Mumbai is known to be a city of spirit, famous for finding solutions to its everyday inconveniences. From hiring autorickshaws to ferrying children to and fro from school on a monthly rate basis, to quietly gathering in front of the TV showroom near the workplace to catch the big cricket match, we Mumbaikars are known to be an enterprising lot.
So it didn’t really come as a surprise when I discovered that the daily hour-long journey from my Parel office to my Dombivali residence was tiring only for ignoramuses like me, who didn’t know that there were means of fun available other than reading books and listening to music. I am not among the elite class of travellers who are members of exclusive clubs that have their own card games, and whiling away time sometimes becomes a bore.
This was till a friend took me to the most entertaining section of the last Karjat-bound local train: The luggage coach. Now the mention of this part of the local trains has elicited a nose-wrinkling from many a sophisticated friend of mine, but it appealed immediately to the romantic in me. I found out that the luggage coaches one sees overflowing with crates and humans during the day are vastly different from those at night, particularly on the last few trains.
To begin with, it has people from all walks of life — a couple of khaki-clad taxi drivers, a bespectacled tailor, a caption of waiters in an elite Shivaji Park eatery, a singer in an orchestra bar, an Ulhasna-gar resident who runs a small time courier agency in Chinchpokli, a chemical analyst with a Mumbai hospital…the list goes on.
All of them have one thing in common — they live at least an hour’s train ride from where they work. So every night, after a long hard day at work, they meet up in the luggage compartment, forsaking the two wooden seats to sit on the floor instead. Some of them spread shee-ts of newsprint on the floor — indeed, newspapers are specially bought for this reason — but most happily lower themselves on the cold metal floor as close to the door as possible.
As the numbers increase with every station, so do the number of little goodies that each one brings along — chips, biscuits, soft drinks, etc. Several commuters even call their counterparts boarding at later stations with requests, and it is not uncommon to hear Diva resident Deepak Chaurasia call out, “Arre Bharatbhai ko cigarette laane ko bolo, Diva mein raat ko sab band ho jaata hai!” (Someone tell Bhara-tbhai to get cigarettes, the shops in Diva are all closed at night). Those who run or work in eateries make it a point to bring a specially cooked dish for their special friends at least once a week.
The seats are reserved for a select few, mostly those older to the others and unable to sit on the floor comfortably due to arthritis or other ailme-nts. The younger lot holds the seats till the rightful commuters arrive.
Then comes the singing. Almost every luggage coach has its designated singers, who are chosen for two virtues — they know a host of old Hindi songs by heart, and can sing less tunelessly in a more tolerable voice than the others. They always require some coaxing before they break into a song, and that too only if others will join in. Requests keep pouring in, and the singers field them all with the self-assurance of someone who has grown up listening to old melodies and can sing any of them without missing a single word.
The luggage coach adjoining the last ladies compartment has its own set of Romeos, who put up an admirable effort to sing solo in the hope of getting noticed by their respective crushes on the other side of the partition. I am yet to see a romance begin this way, although I think it would be awesome to tell my grandchildren someday that I won their grandma’s heart by singing to her for months together from beyond a metal wall before I even got to know her name.
However, for all their joviality, the luggage coach commuters are fiercely protective of their turf. Every once in a while, a large group of “outsiders” boards the compartment, and is greeted with dirty looks and mumbling on the lines of “there goes the neighbourhood”.
The coach starts emptying out after Thane and Mumbra, and only a
handful remain. These then settle down to discuss issues ranging from America’s war on terror to fare hike in autorickshaws and taxis till their far off destinations arrive.
I, meanwhile, get off at Dombivali and make my way home, thinking what songs to sing the next time I’m there.
This is the seventh of a series of columns that will dwell on the issues plaguing Mumbaikars — traffic snarls, uncooperative civic servants, unreasonable landlords, arrogant cabbies and lots more.
Watch this space.