC. She confided that the American School which is in their neighborhood, was quite helpful but not the Dirubhai Ambani School, which is also their neighbour. She also commented on the students who are from a lower middle class background, and so many of the students are siblings because there is no one to guide the parents about genetically passed on defects. She said that most were progeny of close relatives inter marrying, which a particular community was prone to.
As we chatted and shared confidences, tempers were flaring among co-passengers just behind our seat. This happens routinely. Abuses are hurled, and the scene lends some 'timepass' for the other women. A senior citizen travelling with her two teenage grand-daughters, told us that she had just visited her maternal village of Khedgao and was returning to her vegetable vending job at Sakinaka.
She had changed two trains and was travelling since eight a.m. The girl reading 'The Girl Who Knew Too Much', was going back to her college on the eighteenth and nineteenth floors of the Stock Exchange building at Fort. She was studying a two years Masters in Global Finance Marketing. I was very surprised to know that there is a college in the stock exchange building. The other lady confided that she had been an HR executive and had been with Atkins in Bangalore for five years, before taking a break to be with her baby in Lonavla. She said that she had studied at Lonavla at the sprawling Sinhagad college campus there. She had been to Pune for Ganpati darshan. The last lady in our group, said that she lived with her husband and son at Talegaon, because the son was pursuing his medical degree at a college here, and she often visited Pune for shopping.
As the train approached Lonavla, a water park adjacent to the tracks came into view, and was abandoned as always. A vendor with a tokri full of small packets of sweets got in, and her sales pitch could shame any Television jingle. She sang quite melodiously, 'adrak chee golee ghyaa, khaasee khoklah hoee jhatpath moklaah'.
After the train passes Khandala, the beautiful hills and valleys are as wonderful as always. The far off hills have tiny streams of waterfalls leaping down into the deep valleys, they resemble the long white locks of an older Rapunzel. Closer mountains that had waterfalls when it was raining heavily, are now not visible, but the sculpture that the force of water falling down has formed, due to erosion, is now visible, an intricate pattern where the soft rocks have worn off, leaving the harder rocks, along the vertical rock faces.
As I watch the hills and valleys, the train passes through tunnels, the wheels making screeching protests that are heightened within the confines of each tunnel, making one break into goose bumps at the unearthly sounds. Then I watch the rail tracks, undulating gracefully as the train passes over the connecting portions. It seems as though someone is doodling along the path with the rail tracks.
The train approaches Ulhasnagar, which is as filthy as ever. What a shame to see the littered Ulhas river and its plastic and cloth rags, clogging the banks. But the local MLAs have the audacity to display large posters, wishing the public a 'happy ganeshostav' with the ganpati picture in a tiny corner and the MLA's face featured larger than life. Numerous such posters were visible along the next few stations. Public buses also sported similar advertisements. As Dadar approached, the vendors were selling headphones, books for children and toys. As the train stopped at CST, the loud jingle of 'Badshah masala' welcomed all those alighting.
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