The fragility of our existence stared at me in my face this morning as I was hanging on the footboard of a viciously crowded Mumbai local train. I almost slipped, but thanks to my luck and that angelic aunt who held me up, I’m here typing this and not waiting to be another nugget in tomorrow’s Mumbai newspapers. Posing as the protagonist of the sorry article over which everyone feels pity, and then it is nothing but an archival item, to be forgotten.
The mental investment on the issue of overcrowded trains is so little that there is no necessity to understand the problem or to care. This is because everything keeps going on non-stop until it hits close to home. There are thousands of people travelling in the rush hour from north Mumbai to south, struggling in the compartment. It is an everyday gamble of life and death, the probability of the latter increasing as the population keeps increasing. It is nothing but sheer competition for space. Those who win survive, while the others hang on and hope not to die.
Is this the spirit of Mumbai, as they call it? The city is an infrastructure mess, but yet is at the financial crest. Is it a boon or bane, I wonder.
Owing to the potential to work and earn well, it has successfully invited many people, but it doesn’t have the capability to take in so many. And what is at risk? After every contingency, there is a quiet uproar till the problem is shoved into oblivion. Nothing is done, no efforts are made, even for mere closed-door compartments or increases in the number of train trips.
We all are here to end, that is a said fact, but if the end is in such a way it is a kind of murder happening due to mere negligence, that is sad. It is something that can be prevented just by a little action, a little attention.
After that moment, all I could think was, I may have been irrational considering my priorities where I chose hanging on the train rather than missing many of them for an hour or two, but it certainly shouldn’t ought to be the end. I thought of my mother’s hug that I got this morning and I felt maybe it could be the last, or the conversation that I had with my best friend would be the last.
It was scary. I can’t do anything on the problem as of now, except practise caution and write to our sorry government, but I can certainly now cherish and appreciate my life much more.
asthana.preeti95@gmail.com
