Commuting on the Edge
Traveling Mumbai’s local trains is a matter of life and death, and the past 24 hours were pretty typical.
On the Central Line a few kilometers out of Thane Station, a middle-aged man waited patiently by the tracks and then, at just the right moment, laid his head on the hot steel. He died instantly.
A few hours later, as another Central Line train pulled into Thane, the crowd ejected a young man out the door. It happens; imagine a slippery watermelon seed squeezed between your fingers. He, too, died instantly.
And this morning at one am, just nine hours ago, the last Western Line train of the night slid into Kandivali Station and cut a 55-year old man into two pieces. He was just trying to cross the tracks.
“We have an average of ten deaths a month within seven kilometers of this station,” said Miland Salke, Kandivali’s Deputy Station Master, below a hand lettered sign: “List of Hospitals and Units in the Neighborhood of Kandivali.” He shrugged, waggled his head. Wedged between the wall and a pole just outside his door were two battered aluminum stretchers.
S. and I sipped cups of hot, sweet, milky chai and prepared for battle. The entire Washington, D.C. metro carries 700,000 people a day; at Kandivali alone 500,000 passengers a day pass through the one station. It was morning rush hour heading into town. Passengers ten deep waited on the platform stretched out over 100 yards, the women – a riot of swirling purples and blues and golds, of black braids and golden bracelets and bangles and nose rings – in their own group, angling for the “ladies” cars. A train came – they come in fast. It was full, packed, not an inch to spare. The crowd became a single organism. It moved forward. Slowly, at first; you don’t know, after all, where the open doorways will pause.
Then, suddenly, an explosion, a riot, a bursting violent eruption, a struggle balancing on the edge of life and death.
The train is slowing but still moving. People burst from the doorways and leap into the crowd, a crowd that is surging forward toward the very door same door. The struggle is short and violent; you push, are pushed. Your body feels a crushing weight, a powerful wave at your back. You cannot stop or even pause. But your feet cannot move fast enough. You shuffle your feet forward, try to keep them under you. Your only hope is to grasp the door, a pole, a handle. There is punching. Elbows sharp in my kidneys. I see a man palm another man in the face. I am nearly at the doorway. The man in front of me falls – his body is being pushed but his feet can’t move fast enough – they get stuck at the step up onto the train. Another man falls onto his back – this is how people are trampled to death – and I am next. I grab the edge of the door – it is the only way. To steady myself, to pull into a place where there is no room, to restrain the surging force behind. The men will be crushed. The crowd is one thing with no mind, a muscle spasming. One of the downed men shouts. Somehow, hands reach down and pull them up. A shoe is left behind; it will never be recovered. And then we’re in. Tight, from hips to shoulders. I cannot move, but I must. To stay in the doorway is to risk death at the next station when the next eruption, next pulse, comes.
I write with no hyperbole and traveling on these trains is no laughing matter. There are men clinging to the window grates, clambering onto the roofs. “Yes,” says S., “they must risk their lives every day. Your boss says you must be at your job, you cannot be late. So what can you do? You must reach your job, man, or you will be fucked! There are fights to the death over a seat! It happens!”
People with long commutes – sometimes three hours – will ride a train in the wrong direction, just to get to the end of the line to get a seat when the train empties out.
S. is a perfect guide. He is a short, stocky bulldog with alert eyes ringed in scars, a former drug dealer and street fighter. His last stint in jail lasted 11 months, back in 2000. We leap in and out of cars, hop stations, and he shows me his “style of traveling.” First class on a second-class ticket when the cars are full; baggage cars, even the handicap car. “You get on that car and the people say ‘You look good, man; show me your card.’
“I say, ‘Show me yours first!’ Sometimes a fight happens.”
S’s instructions are detailed: Nothing in my pockets. Be alert. Certain places to stand. When to jump out; when to surge in. Watch for pickpockets. “They want a crowd,” he says. “They don’t have magic; they cannot take anything from far away. They will touch you. You feel that touch and you do nothing. They will touch you again. You will do nothing. But they are testing you. Feeling your pockets. And the third time, you are used to the touches, they will take your money, your mobile phone. Don’t let anyone touch you in your pockets anywhere in the world. If you feel that, you must look at them in the eyes right away. Show them that you know.
“Even the beggars and the children are trained.” He says. “Guys will block you with their elbows. When you are holding on and it is so crowded, sometimes you cannot even move your hands!”
The trains are efficient, amazingly so. They move fast, they come and go constantly. There are just too many people.
Last night we leapt off in the Muslim neighborhood of Mumbra, grabbed an auto rickshaw to visit friends of S’s, and navigated a swirling phantasmagoria of humanity. Goats. Donkeys. Beggars cross-legged in the streets. Women in full black chador. Fish sizzling on grills and dangling carcasses and dust and noise – fifteen years ago Mumbra was “a village,” says S. Now there are 1.5 million people in four square kilometers.
“In ten years,” he says, “you will need helmets and football pads just to travel to work!”
Tonight at rush-hour we’re riding some more and I’m bringing the video camera.
Have you ever written a horror story Mr. Hoffman? Because you have the gift. I had to actually stop reading this post for a moment because I suddenly realized I was no longer breathing. I remember reading about the Japanese trains, with their “honorable pushers” years ago, but that seems positively refined compared to what you are describing.
In many of your past posts you have described how for millions of people simple survival is a desperate struggle. You’ve talked about the razor-thin profit margins, and the ships of questionable structural integrity. But these descriptions have always been tempered with the sense that, despite it all, the people were happy. But I don’t get that from this. I’m sensing nothing but violence and danger and existential rage.
I hear all the time about how activists in the West seek greater political freedom for people in other countries. And, clearly, this is a very important and worthy goal. Yet, it seems to me that one way to greatly improve the lives of the people you describe would be to simply build a lot more trains. You’ve made me understand that, on some level, decent infrastructure is a human right.
Yes, this is so vivid and upsetting to read. But I don’t sense the rage that Mr Padouk mentions–just the desperate willingness to endure torture that these people show in their need to get to their jobs. Sounds brutal. Thanks for taking us there.
This is so clear! Thank you for showing me a place that I could otherwise scarcely imagine.
Why did the man die when he put his head on the hot steel? I’m clearly quite naive…
Also, do you know how much does it cost to ride the train vs. how much the average rider actually earns from the work they’re traveling to? What constitutes “rush hour” there?