Reflections of Passions

Mumbaikars would vouch for the fact that the city's landscape is incomplete without the taxis. More so because it is a known fact that Mumbai cabbies are an institution by themselves. Mumbaikars would be lying if they say they don't prefer the city's new taxis over the battle-weary yellow-and-black Fiat taxis. Recently, my friend ran into a cabbie of one such Fiat who looked on bemusedly after a bevy of beauties rejected his taxi in favour of an Alto. The rejected cabbie spoke with apparent hurt about the "phoren taxi" craze. He mentioned a man with two children and wife preferred to wait at the Marine Drive promenade at around 1 am on a December night than hail the only two Fiat taxis at the stand. As an hour ticked by, the man ventured into the angry cabbie saying he wanted to go to Bandra and the cabbie flatly refused by citing that he had a prior booking. To cut the long story short, the cabbie said his passengers, who trooped out at around 2:30 a.m., offered ...

Compared to chaos of Mumbai's suburbs, Navi Mumbai's neatly divided into nodes and sectors. But these too need some getting used to, as was evident in this case. At Belapur CBD, a middle-aged man in distress was recently seen asking every other passerby for directions to an address in "Sector 2" to deliver a fairly large parcel. Apparently, he had spent a better part of the morning literally going around in circles in the sector. Finally, he approached an autorickshaw driver for help. After looking at the address, the driver immediately said that he must have confused "11" as in the Sector 11 for the Roman numeral II. Such confusion is routine in Navi Mumbai, shrugged the seasoned driver. The man hopped on to the auto and in a few minutes, the parcel was delivered to the right address.

An enterprising urchin caught the attention of female commuters on a Churchgate-bound local recently when he started mouthing Bollywood dialogues each time someone to spoke to him. When a commuter asked the boy to alight, as "men" aren't allowed in the compartment, he announced, "Abhi toh mere khelne-kudne ke din hain. Bada ho jaaunga tab rok tok lagana" (These are my days to have fun. Stop me when I grow up)." As commuters giggled, he looked around when smiled like a veteran actor. When someone threatened to report him to the authorities and warned that he could get beaten up by cops, the boy dramatically stood with one hand firmly on his waist and said, "Waise mard ko dard nahin hota (Men don't cry)." The final gem tumbled out as the train was leaving a station and a commuter had to run some distance to catch it. Our young hero cried out, "Aise toh aadmi life mein doich time bhaagta hain. Olympic ka race ho, ya phir police ka case ho (A...

So much of Mumbai and its typical "isms" be discovered in those black-bodied, yellow-topped moving things. Just like India lives in its villages, some part of Mumbai definitely lives in its taxis. Savour this. On a trip from Churchgate to CST, you ask the cabbie to turn left before Flora Fountain. But he tells you, "No, the Flora Fountain route is shorter. I have done the ARD." I wondered what ARD meant. The pace of Mumbai is such, it doesn't take long to decipher that he means R&D. Then, another day, you are returning from a gastronomic journey to Mohammed Ali Road. And, there's this one cabbie who wants to go home. Nevertheless, he will drop you at CST first. High on kebabs and nihari, a friend gets chatting with the cabbie. Asks him if it's his girlfriend who called when his mobile rings. On being told that they are waiting for him at home, the cabbie wants to know what he will eat for dinner. "Whatever has been cooked." When we reached ...

A rush hour is generally that part of the day when traffic congestion on roads and crowding in public transport is at its highest. The rush hour in Tokyo, Japan has about 3000 passengers packed in a 10-car train and about 100,000 passengers generally transported in an hour, which makes it one of the most congested railway networks in the world. It is a slice of Tokyo's rush hour that is played out in Thane for a few hours every morning and evening. A row of young railway policemen and women queue up along the narrow foot overbridge that lies at the Kalyan-end of Thane station, virtually splitting up the bridge into two. As soon as a train chugs in (in the morning, trains from Kalyan and in the evenings, those arriving from CST), the policemen and women brace themselves for their task: Pushing the crowds to the exit. It made me wonder whether if these policemen knew that their task has been derived from the famed "pushers" of Tokyo's overcrowded underground railway sta...

When two male French tourists unknowingly accompanied their two women counterparts inside the ladies' compartment of the CST bound local the previous Tuesday, an Indian woman politely pointed out to one of the white women, "Excuse me, this is ladies". To which, the female tourist, who couldn't comprehend the statement was indirectly meant for her male friends, shot back, in heavily accented English, "But I am lady, right?" The Indian passenger then had to point towards the men who were hanging out near the door and blissfully taking in the wet landscape. "Next station, that side", she said this time, stressing on every word as if she herself were French. Of course, it worked. While the men got off, the women stayed back, making the otherwise sluggish "slow" journey to CST quite a memorable one. For starters, they had almost every female passenger in the compartment, including the one who got rid of their friends, blushing when they starte...

