Riding the Mumbai Metro

As an escalator levitates you from the concourse of Versova Metro Station (hallelujah!), a charming female voice begs leave to inform you that the train to Ghatkopar will depart from platform number one. Before she has concluded her bulletin or you have reached the platform, the train, of course, departs. Welcome to the Mumbai Metro.

Check out your co-passengers: aspiring film actors, aspiring soap actors, aspiring short film actors, aspiring theatre actors, aspiring ad film actors, and one uncle who also happens to be Gosling-fit. Another rake arrives, the doors hiss open and you step into Narnia. Mind the gap.

The air-conditioning is so Eskimo that three toes immediately fall off and your testicles huddle closer for warmth. Gliding on wings of a million ball bearings, you draw into DN Nagar, which is really Indian Oil Nagar, but boo-hoo, whatchu’ gonna do, it’s so comfy, it’s so cool, the hills are alive with the sound of music and rivulets of perspiration have frozen into glaciers of ice, and you’re at Azad Nagar.

Here is where we meet. If you’re sitting in my seat – yes, my seat – I will scowl at you. I have offered my sweat and tears to the Metro, suffering through years and light-years of oxygen-laden dust and traffucked diversions while its builders played inky-pinky-ponky to pick a deadline for completion. Since I contracted both malaria and dengue in that eon, I like to think my blood was offered too.

My Metro has no beggars, no salesmen, no door mafia, and no fourth seat. What it does have is joint families attempting to fit in a single selfie, couples leaning against the sign that implores them not to lean against the door, and a sugar-high kid, hinged to the pole, running round and round and round until the train stops at Andheri and hush-a bush-a we all fall down.

A crowd awaits, and we brace for a scrum. But – hallelujah deux! – commuters have arrayed themselves in an impenetrable battle formation – The Queue – and everybody files in and out with few casualties. Meanwhile, a trembling granny holds up the escalator by refusing to board the moving stairway to hell, while her family attempts to convince her that at Andheri, there are no steps. Which there aren’t.

The train begins to ascend even higher into civilian airspace and you expect the snacks trolley to appear any minute now. Instead, we soar gloriously over a flyover above an arterial road and into the space station of Magicbricks Western Express Highway. WEH is a halt; Paschim Drutgati Mahamarg is a pilgrimage site. Prostrate yourself before the ticker displaying per square foot rates of all the real estate you can’t afford (Napean Sea Road 62127 3 per cent ?, Kalyan 6041 6 per cent ?).

Next up is Chakala (JB Nagar), which poses existential questions: are we in JB Nagar or Chakala or neither or both, why is the ladies compartment demarcated by a solitary sagging ribbon, and can we have this beautiful beast of a Metro take us all the way to Alibaug, please and thank you? Metro: Andheri/Ghatkopar; Eurotunnel: England/France.

It is faster to walk from Chakala to Airport Road than buy tokens, clear security, wait for a train…all this to reach a spot that is over a kilometre away from the airport. The road itself has five-star hotels on both sides and footpaths only on one. Skip this and proceed to Marol Naka.

You must be exhausted after sitting in a frigid cocoon for 14 whole minutes. Poor you. Would you care to freshen up in the cloakroom? A scantily clad handmaiden will dispense papyrus towels after you’re done. No she won’t, but Metro loos are very clean.

At Saki Naka, the opulent suites of the Holiday Inn next to the station have a wonderful view of slums. At Asalpha – which sounds like a flammable compound, but isn’t – these favelas are on hilltops. Hardly anyone gets on or off at Jagruti Nagar, so of course they built massive balconies from which you can watch jumbo jets land.

This is where we all shuffle to our feet to burst out the door at Ghatkopar and plunge down the stairs to spend 49 seconds less in the exit queue before we charge to be first in line at the railway’s Automatic Ticket Vending Machine that is out of order.

In a few years, Metros will cover the city, Mumbai will become Gotham and intrepid townies will venture out on suburban Metro expeditions to explore the mysterious charms of Shimpoli and Ovaripada. Amen.

 — By arrangement with TheCityStory.com