published in "Treasure at the Terminus: Stories in Wood and Stone", Public Relations Department, Central Railway, India. 2019
courtesy: The People Place Project
Arriving at the Terminus
Anuj Daga
Many of us who have grown up in Mumbai have ritualistically crossed through the halls of CST to reach our place of work, meet a friend, extend it as a landmark to a stranger or simply board from its premises an outstation train. In our constant hurried passing, we may have missed observing this magnificent building so as to consider it closely. It merely takes a delayed train to slow you down in this rushed city, and draw your gaze into the building’s intricate, layered details that transcend you into its hidden, forgotten worlds. It is here that the building begins to unfold the myriad stories that take us back in time – allowing us to live an alternative urban reality. CST intersects with our lives at a range of scales and informs our identity(-ies) at several registers. One may be able to excavate within its artifice, several histories as well as the way we come to address the contemporary landscape. Ideas of colonialism, urbanity, modernity, mobility and everyday are intrinsically tied within the object of the CST.
As we begin to travel these time-lines, we encounter multiple revelations about the way in which our own lives are intertwined into this grand urban artifact. Recounting some such journeys through CST may bring value to its presence, but more importantly to discover paths we may take to confound into ourselves. Being the first railway station built in South Asia more than 130 years ago, announced as a World Heritage Site in the early second millennium, what does it mean to arrive at CST today? How does it become a visual metaphor that indexes values of enterprise, promise and hope for a city like Mumbai? What future does it behold for its public and how does it find place within our everyday? These are questions I would like to explore by discussing the project in five scalar modes of arrival.
1. The arrival of the British
The presence of the British colony in South Asia can only be felt as it comes to engage as well as create a new public sphere for the natives through its modern institutional apparatus. The introduction of the railways in this light, has been fundamental to the endavours of the British for establishing connectivity between the different regions of India to aid purposes of trade, communication and defense. The machinery of postal system, policing and many others principally depended on the development of railways as the mass mobility system. Such institutions were eventually opened for use to the natives, who subconsciously imbued modern sensibilities within themselves in attuning to new ways of movement, gathering and communication. In opening up all these new ways of connecting and communicating, the railways restructured a medieval life into modern, it stitched the pastoral into the industrial. Being the first railway station, CST marks the onset of such institutional shifts, in essence, the arrival of the British colony on south Asian land.
While introduction of new means and methods reoriented native life, the British too were rapidly learning the new territories they came to claim. The representation of oriental nature and culture within the British palette can be studied amply in the architectural details of CST. Tropical flora and fauna intricately sculpted into various parts of the building indicate the wonderment of British in the Oriental land. Crawling reptiles and jumping monkeys on column capitals, leopard and crocodile gargoyles, lush leaves and peacocks spanning arch windows of CST amply speak of the curiosity of the new landscape that the British colony came to occupy. It was precisely the resource laden South Asian territory that attracted the British. Instead of exploit, today, the CST building might as well be celebrated as an emblem representing such bountiful landscape.
Architecturally, ideas of structuring and organizing large scale public and office space are best demonstrated in the planning of the Victoria Terminus. The meticulous attention towards management of multiple traffic flows – vehicular and pedestrian - can be studied in the archival correspondences and annals of British record. The lofty free flowing spaces thereby designed towards ordering effective public and private movement within the building calls for appreciation of architectural foresight. The design of CST lends organizational principles for public transport buildings that are worth considering for layouts until the present day. The conjoining of the long industrial platform shed to house the trains with the ornately crafted bureaucratic headquarters is synthesized uniquely through the introduction of intermediate public spaces within the scheme. On the other hand, in its C-shaped courtyard type building form, buffered with semi open verandahs folding around a covered driveway, the building marks the arrival of the public institution that mediates in its form, the relationship between the Colony and its subjects.