A short fifteen minute drive in any direction will show an individual that if Mumbai's carriageways were better managed, half of Mumbai's flyovers would be unnecessary. One badly/wrongly/double-parked tempo or taxi throws the brake on a whole line of fast-moving traffic. A garbage bin jutting out an angle, or a foot away from the sidewalk, instead of being flush with the kerbside, creates the same obstruction and gives trucks and cabs to use the "cordoned off" space as legitimate parking. A temporary BMC shed for repair or construction is soon joined by a snaking line of corrugated iron, which becames permanently long after the municipal gangs have moved out, leaving a pile of never-removed debris in their wake. And now, they saw off monsoon-precarious branches of roadside trees and leave them to rot on the carriageway, creating a literal logjam. I am not even going to mention the potholes, because I have fallen into them a long while ago. How easy it would be to smoo...

You are full of questions in a distant land. But one question that haunts you in the first few days in a new place is 'right or left?' No, it's not about your political leanings. It is a simple question that a cabbie might ask you once he senses that you are new to the place and wants to test his instinct by asking if he needs to turn right or left to reach your destination. You would try and say, "take the shortest possible route", confirming the taxiwallahs doubts and making his day. My sister made an interesting observation about how to tackle this question. "When a taxiwallah in Bombay asks 'left or right', always choose the left," she advised.

Any visitor to Mumbai is fasscinated by its rail network. Each day, the city sees thousands of people make their way into the city from the remotest corners of the country. Not all of them are well-to-do or educated, but unlike in other parts of India, most buy a ticket before they board a Mumbai local train. The trouble starts when they cannot distinguish between a first class and a general compartment. Last week, two young men from Bhubaneshwar found themselves hauled up by a ticket checker on a Central Railway train. It was apparent that they were not intending to break the law. Their demeanour suggested that it was a genuine mistake. Probably in Mumbai for the first time, they had rushed into the first train compartment they saw empty. The ticket checker had no choice, but to read out the rules to them. Once off the train, he pointed out that the compartment clearly said, "First Class". The duo confessed that neither could read. They also admitted that to them the entire ...

Minus the rush, Sundays are a bit boring on a local train. One young lady who got on a Churchgate-bound local train at Borivli, though, more than managed to perk things up. Sipping casually on what seemed to be a bottle of cola, she was calm till the train left Andheri. She then decided to take a walk in the compartment, which was followed by a stint of hanging from the pole at the door. Soon, she upgraded her moves by hopping on top of the nearly empty seats in the ladies compartment. Taken aback, all other commuters except my curious sister made a dash for the door. Our lady, pleased at being given the entire field to play, sipped some more "cola" and popped in some mysterious powder from her pocket and turned her attention to the handbills plastered all over. She fished out a pen from her shirt and scratched them. The ''instant remedy'' tantriks taken care of, she began dancing in joy singing, "Chalo chalo, full night jaagenge, party karenge, party kar...

Mumbai local trains are an interesting place to observe all kinds of uncanny, bizarre and wacky stories taking place. Life is nothing less than a drama, especially if you travel by commuter trains. They surely attract more than its share. Due to its share of things and regardless of whether people like them or hate them, they're still known as the lifeline of Bombay. A young thirty something tall man boarded the train from Wadala. His fellow passengers noticed that he was carrying a gun. His fellow passengers slowly decided to strike up a conversation but our hero chose to remain silent and asked them to move on. On this note, a suspicious but alert passenger decided to call and alert the railway police. Thinking that the man could be a terrorist, the city's crack commando team and Bombay's police team were pressed into action. They succeeded in ''neutralizing'' the suspect and alas, their joy was short-lived. The man in question turned out to be a bodyguard...

All scientific research suggests that tempers are likely to be frayed when ten men are packed into a space meant for one. Therefore, it was no surprise that a heated argument broke out in a Vashi train when a group of newly boarded passengers tried to make their way from Wadala in and another bunch wanted to fight its way out. Matters seemed to be settling down once the train started with a jerk, but the two factions were still measuring each other up for a fight. It was then that a timid old man squealed from under the crowd, "Each one of you try to move by just a millimetre. That will help." The whole compartment burst out laughing, and needless to say the fight was over before it began.

My cousin was recently a witness to prejudice on the city's lifeline (read: the commuter trains), twice in a single week. Unaware of the compartments on trains, some obviously poor and illiterate rural families accidentally entered the first-class compartment on the western line, only to receive disgusted looks from passersby. Many of them were quickly shooed away. Cut to the next day in a second class ladies compartment on the harbour line. A group of four Germans--three women and a man--boarded the compartment from Mumbai CST at about 10 pm. They were greeted with a wide smile. To top it, the man was allowed to stay on after the quartet pleaded that the general compartment was too crowded.

