Western Railway, Mumbai 2024

After years, I took a morning local train on the Western Railway of Mumbai towards South Mumbai. Once upon a time it was an everyday ritual, to be at my office in the Fort area by 9, and hence to take the same local, enter the same pool of people everyday, cut through the crowd on the footover bridge while scrutinizing the indicators, zig zagging then to my everyday spot on the platform and take position to board the train. A decade has passed since I returned back from the USA when I decided to work at another institution which no longer needs me to transact the train environment anymore. Instead it's the more unregular BEST bus network within which my new routine is intertwined.

In approaching the morning train that I had decided to catch tonrrach CST, by confirming on the mIndicator app, I had already set my body in clock the previous night. 7.17 am, CSTM from Goregaon. And should I have missed it, the day would drop like a domino. But i managed parsing through all hesitation of missing it over morning chores and intermediate connections. But so much had changed over the decade... The Goregaon station had expanded, new direct trains were added from the Western line to the Central, one could book tickets over the mobile phone, locate the buses on the Chalo GPS app, escalators were installed on the train platform, and yet, as one entered the simmering sea of bodies within the station, the mood seemed same.

A theatre. Descending down the staircase after checking the status of the trains, I see two young girls waving at another on the steps to call quickly for their third to board the train entering the platform, people quietly waiting on the seats for their train to arrive, others hurrying to get to their spots, school girls, working men and women, vendors with fresh produce, sellers...the station seemed like a set waiting to be performed by these actors of the city.

To be sure, the observation possibly felt beautiful given the moment of an November early morning - when the station was still waiting to warm up. I pick my compartment seat, release the shut window besides my seat together drawn to the yet available gaze of the platform across the track. Submerged in the pool of announcements, I am jerked into the journey of the day, sucked into the unfiltered sounds of the mobile speakers that are new televisions for those who labour the roughness of the city.