2. The arrival of the locomotive
Large groups of people gathered all along the two sides of the railway track from Bori Bunder to Thane on the inaugural day to witness the spectacle of the engine driven locomotive for the first time in their city. For the natives, it was unbelievable to imagine a carriage running without harnessing animal or human energy. The railway engine alluded to a mysterious black creature spewing out smoke, magically escaping space and time – a device almost straight out of the mythical texts! The collapse of myth into the modern machine marks the arrival of the locomotive within the native peoples’ lives. With time, the technology of the steam operated machines was understood and put to wide scientific use in setting up industries or looms, or even the early cars that reshaped Mumbai’s physical and cultural geography.
The railways drastically changed the experience of space and time within the Indian subcontinent. Firstly, with the coming of locomotives, the travel time between places reduced drastically. Distances that took three days to traverse now could be covered in a matter of few hours. A post which earlier took ten days to deliver could now be sent in a day. Evidently, the railways gave a tough competition to the existing animal-driven modes of transport both, in speed and carrying capacity. Secondly, it allowed wide panoramic views of the Indian landscape in a quick passing of forests, fields and mountains extending new ways of appreciating the territory the natives themselves inhabited. Lastly, moving on its dedicated levelled tracks, the train was much more comfortable than the bumpy rides of the horse or bullock driven carts, uninterrupted by externalities of extreme weather.
More important than any other, the arrival of the locomotive, for the first time, produced the notion of a moving public. Forging new relationships while traveling with large groups of strangers underpins the social agency that the railways opened up. To be sure, the initial overwhelm, hesitation, unfamiliarity, wonder and surprise towards the new mass-moving machine must have bonded people over and along the train journeys. The CST has historically been thus the house of new friendships within the emerging city. Although the strong hierarchies of class within bogies have loosely remained as a colonial hangover until today, in being chained to each other held on the common track, the introduction of the train gave a secular direction to a composite society held together in its contradictions.
3. The arrival of the migrant
Mumbai has largely remained an aspirational city due to its primary anchor in trade and entertainment industry. Historically, as the birth place of the cotton mill as well as cinema in India, Mumbai has territorially as well as visually reached out to the masses across the country drawing them in for labour and leisure. The CST has remained a significant physical and symbolic medium for such travel of people and ideas. In Hindi cinema, an exterior longshot image of CST building announcing the opening of a film, is synonymous to the idea of Mumbai: it maps the entry into the world of work and enterprise and the dreams and promise of the land. It’s quite tautological to think that for those who travel to the city through popular cinema or in real, the first sight of Mumbai has often been the monumental Victoria Terminus.
CST has forever remained an important sight seeing landmark for the tourist circuit in Mumbai. A newly built viewing deck at the crossroads in front of the building allows travelers and enthusiasts to enjoy a prolonged uninterrupted gaze of the city icon. In consuming visually, the building brings up simultaneous emotions of being and outsider and insider within the city. The onlooker is compelled to contemplate upon one’s changing social proximity with the city while held in its embrace. These thoughts bridge the initial awe of the migrant to routine everyday of the city dweller, allowing to trace one’s past to the present. It is in this way, that we meaningfully fold in our “outsider” migrant identities towards that of belonging and claim.
Undoubtedly then, CST stands today between a circle of markets represented by various communities who came to Mumbai and settled over the eventual years for purposes of trade and business. Simultaneously, a large population of labour serving the textile mills came to offer Mumbai the distinct chawl type which supported a unique density of urban life and culture. While the railways went on to connect these neighbourhoods over time, the terminus became the official terrestrial gateway for the population traveling from inner peninsula to the peripheral city of Mumbai. In doing so, the CST marks the arrival of the migrant that gives the city its cosmopolitan character and a thriving cultural diversity.
4. The arrival of Mumbai
With the settling of the newly built terminus and the smooth functioning of the trains, a large number of wealthy and prominent citizens came to invest in the expansion of railway lines to the extents of residential towns in the north. These are the philanthropists to whom we owe the infrastructural development and image of Mumbai. Further, realizing the potential of the new mass transit system, surrounding areas began to flourish. The C-shaped typology of the building was steadily assimilated into the bureaucratizing built environment of Mumbai. Many key buildings of Mumbai were commissioned to be built adapting the motifs and manners of the Victoria Terminus. The Taj Mahal hotel by Jamshetji Tata is one such example that asserts its power using the architectural language experimented in VT. Subsequently built public institutions, gymkhanas, bungalows or even chawls in the city are modest typological expressions of the terminus building.
