Struggling commuters in Surat now have a new lease of life. Western Railway has taken the step of introducing one more train in the morning in addition to the existing Flying Ranee according to this times of India report.
This is great news for thousands of Surtis who daily spend 10 hours alone traveling from Surat to Mumbai back and forth in order to earn their livelihood. The new train will just take three hours to reach Bandra and give a boost to the heavy economic activities that exist between the two states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Traveling on commuter trains in India is one hell of a chaotic experience. I have had the experience of traveling in the Flying Ranee on numerous occasions even at a time when it was one of the fastest trains in India next to only the Rajdhani. These commuters on the Surat-Mumbai journey have a culture of their own which includes being loud, obnoxious, stepping on everyone's feet other than their own, pushing everyone in their upper quadrant(right and left), constant chants of chalo aage badho and mostly sister-mother related expletives directed at those people they have tried pushing but are not budging or to those who do not understand the aage badho part. They laugh loudly at every possible joke or a semblance of one including killing a fly that had got attracted to the decaying matter in one of the commuter's ear. On a recent trip, they also sang about 10-15 bhajans in their loudest pitch on the stretch from Valsad to Vapi. They share great camaraderie and once their stop arrives disperse as if they were magnetic with opposite poles.
I recall once I was on the return journey of Mumbai-Surat and the train had just pulled into Mumbai Central. Mom and I got inside the train. As we matched the seat numbers to our tickets a sweaty blue handkerchief came flying like a UFO through the window and landed on the berth just at the moment I figured that the seat was the one assigned to me. I felt so disgusted about it, that I threw it out the window holding it in the tip of my nails. I looked out and just saw the back of a man trying to get into the bogie. Then he suddenly appeared next to us and asked...no actually demanded us to vacate the seat. We showed him our tickets and told him to shove off. So he said that he had put his handkerchief in there and so he had booked his seat.
'What handkerchief?' I asked him
'Huh, where is it. I placed it here ?' He said sticking his nose on the window to see what had happened to his UFO? Shoe sole patterns of all kinds had formed by now on his flattened piece of cloth accessory. Since my mother was there he refrained from using cuss words but made his displeasure known.
'Hanky-throwing is not a civilized way to reserve seats,' my mother told him in English. Whenever my mom gets in a spot of bother she starts to mouth English words.The Surat rickshawallahs who ply their trade in the old city have often been left scratching their heads by the time my mom bargained a rupiah deal.
'See I do this everyday,' the man said
'Let us call the hawaldar,' Mom said. Luckily one happened to be passing in that bogie. Thank God for the semi-periodic checks our Railway police force conducts. Rolling a baton in one hand he understood the situation and took the man to task.
'Jasti badbad something something..is all I could understand.
The commuter man didn't look too happy with an English vocabulary throwing middle-aged woman and a pot-bellied pandu rounding up his day when the poor man must have slogged it out in some dilapidated office building in South Mumbai. For a moment I felt sorry for him. He slowly walked out. I watched him through the window. He picked up his handkerchief which seemed no cleaner than before and walked away to the next bogie to try his luck. A dirtier hanky might fetch him a seat I thought as people would be reluctant to touch it. Hmm..
Funny but incredible India it is.
This is great news for thousands of Surtis who daily spend 10 hours alone traveling from Surat to Mumbai back and forth in order to earn their livelihood. The new train will just take three hours to reach Bandra and give a boost to the heavy economic activities that exist between the two states of Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Traveling on commuter trains in India is one hell of a chaotic experience. I have had the experience of traveling in the Flying Ranee on numerous occasions even at a time when it was one of the fastest trains in India next to only the Rajdhani. These commuters on the Surat-Mumbai journey have a culture of their own which includes being loud, obnoxious, stepping on everyone's feet other than their own, pushing everyone in their upper quadrant(right and left), constant chants of chalo aage badho and mostly sister-mother related expletives directed at those people they have tried pushing but are not budging or to those who do not understand the aage badho part. They laugh loudly at every possible joke or a semblance of one including killing a fly that had got attracted to the decaying matter in one of the commuter's ear. On a recent trip, they also sang about 10-15 bhajans in their loudest pitch on the stretch from Valsad to Vapi. They share great camaraderie and once their stop arrives disperse as if they were magnetic with opposite poles.
I recall once I was on the return journey of Mumbai-Surat and the train had just pulled into Mumbai Central. Mom and I got inside the train. As we matched the seat numbers to our tickets a sweaty blue handkerchief came flying like a UFO through the window and landed on the berth just at the moment I figured that the seat was the one assigned to me. I felt so disgusted about it, that I threw it out the window holding it in the tip of my nails. I looked out and just saw the back of a man trying to get into the bogie. Then he suddenly appeared next to us and asked...no actually demanded us to vacate the seat. We showed him our tickets and told him to shove off. So he said that he had put his handkerchief in there and so he had booked his seat.
'What handkerchief?' I asked him
'Huh, where is it. I placed it here ?' He said sticking his nose on the window to see what had happened to his UFO? Shoe sole patterns of all kinds had formed by now on his flattened piece of cloth accessory. Since my mother was there he refrained from using cuss words but made his displeasure known.
'Hanky-throwing is not a civilized way to reserve seats,' my mother told him in English. Whenever my mom gets in a spot of bother she starts to mouth English words.The Surat rickshawallahs who ply their trade in the old city have often been left scratching their heads by the time my mom bargained a rupiah deal.
'See I do this everyday,' the man said
'Let us call the hawaldar,' Mom said. Luckily one happened to be passing in that bogie. Thank God for the semi-periodic checks our Railway police force conducts. Rolling a baton in one hand he understood the situation and took the man to task.
'Jasti badbad something something..is all I could understand.
The commuter man didn't look too happy with an English vocabulary throwing middle-aged woman and a pot-bellied pandu rounding up his day when the poor man must have slogged it out in some dilapidated office building in South Mumbai. For a moment I felt sorry for him. He slowly walked out. I watched him through the window. He picked up his handkerchief which seemed no cleaner than before and walked away to the next bogie to try his luck. A dirtier hanky might fetch him a seat I thought as people would be reluctant to touch it. Hmm..
Funny but incredible India it is.
