Two potential disasters on the train, both turned out to be nothing.

7/10/07
I work 3 days a week in the Bandra office, near where I live, 3 days in the downtown office, near Marine Drive(a famous thoroughfare), and I have one day off. I alternate days between offices; Sunday, Tuesday, and Friday I am downtown, Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday I am in Bandra and Thursday I have off.
Last Friday a woman from the downtown office showed me how to ride the train to work. She picked me up in the morning and took me to the train station The first part, getting to the station, is no big deal. Just get into a ric and say “Bandra Station.” (A ric is a three wheeled cart that serves as a cheap mini-cab around here. They sound and smell like lawnmowers, but go faster and are scarier to ride in. They aren’t allowed downtown, only in the outer areas.)
Next part was figuring out where to go in the station to catch the right train. She brought me inside and showed me which track to go to and where to stand on the platform so that I would be positioned appropriately to get onto the ladies’ first class compartment. This is sort of a big deal, because the trains are really long, and if you aren’t standing in the right place, you have to run a long way through a lot of people to get to the right car. And you won’t make it, at best you would know where to stand for the next train. And you want to know where to stand for the ladies’ first class car, because during the morning and evening rush hours, you want to get into the right car. The ladies’ first class car is full- you are closely and uncomfortably surrounded by sticky people on all sides, but you are still able to draw air into your lungs to breathe. In other words, you have the half inch of space you need for your lungs to expand. Not so in the regular first class, ladies second class or regular second class. People pack themselves into those train cars like crazy. The cars are filled way beyond capacity.
So I guess it makes sense that getting on can be a fight. I have been shielded from a lot of the heavier jostling with my precious, precious first class pass, but my students were telling me that in the second class, swarthy fisherwomen will just walk up behind you as you are trying to get onto the train and yank you off and out of the way. Then the train leaves and you are left stammering “wait, what just happened?” This delicate American has not yet been subjected to such an injustice, but I am waiting.
The cars have, I think, either loose regulations or poorly enforced regulations regarding how many pounds of human per square foot are allowed inside. It is as though all the sardines from one tin decided “Nope, not squished enough!” and shoved themselves into the occupied tin next to them, laws of physics and personal space be damned. The Mumbai trains must operate at 2000% efficiency. And when the train gets to a major station, it is like a big, long, metal seed pod has just burst as everyone goes rushing off the train. The train just throws up people.

Anyway, back to my life. So the nice lady from the office shows me where to stand in the morning and in the evening on the platform in order to get into the right car. This was Friday. On Sunday, I tried the process on my own. Getting to work was fine. Getting home was mildly scary. I walked from my office to the station in the evening with one of my students, and the train pulled up as we were walking down the platform. My student didn’t want me to miss the train, (because they only come along every five minutes. Oh well, she was nice to be concerned.) so she bustled me into the nearest first class compartment which happened to be an open one, for men and women. Not a big problem at 6 pm on a Sunday evening. There were only a few people on it; I had plenty of space. The problem came when I got to my station. I was completely disoriented, for 2 reasons. First of all, because I wasn’t on the first class ladies car, so I had to get out in an unfamiliar stretch of the platform, and I wasn’t entirely sure how to get out of the train station. Second because it was daylight, and the area around the station looked completely different in daylight at the end of the station where I ended up. There were trees and a wide area of water. Because the surrounding area was so different from what I had seen earlier I almost didn’t get off the train. I was completely confused. Then my logic circuits kicked in and I decided that I should get off at the stop that had the same name as my stop regardless of what it looked like and worry about it later.
Eventually I made it out of the station on the right side and got home, much to my relief. I had to wander around a little though. I think the people waiting at the station thought that I was taking myself on some weird tour of the train station or something. “What is she doing? She’s already seen this part. Freak. Go home!” It is really hard to wander casually around the same platform for 10 minutes, fighting the growing concern that you now live at the train station. The nonchalance wears thin.

The second nondisaster happened the following Tuesday when I took the train alone for the second time. I arrived at the station nice and early and walked to my place next to the snack shop by the second stairway to wait for the ladies’ compartment to pull up with the next train. After I had been waiting for a few minutes, a train pulled up to my platform and deposited a ladies’ car in front of me. Some people got off, no one got on. Except me. Alarm bells should have sounded. But they didn’t, in part because when I move to a new country, I have noticed that common sense is an early casualty. I have a heightened survival instinct, but I lose that “hey, if the door doesn’t open when you push, try pulling, don’t just start banging” sensibility. Not sure why.
I think the other reason alarm bells didn’t go off is because of an implicit faith that I have that things are supposed to work right. People follow traffic rules, stop at stop lights, they walk on sidewalks and drive on roads, they put trash in trash bins. I am mildly insulted when things don’t work right, when buses are late and when grocery lines take longer than they reasonably should. So when a car pulled up in front of me while I was standing in the right place, I assumed it was the right one. Turns out not. It went to the next station and stopped. A kind woman noticed me looking forlorn and explained that this station was the last stop for that train. Eventually, after asking around a little and walking around a lot I got to the right platform. But then, horrors, I didn’t know where to stand to get onto the ladies’ first class compartment!
I walked down the platform until I saw a bunch of saris and asked one of them if they were waiting for the ladies’ first class. Yes. Phew.

7/13/07
Friday, third day on the train. I am very excited for the train to become routine, right now it still feels like I am going to screw something up whenever I get onto the train.
The ride home today was downright eerie. I stood by the doorway and watched the scenery as it flashed by. There are no doors on the train, just open doorways in the middle of both sides of each car. I guess that is part of why 1,400 people die on the trains each year. So I am nice and careful.
The night was sort of misty and dark, and watching all the city streets and apartment buildings go by made me feel like I was in a pretentious art film, like it was all supposed to mean something. Click click, buildings. Click click, lights. Click click, water. Click click, kids, running by the train, too close. Swaying back and forth. The grittiness of life in a big city, a thousand stories to be told, home comfort even in the saddest looking tenements, the contrast of open water with rundown, overcrowded buildings. Or whatever. I felt as though I was supposed to go back to my lonely room and, I don’t know, drink whiskey? What do people do in art films when they have been exposed to the rough and tumble of life on the streets? I went home and read for a while and went to sleep, but that can’t be right. I might have taken a desperate swig of juice to help myself deal with the inhumanity of it all or something, I can’t remember now.
One thing that was kind of creepy, but is something that is getting to be a familiar sight, was a glimpse that I got of someone’s living quarters. They had pulled a tarp over a wall and held it down with some bricks at the other end, to create a tent like place to live. The disconcerting thing about it was that how permanent it looked, it had little oil lamps set up inside, and people were eating, and there were beds set up around the edges. There are a lot of people trying to live here.

More later!