Over the years, the local trains have come to be understood as the ‘lifeline’ of Mumbai - those that collect and redistribute people in the city. The railway is the primary mode of transport that people use to commute in Mumbai. Of the three prime lines that broadly run north-south along the entire city, two culminate into CST. To arrive at “Mumbai” essentially means to arrive at CST – it is the historical demarcation of Fort (precinct) whose ramparts were brought down to release and reclaim land for the construction of the terminus so that the city could extend further. Until today, coming to CST is coming to the Town – not just the colonial town, but also a place that embodies the urban essence of Mumbai – a city known for its work culture disciplined fundamentally to the timetable of the railways. Until today, local trains in Mumbai are identified in their time-stamps.
As the representative image of Mumbai, the CST has been constantly restored and retrofitted with new technologies, amendments and extensions. The electrification of the steam engine during the 1930s, the conversion of bogies from DC to AC, the constant upgradation of railway compartments towards creating comfortable environment within the trains, the appreciation of concourse lengths and heights - all remind us of the historical shifts that the building, its patrons and the public have laboured together over time. The addition of underground subways, new discreet outlets for the public have all been designed respecting the original vision of the place, however debatable. The recent colourful lighting of CST’s exterior invited ample criticism from conservation architects and the public, which only indicates concern over how people see the building as a reflection of the city. In keeping pace with time, a public building like CST ceases to become outdated and validates Mumbai’s contemporariness.
5. The arrival of ‘everyday’
Over the latter part of 20th century, while the suburbia in the north sprawled as the place of residence, the downtown in south remained the principal place of work: the commercial district where most Mumbaikars travelled ritualistically to spend much of their productive time. A life of commute, commotion and care that culminated in the environment of VT lent Mumbai its ‘everyday’ identity. To enter into the numerous bodies with an estranged feeling of belonging to the city is what the terminus accommodated and mediated generously. It announced the feeling of fruition of the everyday that one desires for. It became a social shelter outside of home where one is able to meet a city of one’s own under one single roof. In bringing together people to consume a life of possibilities and promise, the terminus defines a distinct realm of the everyday.
Over the years, CST has multiplied its institutional role to transform itself into a shelter, refuge, home, museum, a stage for performance or has even served as a symbolic backdrop for protests. It is needless to mention that for the enormous staff that controls the operations of Mumbai railways from CST, the building is nothing less than home. Besides, for the public, the terminus has always been the place of refuge during heavy rains or other man made accidents. In several instances in the past, the transactional spaces like corridors or passageways have been lent for hosting mini public exhibitions informing the commuters about their city in small ways. Performers have used its hallways to stage street plays or flash mobs in order to engage or educate the diverse population of the city. CST introduces us to these multiple facets that constitute our everyday life and make it meaningful. It is an everyday that makes a million dreams real. It brought, and still continues to bring the same people regularly at a place and setting up a rhythm, a routine through which they enter into their “everyday”.
Over the last 20 years, the station has undergone several transformations – physical and cultural. In the spirit of overcoming colonial hegemony and bringing the building’s identity to terms with the contemporary times, the station's name was changed from Victoria Terminus to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in March 1996 in honour of Emperor Chhatrapati Shivaji, founder of the Maratha Empire. In 2017, the station was again renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. In 2004, CST was awarded the World heritage status, which has focused plans on the conservation of its premises. In 2008, the station bore brutal terrorist attacks, after which it was installed with a serious layer of security in the form of metal detectors and CCTV cameras. This has seriously affected its publicness. My essay has struggled between calling this piece of architecture as VT, CST or CSTM, precisely because of the mixed and layered relationship it has built within us with the city of Mumbai, that indexes its history. Although the city keeps sprawling farther into the northern suburbs, once in a while, we all crave to visit the station in order to remind ourselves of the identity we hold as Mumbaikars. The CST is now an object of longing to fulfil the dream of what it means to be in Mumbai. It is an icon that defines Mumbaihood, in which we begin to seed the dreams of a larger future.
