Mumbai. City. Obsession. Catharsis.

.... and this dark secret love will thy life destroy.
- Blake

Traveling by train every single day makes you a sensitive and a selectively sanitized person. Once you've elbowed, pinched, stamped your way into the compartment; squeezed your butt on the fourth seat next to the corporately dressed lady (with tarty red lipstick), with immense sense of pride - you have duly become a Mumbikar (or a mumbling Bombayite).

A true Mumbaikar travels in trains, the class doesn't really matter. The daily commute is often claimed to be strenuous, suffocating, friendly etc., it can be all of the above and none. But what it can not not be is uneventful! Every single day, you will either witness a fight, a business deal, a lesbian kiss, a death, a swollen jaw, hickeys on necks/backs/ arms, frowns (multiples of them), people reading an array of books from regional literature to Russian porn, breakfast parties, sorry tales, consistent adjustment of breasts within the bra or the blouse, or women sleeping carefree with their mouth's wide open.

Mumbai, as it is a city of trains, it is a city of sewage or gutters as they are fondly called. Drama King often calls Mumbaikars as 'we are all in the gutters, mademoiselle; only some of us are staring at the sky and dreaming of the stars.' The city without much surprise has more than a dozen hundred gutters, most of them are rivulets from the largest river called Mithi (read: sweet, small). Once upon a time, in a fairy tale Byzantium, this lean water source was the only source of fresh flowing water. Now it is a stink line - the pulmonary vein amongst mineral water arteries. The living symbol of Mumbai's health.

The river is at the mercy of monsoon to wash away the clogged plastic, steel, and diffusers into the ever embracing Arabian sea. The citizenry is ruthless to these gutters and swamps: it has allowed too many people to survive suicides in them, too many have thrown away enemy carcasses or flowers offered to domesticated 4-inch gods. The gutters are malleable warriors fighting survival, squeezing through the clefts and the breeches left by builders who conspiring to sink the city. Gutters are like people who sit on the forth seat, grow iceberg lettuce using the same water, packaging them in polythene to sell in train compartments to seemingly rich women obsessed with health food.

Gutter's and gutter dwellers celebrate survival; of not allowing plastic or carbon mono oxide to choke their existence, or stop the steel fringe sculptures from the blown-up train compartments, from going to work the next day. Prima facie, Mumbai is a city of the young and bold, on the inside it's a body infested with over-working, multiplying carcinogenic cells ... the city is dying, gradually sighing out, wreaking and lying. Like a dying woman, it has become exotic, historical and wanting to gulp a cup of hot chai at a go - it is fighting against time, against death.

Mumbai's losing it's taste, it's mind was always a wanderer; now it's pulling-up the keel, raising the mast and girding to sail in an iceboat.

Bonding

Women rarely bond; they may converse, ramble or critique but not really bond, they never slide under a skin. It is often a 'She and I', identification, comparison, complain, etc. Rarer are the silent understanding of the other person - (I would often conclude that because the gender is so obsessed with the opposite one they never see themselves in any light). Nonetheless, we all have had chats with other people whilst travelling on the local train. I have had conversations while reading a book - a hangover from college that I refuse to shun. It often starts with a question, remark or compliment; and I do my best to read 'intelligent' books with a Booker, Nobel, Penguin, Frankfurt backing them (some justification for my choice of books). If you are reading a Sheldon or a Forsyth, they'd look at you and turn away and if you are reading kitch the *sigh* is just not ignorable!

Yesterday, after a finishing Unaccustomed Earth, I picked-up a Mills and Boon 'The Executive's Surprise Baby' (honestly, they aren't as ridiculous as their reputation), a joy that I have very recently discovered. As I comfortably snuggled into the tote, half way through the book and blaring Roja music; bevy of irate women got in, urging everyone to make more space. In that bustle, I happen to notice that the girl beside me was reading as well. I did not bother to check what she as reading as my protagonist had just discovered her fiance's infidel nature, and she being 7 months pregnant - I knew there would be a major twist in the next paragraph.

She politely made space for me to come closer in order to allow the lady a comfortable fourth seat. Then she spoke
She: "Mills and Boon, you too?"
Me: (jostling with the guilt of being caught) "Ya, I know it's trash!"
She: Ya, but it's just time-pass, sometimes it's okay (certainly re-negotiating with her Id and Super ego.)
Me: Ya. This one isn't that bad.
She: Yes, mine is just about okay, as well.

For a brief moment I looked into her eyes and there was something unspeakable, something that was understood. It wasn't the 'Desire series' that incidentally we both were reading. It was something beyond that, an understanding of allowing the pretentious, polite intellectual her raw space. It was a reconciliation with one's primeval yet silent needs. Emptiness fell back in and moments later she alighted, leaving me guessing. How many onion skins does one need to peel before really knowing the other's never expressed desire?

overhearing

Scene: On my way back home, in the train compartment. Aboard two college girls, laughing (not giggling), talking loudly, dragging their speech with an acquired accent. they plonk on the seats, one beside me the other opposite her.

"A- That was sooo Dumb!
B- kmpltetlllllyyy

A- (in nasal voice) I just hope this dammed thing looks good (twisting her fake blond streak).
B- Oh come one- let me do the VJ Anushaa thing (ties her hair with a claw in a perfect twirl, giving the blond streak a classy effect)

A- the compartment is so dead!
(every woman turns only to throw identical dead-pan looks)

A- I have a chocolate!
B- U are supposed to lose weight not gain it!

A- i exercise and i didn't have lunch
B - hey, i may have a fruit- its much more nutritious.

A - Okay! but don't stare at my chocolate.
B- ya, right- you don't stare at my figure."

the approx. weight for A- 55, B- 38-40.

As Drama King says, "Being fat is the crime of the century!"

iPOD Bhajan

I have reiterated that we are in digital times. God, too has become mobile.Earlier there were audio bhajans; yesterday, i saw one that had taken the visual face. A video of some Astha/Sanskriti channel god-man; dancing in a trance like high on a krishna bhajan. [Irrespective of my first thought that he looked like a bihari/ U.P fraud]
What I found intriguing was-- the lady, listening to it and grooving to the rhythm of the bhajan: at 8 am in a super crowded, dark, humid, temperamental first class compartment.

Her trimmed hair gave her a professional 'regular' no fuss look. Her Salwar kameez without dupatta, gold ornaments, her savvy Baggit bag, the iPOD --completed the above-average, affable working class woman. Then why would she resort to obvious looking fraud god man singing a bhajan in karaoke? Can't she read a good book instead?

I am being judgemental; but something in me pinched with sarcasm when i saw her; fuck me: there was no place to sit, not enough air to breath and everyone standing had either their butts or their pubis in your face. [my innate fear is that someone is going to fart in my face someday- precisely why I take an empty train to work and walk in with the canteen boy].

She was enjoying in her trance state, intermittently checking up on stations; smiling at chatty, gossipy, dhokla nibbling women working in RBI.

Her composed gait unrested me, then it dawned that she had made her peace with all the brouhaha around her: she indeed had! And the 'hows' didn't matter at all.