Up and down in Mumbai

Mumbai, the big city of India, teaches you something new every day. The last six weeks have been full of hopes rising up and hopes falling down, traveling up and down, moving up and down and looking up and down.

For the most part of last three weeks, the small talk has revolved around the delayed onset of monsoons. Wiping beads of sweat off their foreheads, people glance up at the sky and shake their heads down in disbelief that rains have beaten them in to the sultry mid-summer. Kids though too happy to go back to school, also probably wonder when it will be called off for a day or two when the waters enshroud the roads and bring productivity of the city down.

My second day in Mumbai was spent learning firsthand the vicissitudes of life on a ‘local’. My local batch mates from IIMA-PGPX had planned a meeting, it so happened, on the day after I landed here. Living with a few relatives until I moved into the company guest house, I was left to figure out how I could negotiate the forty kilometer distance from uptown Borivali to downtown Colaba. The first evening I watched trains at Borivali station cough out people in a hurry and suck in people in a hurry. Two and a half decades back, as a kid, watching trains was apparently an obsession with me. After work, my parents would take me to the nearest level crossing where we would watch trains until they got bored or I stopped jumping with joy, or both. Watching what was going on in the Mumbai local station did not bring up any of those fond memories. Anyway, I had a task to do the next day and my wife’s cousin and uncle had one of their own that day. They had to ensure that their esteemed (tch! tch!) relative was well taken care of and trained enough to travel safely up and down the busy chest of the big city. The next day, while I had no problem getting to Churchgate, on the way back, I learned not to underestimate statements made with respect to the local. I had been warned 'let the Virar local go, you have to take the Borivali local'. But, I thought that warning was too much to be taken seriously at midnight. The Virar passengers take it to their heart that someone would take a Virar local to Borivali when the latter has a train all to itself, last stop Borivali. And they showed this to me the hard way. The carriage full of people standing on each other’s feet, would only allow people in and refused to let me out. (Stepping out and into locals is not how it works in India's city that never sleeps) Jumping out of a train slowing gathering speed, I learned it is never too late (read as never too restful) on a Mumbai local, time of the night notwithstanding.

Lifts, the ones that take you up and down, of all kinds is another thing that one needs to get used to in the Big Apple of India. Tall buildings are not built to impress; they are built to sustain. Sustain the ever growing population of the city that shelters (or not) the fourteen million aspirants and the arrived. But unlike many other cities, Mumbai had learnt many decades ago that it needed high rises. Hence, the variety of lifts in the variety of buildings. The modern one in our office is not always as predictable as the old collapsible-grill kind in the guest house building. The former, though computerized (ahem!) has a mind of its own. Back at the guest house, one has to remember that the lift is not automatic. And this learning did not come to me automatically. One evening, a bunch of kids rushed in shouting ‘wait, lift, uncle, wait’ (or was it ‘wait, lift-uncle, wait’?). I smiled and opened the door. The little people took over the charge of lift operations. They pressed some number and I said ‘Six please’. The little girl did not respond. So, I looked down at her and said ‘Six please’. A little irritated, she looked up at me and said ‘Uncle, this is not automatic. You press Six after we go out’.

Like I said, Mumbai (small or big) teaches you something every day.