Many of us who have grown up in Mumbai have ritualistically crossed through the halls of CST to reach our place of work, meet a friend, extend it as a landmark to a stranger or simply board from its premises an outstation train. In our constant hurried passing, we may have missed observing this magnificent building so as to consider it closely. It merely takes a delayed train to slow you down in this rushed city, and draw your gaze into the building’s intricate, layered details that transcend you into its hidden, forgotten worlds. It is here that the building begins to unfold the myriad stories that take us back in time – allowing us to live an alternative urban reality. CST intersects with our lives at a range of scales and informs our identity(-ies) at several registers. One may be able to excavate within its artifice, several histories as well as the way we come to address the contemporary landscape. Ideas of colonialism, urbanity, modernity, mobility and everyday are intrinsically tied within the object of the CST.
As we begin to travel these time-lines, we encounter multiple revelations about the way in which our own lives are intertwined into this grand urban artifact. Recounting some such journeys through CST may bring value to its presence, but more importantly to discover paths we may take to confound into ourselves. Being the first railway station built in South Asia more than 130 years ago, announced as a World Heritage Site in the early second millennium, what does it mean to arrive at CST today? How does it become a visual metaphor that indexes values of enterprise, promise and hope for a city like Mumbai? What future does it behold for its public and how does it find place within our everyday? These are questions I would like to explore by discussing the project in five scalar modes of arrival.
1. The arrival of the British
The presence of the British colony in South Asia can only be felt as it comes to engage as well as create a new public sphere for the natives through its modern institutional apparatus. The introduction of the railways in this light, has been fundamental to the endavours of the British for establishing connectivity between the different regions of India to aid purposes of trade, communication and defense. The machinery of postal system, policing and many others principally depended on the development of railways as the mass mobility system. Such institutions were eventually opened for use to the natives, who subconsciously imbued modern sensibilities within themselves in attuning to new ways of movement, gathering and communication. In opening up all these new ways of connecting and communicating, the railways restructured a medieval life into modern, it stitched the pastoral into the industrial. Being the first railway station, CST marks the onset of such institutional shifts, in essence, the arrival of the British colony on south Asian land.
While introduction of new means and methods reoriented native life, the British too were rapidly learning the new territories they came to claim. The representation of oriental nature and culture within the British palette can be studied amply in the architectural details of CST. Tropical flora and fauna intricately sculpted into various parts of the building indicate the wonderment of British in the Oriental land. Crawling reptiles and jumping monkeys on column capitals, leopard and crocodile gargoyles, lush leaves and peacocks spanning arch windows of CST amply speak of the curiosity of the new landscape that the British colony came to occupy. It was precisely the resource laden South Asian territory that attracted the British. Instead of exploit, today, the CST building might as well be celebrated as an emblem representing such bountiful landscape.
Architecturally, ideas of structuring and organizing large scale public and office space are best demonstrated in the planning of the Victoria Terminus. The meticulous attention towards management of multiple traffic flows – vehicular and pedestrian - can be studied in the archival correspondences and annals of British record. The lofty free flowing spaces thereby designed towards ordering effective public and private movement within the building calls for appreciation of architectural foresight. The design of CST lends organizational principles for public transport buildings that are worth considering for layouts until the present day. The conjoining of the long industrial platform shed to house the trains with the ornately crafted bureaucratic headquarters is synthesized uniquely through the introduction of intermediate public spaces within the scheme. On the other hand, in its C-shaped courtyard type building form, buffered with semi open verandahs folding around a covered driveway, the building marks the arrival of the public institution that mediates in its form, the relationship between the Colony and its subjects.
2. The arrival of the locomotive
Large groups of people gathered all along the two sides of the railway track from Bori Bunder to Thane on the inaugural day to witness the spectacle of the engine driven locomotive for the first time in their city. For the natives, it was unbelievable to imagine a carriage running without harnessing animal or human energy. The railway engine alluded to a mysterious black creature spewing out smoke, magically escaping space and time – a device almost straight out of the mythical texts! The collapse of myth into the modern machine marks the arrival of the locomotive within the native peoples’ lives. With time, the technology of the steam operated machines was understood and put to wide scientific use in setting up industries or looms, or even the early cars that reshaped Mumbai’s physical and cultural geography.
