One miserable Saturday night

There was a sense of finality in the air. The trains were buzzing past like centipedes on some holy mission. Some passing travel bug bit me then.

Five minutes later I was on board one of these huge centipedes bound for the southern tip of Mumbai’s central railway line. It was 8pm in the night, and it was a Saturday. The crowd, however was as reliable as ever. Being alone in the crowd is a peculiar feeling. One can both love it and hate it, for obvious reasons.

The human machine is a collection of odd bits. Here I was, going somewhere for no reason, amidst a surge of humanity which seemed to have a solid purpose. At least, it seemed to have a purpose. The train was a slow train which was moving fast.

A slow train is one which stops at all the stations. It was fast because it accelerated with a vengeance between stops. People kept rushing in and out of the doors into the packed train cars. I managed to prop myself near one of the entry points, and as a reward, was crushed every time the train stopped at any station.

There is a metal notice plate riveted on the wall near the doors saying. ‘Do not lean out of the running emu’. This sounded like an ancient Chinese proverb. Very cryptic. Maybe emus used to roam around the city of Mumbai, once upon a time.

The stations went whizzing past. As usual the crowd thinned out a bit at Dadar. The train clawed on towards its destination. There are a lot of low cost apartments on either side of the rail tracks. Each one was lit up. I saw little people in their windows, doing people stuff. Somehow, it felt amusing.

The sense of finality was draped over everything. I could feel in my gut that this was going to be my final journey. I wanted to get out of the train, but I didn’t. Just to see if my gut feeling was worth anything.

The behemoth finally reached CST some 40 minutes after I had boarded the train. It felt good. I called up Stryker to tell him about the weird sojourn. I wandered around the place for some time and boarded the same train back ‘home.’

The view from a train is an everchanging one. The buildings and tunnels come and go. They keep changing, as long as the train is moving. The only thing which kept pace with the vista from the window of the train, was the lonely crescent in the sky. It seemed to be following the train, not willing to let it go. It seemed to shine even more brightly after brief disappearances in dark tunnels.

By the way, an EMU is an Electric Multiple Unit. Just found it out. At least, the metal plate is making sense!