83 - TRAVEL BUDDIES AND MORE GYAN

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.

  

  

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.