The railways drastically changed the experience of space and time within the Indian subcontinent. Firstly, with the coming of locomotives, the travel time between places reduced drastically. Distances that took three days to traverse now could be covered in a matter of few hours. A post which earlier took ten days to deliver could now be sent in a day. Evidently, the railways gave a tough competition to the existing animal-driven modes of transport both, in speed and carrying capacity. Secondly, it allowed wide panoramic views of the Indian landscape in a quick passing of forests, fields and mountains extending new ways of appreciating the territory the natives themselves inhabited. Lastly, moving on its dedicated levelled tracks, the train was much more comfortable than the bumpy rides of the horse or bullock driven carts, uninterrupted by externalities of extreme weather.
More important than any other, the arrival of the locomotive, for the first time, produced the notion of a moving public. Forging new relationships while traveling with large groups of strangers underpins the social agency that the railways opened up. To be sure, the initial overwhelm, hesitation, unfamiliarity, wonder and surprise towards the new mass-moving machine must have bonded people over and along the train journeys. The CST has historically been thus the house of new friendships within the emerging city. Although the strong hierarchies of class within bogies have loosely remained as a colonial hangover until today, in being chained to each other held on the common track, the introduction of the train gave a secular direction to a composite society held together in its contradictions.
3. The arrival of the migrant
Mumbai has largely remained an aspirational city due to its primary anchor in trade and entertainment industry. Historically, as the birth place of the cotton mill as well as cinema in India, Mumbai has territorially as well as visually reached out to the masses across the country drawing them in for labour and leisure. The CST has remained a significant physical and symbolic medium for such travel of people and ideas. In Hindi cinema, an exterior longshot image of CST building announcing the opening of a film, is synonymous to the idea of Mumbai: it maps the entry into the world of work and enterprise and the dreams and promise of the land. It’s quite tautological to think that for those who travel to the city through popular cinema or in real, the first sight of Mumbai has often been the monumental Victoria Terminus.
CST has forever remained an important sight seeing landmark for the tourist circuit in Mumbai. A newly built viewing deck at the crossroads in front of the building allows travelers and enthusiasts to enjoy a prolonged uninterrupted gaze of the city icon. In consuming visually, the building brings up simultaneous emotions of being and outsider and insider within the city. The onlooker is compelled to contemplate upon one’s changing social proximity with the city while held in its embrace. These thoughts bridge the initial awe of the migrant to routine everyday of the city dweller, allowing to trace one’s past to the present. It is in this way, that we meaningfully fold in our “outsider” migrant identities towards that of belonging and claim.
Undoubtedly then, CST stands today between a circle of markets represented by various communities who came to Mumbai and settled over the eventual years for purposes of trade and business. Simultaneously, a large population of labour serving the textile mills came to offer Mumbai the distinct chawl type which supported a unique density of urban life and culture. While the railways went on to connect these neighbourhoods over time, the terminus became the official terrestrial gateway for the population traveling from inner peninsula to the peripheral city of Mumbai. In doing so, the CST marks the arrival of the migrant that gives the city its cosmopolitan character and a thriving cultural diversity.
4. The arrival of Mumbai
With the settling of the newly built terminus and the smooth functioning of the trains, a large number of wealthy and prominent citizens came to invest in the expansion of railway lines to the extents of residential towns in the north. These are the philanthropists to whom we owe the infrastructural development and image of Mumbai. Further, realizing the potential of the new mass transit system, surrounding areas began to flourish. The C-shaped typology of the building was steadily assimilated into the bureaucratizing built environment of Mumbai. Many key buildings of Mumbai were commissioned to be built adapting the motifs and manners of the Victoria Terminus. The Taj Mahal hotel by Jamshetji Tata is one such example that asserts its power using the architectural language experimented in VT. Subsequently built public institutions, gymkhanas, bungalows or even chawls in the city are modest typological expressions of the terminus building.