Being a cop must be the toughest--and the most boring--job on New Year's eve. While the world parties, you're stuck on the side of a busy road, checking for drunk drivers. On Thursday evening, the city's cops made their job a bit more fun by converting their check posts into roadside discos. At the post under the Byculla bridge, ''Happy New Year, Don't Drink and Drive'' was spelt out in flashing lights. At the crossing very close to Famous Studios in Mahalakshmi, a fuchsia banner splashed the same message in funky alphabets. The policemen marched about, swinging their incandescent batons that looked like strobe lights criss-crossing a dance floor. The only thing they didn't do was break into a jig in the middle of the road.

Recently, at dusk, a traffic policeman stopped my friend's rented car on one of the city's busy suburban station roads. He said that the car had been going in the wrong direction on a one way street. The driver pointed out that there was no prominent sign indicating the one way, and the fact that BEST buses were allowed in both directions added to the confusion. Insisting there was a sign, the cop added that only he--no motorist and not even his own boss--could decide whether the driver had erred or not. He demanded her licence, but she refused to hand it over, fearing that she wouldn't get it back. My Mumbai-born and bred colleague was getting late for an engagement. So she got out of the car and tried to mediate the stand-off in Marathi. Pleading guilt on her chauffeur's behalf, she said the woman had driven carefully all day, and that the violation was a genuine mistake and not a disregard for traffic rules. Shrewdly taking the cue, the driver pledged never to repeat...

Mumbai's cabbies are an institution unto themselves is a well-known fact. Sometimes their reasoning seems rooted in some parallel universe whose logic defies mere human understanding. Recently, when a friend alighted from the cab, a driver asked for Rs. 98. She happened to have a tariff card in her purse and pointed out that she owed only Rs. 89. Bristled with indignation at the implication that he had tried to rip her off, the cabbie said, "Madam, if I really wanted to cheat, why would I jack up the fare by only eight rupees? I would have asked for a thousand!" Since my friend was in a hurry, she paid him Rs. 90 and desisted from pointing out two flaws in his argument. One, the argument was nine rupees, not eight and two, a cabbie would need exceptional luck to score that one-in-ten-million chance of finding a passenger foolish enough to cough up Rs. 1000 for a 10 kilometre ride. The cabbie failed to convince my friend that he had made a genuine mistake, but he did provi...

Recently, three young women on their way home to Goregaon mall felt it would be unsafe to walk the short stretch, considering that it was almost midnight and, incidentally, they were being followed by two men on a bike. They quickly stopped a rickshaw and asked the driver to take them home which was just at the end of the dark, lonely patch of road. The driver though developed cold feet at the idea. He refused despite repeated assurances that several other autorickshaws are parked there for the night. The trio though managed to jump inside the rickshaw, unmindful of his protests, "How will I go back from there? What if someone murders me?" The only assurance which eventually gave him some strength came from one of the girls who offered to drop him back to the main road after he dropped the others home. Holding on to this promise, the driver reached the destination and perhaps also a realisation--the road was not as scary as he had imagined.

A photographer from Delhi recently had a shocking experience while travelling from Churchgate to Bandra. As her cab waited at a traffic signal, her cellphone was snatched from her hand. She asked the cabbie to wait and started following the man in the narrow bylanes of Bandra, as it happens in the movies. As expected, the man managed to disappear. Dejected, she headed back. The next morning, when she went to lodge a complaint at the Khar police station, she was pleasantly surprised by the treatment she got. The cop on duty turned out to be a lover of photography, who too had done a course at the J.J. School of Arts. After chatting with him for a while, she stepped out with a happy feeling, "The city is not so bad after all," she told one of my friends.

It was the day when television channels were trying to desperately rhyme their breaking news headline with two words: lifeline and pipeline . Last week, when a bridge fell on a Kalyan bound train, Central Railway passengers cursed their fate as the rare Thane train threatened to run till Kurla and then jump over to the Harbour Line and take them to Vashi, before returning to Thane. But the happy-go-lucky Dombivli bound crowd of aunties, young bankers and others who had met each other for the first time, chose to make the most of this 100 minute journey. They volunteered to share seats and hold bags, laughed at the crowd in the First Class compartment at 7 pm, tried hard to pronounce Ghansoli and even celebrated their rare view of the '' awesome'' Vashi station. " It looks better than an airport ," the most vocal of the aunties remarked and everyone followed it up with praises for the " lighting" , "highway" and the "lack of people...

We like to think of Mumbai as Maximum City--a city bursting with people, heart, smarts, all that. Not on every count, I learnt this quite recently. A work-worn employee of a PR firm located in Tardeo was heading back home to Mazgaon last week when cabbie after aggravating cabbie refused him a ride. He walked the length of the road right up to Mumbai Central station, where cabbies are usually quite accomodating. He was refused by at least six. Then, almost like a dream, a stranger on a motorbike slowed down and asked him if he required a lift. The PR executive jumped on before the rider reconsidered, and the two rolled forward. He was silently congratulating himself on his luck, and congratulating this city for the goodness and open-heartedness of its people, when they reached the said destination, and the PR executive unsaddled with a grateful heart... only to have that kind Mumbaikar ask him for the cab fare he'd have coughed ip had he taken a taxi instead. Grumbling, and having l...