Mumbai Mojo

It is often said that nothing, not even a series of bomb blasts can break Mumbai city's mojo. Wrong. Rains can. They did. Just last evening.

I was coming back from work, taking the usual route, wanting to catch up with a friend on the way and then going home, when I saw the skies above Dadar station turn purple in fury and lightning make its 'blink and you miss' appearance. That alone was enough to drive the crowds into a frenzy, whereby everyone was trying to get into any train and any compartment possible. I, for one, managed to find a comfortable corner where the likelihood of getting crushed by heavy, screaming and aggressive women and their heavier and bulkier bags was minimal. I promptly called my friend and cancelled our plans for the evening.

Three minutes into chugging along to the next station, all the screaming and shouting each of these women to every other woman in the compartment was drowned by a loud crack of thunder and the loud sound of torrential rain hitting the roof of the train. Windows were shut and the doors were slid shut to avoid the water from coming inside. The inside of the compartment soon started to feel like a pressure cooker. The air got stuffy and smelly from the combination of sweaty odours claiming my nostrils with a vengeance, and I was starting to feel faint. The local train authorities and the signals were at their sadistic best, making the trains move at a speed that could make a bullock cart ride feel like one in the Concorde.

I managed to stand comfortably in my tiny corner till the time the train reached the station before the one I had to alight at. And thankfully I managed to get off at the right station without much trouble. Oh! Did I mention trouble?  How could it leave me alone?Trouble did happen to me. Now.

To get out of the station from the platform at the farthest end took me more than 20 minutes. The crowd looked like a mass of bees swarming around an invisible target. If I thought I had been about to faint from the overwhelming odour of sweat in the train, I had become a zombie now. I cringe to recall all the elbowing, pushing, shoving and name calling that happened around me, while I tried to navigate my way out of the human mess with a phony sense of calm that I just looked, but didn't feel. Amazing as it was, I did pull myself up together long enough to reach the exit and sprint to the auto stand. I didn't care about the rain, the slush, or the mud staining my feet, slippers or clothes.

And now, like in very other city in the rain, the auto walas started acting up; refusing to go anywhere they didn't want to. No matter how much I said I'd pay them. I asked a lady to guide me to the bus that would take me home. She sternly directed me to a queue that was snaking its way into one of the BEST buses of Mumbai I had heard so much about. After having got in, and gone some way ahead, I asked a co-passenger how far my bus stop was. To his amusement and my consternation, it was the wrong bus. It didn't take that route at all!

As soon as the bus stopped due to a traffic jam, I got off and waited for an empty auto rickshaw to grant me respite as I felt the cold rain water drench me. Finally, an old man in a rickety rickshaw decided he could earn brownie points with the Almighty force up there by helping the poor girl in extreme distress (he said that to me). Thankfully I hadn't gotten too far away because I reached home soon enough. If two and a half hours for the whole commute from work can qualify as "soon enough" for a route that generally takes me an hour and forty-five minutes to traverse.

Now that I am writing about this particular "fright night", I am finding it difficult not to smile to myself. It is not like I haven't encountered crowds in public transport systems or rains that mar the mood of the day. It's just that when you expect a city to be on the move all the time, when you have so much about it, it appears invincible. To know that is just an illusion and maybe not the forces of man, but the forces of nature can reduce it to any other ordinary city in India is a humbling thought. As much as I have come to love Mumbai, I have to admit, it needs to manage its rainy days better.