Over the years, the local trains have come to be understood as the ‘lifeline’ of Mumbai - those that collect and redistribute people in the city. The railway is the primary mode of transport that people use to commute in Mumbai. Of the three prime lines that broadly run north-south along the entire city, two culminate into CST. To arrive at “Mumbai” essentially means to arrive at CST – it is the historical demarcation of Fort (precinct) whose ramparts were brought down to release and reclaim land for the construction of the terminus so that the city could extend further. Until today, coming to CST is coming to the Town – not just the colonial town, but also a place that embodies the urban essence of Mumbai – a city known for its work culture disciplined fundamentally to the timetable of the railways. Until today, local trains in Mumbai are identified in their time-stamps.
As the representative image of Mumbai, the CST has been constantly restored and retrofitted with new technologies, amendments and extensions. The electrification of the steam engine during the 1930s, the conversion of bogies from DC to AC, the constant upgradation of railway compartments towards creating comfortable environment within the trains, the appreciation of concourse lengths and heights - all remind us of the historical shifts that the building, its patrons and the public have laboured together over time. The addition of underground subways, new discreet outlets for the public have all been designed respecting the original vision of the place, however debatable. The recent colourful lighting of CST’s exterior invited ample criticism from conservation architects and the public, which only indicates concern over how people see the building as a reflection of the city. In keeping pace with time, a public building like CST ceases to become outdated and validates Mumbai’s contemporariness.
5. The arrival of ‘everyday’
Over the latter part of 20th century, while the suburbia in the north sprawled as the place of residence, the downtown in south remained the principal place of work: the commercial district where most Mumbaikars travelled ritualistically to spend much of their productive time. A life of commute, commotion and care that culminated in the environment of VT lent Mumbai its ‘everyday’ identity. To enter into the numerous bodies with an estranged feeling of belonging to the city is what the terminus accommodated and mediated generously. It announced the feeling of fruition of the everyday that one desires for. It became a social shelter outside of home where one is able to meet a city of one’s own under one single roof. In bringing together people to consume a life of possibilities and promise, the terminus defines a distinct realm of the everyday.
Over the years, CST has multiplied its institutional role to transform itself into a shelter, refuge, home, museum, a stage for performance or has even served as a symbolic backdrop for protests. It is needless to mention that for the enormous staff that controls the operations of Mumbai railways from CST, the building is nothing less than home. Besides, for the public, the terminus has always been the place of refuge during heavy rains or other man made accidents. In several instances in the past, the transactional spaces like corridors or passageways have been lent for hosting mini public exhibitions informing the commuters about their city in small ways. Performers have used its hallways to stage street plays or flash mobs in order to engage or educate the diverse population of the city. CST introduces us to these multiple facets that constitute our everyday life and make it meaningful. It is an everyday that makes a million dreams real. It brought, and still continues to bring the same people regularly at a place and setting up a rhythm, a routine through which they enter into their “everyday”.
Over the last 20 years, the station has undergone several transformations – physical and cultural. In the spirit of overcoming colonial hegemony and bringing the building’s identity to terms with the contemporary times, the station's name was changed from Victoria Terminus to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus in March 1996 in honour of Emperor Chhatrapati Shivaji, founder of the Maratha Empire. In 2017, the station was again renamed Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus. In 2004, CST was awarded the World heritage status, which has focused plans on the conservation of its premises. In 2008, the station bore brutal terrorist attacks, after which it was installed with a serious layer of security in the form of metal detectors and CCTV cameras. This has seriously affected its publicness. My essay has struggled between calling this piece of architecture as VT, CST or CSTM, precisely because of the mixed and layered relationship it has built within us with the city of Mumbai, that indexes its history. Although the city keeps sprawling farther into the northern suburbs, once in a while, we all crave to visit the station in order to remind ourselves of the identity we hold as Mumbaikars. The CST is now an object of longing to fulfil the dream of what it means to be in Mumbai. It is an icon that defines Mumbaihood, in which we begin to seed the dreams of a larger future.
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