78 - ALL IS NOT 'FARE' IN TRAIN TRAVEL

Most train travelers are aware of what a 'platform ticket' is.  One costs rupees ten and about 10 minutes of waiting in a queue.  But,  is it necessary to buy any ticket at all?

Sitting in the general ladies'  compartment of a Pune Mumbai train, I was hassled by a very young beggar, maybe eight years old.  She was moving from one train window to the other, touching and irritating the passengers, begging with a very filthy extended hand.  

In order to get a window seat in a general compartment, one has to be seated in the train, about two hours in advance, and to get any seat, one has to be in the train, at least one hour in advance.   Add to that the ten to fifteen minutes one has to wait in the queue, to buy the ticket.  So, while sitting in the train, waiting for it to depart,  the passengers are approached by hawkers selling water, samosas, trinkets, wada pav, chikki, chai, toys etc,  but most of all by beggars in all shapes and sizes and age groups.  A young woman with a tiny baby in her arms, an old man reeking of beedi and booze,  urchins,  male and female, dirty and wearing smelly clothes,  their hair  all disheveled  and matty,  all just begging and making a living on the railway station.  There are gangs of upto ten to twelve women, each with a tiny baby in their arms, and ten to fifteen kids around them.   How do these professional beggars gain access to the railway platforms without any tickets or any railway authority checking their activities?    It is so obvious then that the authorities are hand in glove with these perpetrators and must be getting 'hafta'.   Many of these beggars use the train toilets and render them unfit for anyone else to use later.

When the train reaches Karjat,  the ladies' compartment is taken over by a gang of hawkers, usually a couple, with two to three babies in tow, selling trinkets.   The half naked babies, with snot oozing out of their nose, bedraggled hair, wander around the entire compartment, begging with an extended hand, from any passenger who is eating or drinking.  So they end up with handfuls of popcorn, wada pau, biscuit packets and chocolates.  Then they cry for water, so the women passengers give away their water bottles too.  All this while, the young parents are peddling their ware of cheap earrings and clips.  As the train reaches Dadar station, the empty seats were taken over by the peddlers' dirty kids.  One emptied all the popcorn that someone had given, onto the cushioned seats,  while the other ten month old relieved himself and did potty on the seats.  The mother came reluctantly and used some discarded newspaper to clean the mess.  It was a disgusting experience.  Are the railway authorities unaware of these going-ons?  The last beggar is usually the 'Salman Khan' topless young man, who uses a dirty rag to 'clean' the floor of the compartments, as he extends his hand to beg,  after pretending to 'clean' the floor.

The Indian Railways support these beggars, so keep up the philanthropy,  but be fair without class or creed, and do not penalize those who are 'ticketless' travelers.  And please stop selling the platform tickets, because they are so redundant,  if you just observe the persons that gain access to most railway platforms and trains too.

Sometimes I am so tempted to travel ticketless,  just pretending to hawk trinkets or chikki,  to prove a point to the railway authorities, how predominantly unwanted persons are on trains illegally  and that that is not how they will increase their popularity.

34 - CHATRAPATI SHIVAJI TERMINUS -CST

Mumbai is my 'sasural' and Pune is my 'maher'.  So travel between the two cities is warranted by relationships and circumstances.  The mode of travel can be by train, bus or taxi.  Shivneri bus services are very regular and reliably safe, but I prefer train travel.  And for that I had to go to CST a few days ago.  The beautiful facade of the station is always a pleasure to behold, but what a torture it was to traverse the entire space from the entrance upto the ticket counter and then upto the platform.  The smooth tiles were wet and splippery and I had to walk very very slowly, to avoid falling.

My train arrived after a wait of two whole hours, because I missed the one I had to  board, because of dahi handi traffic snarls, on my way to the station.

Another hour inside the train, and soon the unreserved ladies bogie was overcrowded and crammed.  But it was not too bad, until our train stopped at Dadar and then it was over crammed.  Four persons sharing the seats that are meant for three travellers, others standing between the seats, and yet others sitting in the passage way between seats.

The one visitor that makes the rounds of every train is the well dressed and immaculately made up 'kinnar' or gay man.  Wearing pretty sarees with extremely stylish blouses, these lady-men saunter through the crowds, tapping persons on their heads, heralding their presence with their typical claps and demanding money.  They target the young men, who giggle and donate currency notes happily.  This particular kinnar, had displayed all his booty of cash, very deftly, between the fingers of one hand, while he 'blessed' the commuters with his other hand.

And among all this, the flow of hawkers that kept coming and going a myriad times.  The main commodity was 'paani' thanda paani.  The next was 'chikki' Lonavla chikki, and garam garam vada pav, chai, adrak ki chai, kafee, bournvita, tomato soup, moongfally, gavtee kakdee, omellete pav, cutlet pav.   A very limited choice.   My repeated requests for sugarfree chai were in vain.  The Lonavla chikki sellers were relentless and numerous.  Young men, old men, one blind woman, one blind man, all shouting out for the travellers to buy authentic chikki, at Rs.30 per packet or Rs.100 for four, but when one passenger wanted the 'Maganlal' brand, it would cost Rs80, he was informed. These chikki hawkers walked up and down, almost 20 times, along  the bogies, that had continued access, with walk through connections.  They may be selling off their wares only through the non-stop assault that they vent onto the commuters.

I bought Karjat vada pav and Lonavla jelly sweets, for my family.  The next day, I returned via the train journey, but this time I made friends with two chatty sisters, who were returning after visiting their brother's family for raksha bandhan. 

They shared some prasad with me and also with the monkeys at 'monkey hill' on the way to Mumbai, where the train slows on the ghats.  They bought tea and discarded the thermocole cups through the window.  They ate vada pav and aimed the soiled paper out of the moving train.  They ate bananas and threw the peels out.  They drank Mirinda and water and both the empty bottles were discarded through the moving train, somewhere along the western ghats, along the rail tracks.  But they were not the only ones who threw thrash into the pristine wilderness.  Almost every passenger discarded thrash out of the moving train.  If  ten trains are commuting along the tracks in that area,  just imagine the thrash that is being discarded along its length,  polluting the ghats. 

To top it all, an urchin slides along the passageway, with a rag, half naked and seeming busy and hard at work, cleaning the floor.  Then he returns and looks soulfully at the passengers, with an extended palm,  all this in mime.  Many of the travellers fill his palm with coins.  At CST, there were only 2 to 3 passengers in each bogie, most alighted at Dadar, and then the dirty urchin was walking off with a very lively gait, his pockets jingling with his earnings.  Mentally, I notched his acting talents, at par with SRK.

As the train passes Ulhasnagar, it is the stench that greets us and then the polluted Ulhas river.  It looks lika an open sewage drain, oily, with floating plastic and all sorts of thrash and garbage.  And then the polluted scenario continues.  The land along the tracks is like a garbage landfill.  What a sorry state of the areas.  It is so depressing to watch the littered and stinking slums and shanties that are on view along the route of the train, until it reaches CST.  And then I had to laboriously traverse the wet slippery platform until I exitted onto the road.