Railway services have been reinstated on our Mumbai locals. And what was possibly our 9:00am-Borivali-Fast, the one to which our blue-collar Mumbaikar set his watch to, could now well be the new 12:00-noon-Chugger! As stated – ‘12:00 to 4:00 pm, train service started for all passengers’ – Mumbai slowly and cautiously inches back into its crazy, frenzied normalcy, one train at a time.

As the lifeblood of our city, Mumbai’s local trains across Mumbai on two principles – a dauntless spirit and the love of all things chaotic. Ask a pre-Covid regular exactly what that entails, and he can enlighten any clueless ignorant Mumbai bourgeois on this everyday meritorious feat… all the while remaining unfazed by a routine that has nothing, if not an underlining method to its madness.

Trains continue to ply up and down, while the burgeoning masses of millions packed each day, morning and evening, in time frames called the rush hour, do so with an impervious disdain and nonchalance. Stuffed like sardines, they perform life-threatening, jaw-dropping feats – much on the lines of skilled acrobats and circus performers. Jumping, swinging, just hanging from rails and handles, doors and other odd protrusions that somehow enable a grip, they cling on to dear life just by the tip of their fingers. Entire journeys made attached to fellow passengers and bodies, expertly risking life and limb, but no sweat there!

Taking a local five times a week, years on end, they set their body clock, mechanisms and life schedules in tangent with the 9:05 or the 9:20, to that exact minute, on the hour, best suited to their schedules. The same follows on the return run – these journeys back and forth, all set to coincide with the appointed hours of their jobs, businesses and employment.

The regularity is comforting and agreeable to a person of habit, yet completely incomprehensible to errant newcomers – that you would be unavoidably squeezed, thrown and bounced! It’s almost like charging into a battlefield unawares and defenceless. With every embarkation or disembarkation upon a sea of the masses, you’re lifted and placed inside the carriage without any bodily effort or strain on your part, almost like floating on a wave that carries you with the tide… your entries and exists marked by the marauding masses, all seeking a fixture into this death-defying serpentine means of travel. It serves as a slipway along which one is gently but firmly launched into the waters of daily business routines.

Invariably, the time of your travel dictates the penetration of familiarity in a sea of washed-out faces. In this ever-evolving world of travel, you soon recognise people whose routines are set to yours. You become that group of regulars that rarely changes and when a new face suddenly appears on that platform minutes prior to the arrival of the train, there is a certain declamatory feel, in and around. Protest ripples all around, like a new bird added in a cage of friendly canaries.

You can imagine the horror when this new companion follows you into your own compartment. Everything’s an unwritten rule here and it’s best to understand quickly enough that people have seniority here too. As any hierarchy, you’ve got to climb the ranks. That place next to the window is long reserved for that able bodied veteran whose only interaction during the entire hour is to glance up from time to time from the pages of his newspaper. Now that exotic feel of that bright new plumage bears heavy for a couple of days following which you learn to recognise the shrug of that shoulder and half-given sign of greeting, morning after morning.

Then there are those sighs of exasperation against a common enemy running late by two minutes, that really changes everything. Bound now by chords of concern and displeasure at the lateness of that train, you realise that your compartment will be over brimming this morning with the spillage of a previously scheduled delayed train. If it is a really buoyant morning, you may even generously consider making room next to you on that already packed berth. The journey, often, is neither too long nor too short, feeling almost like a healthy perambulation along tracks, crowded with fellow commuters all proceeding to their places of work on the same orderly schedule as each other.

It gives one a sense of comforting assurance to be moving among these dependable, dignified people, month after month, knowing there are others who have stuck to their jobs and don’t go gadding around all over the place, seeking greener pastures. The lives of these daily travellers are regulated by the minute hand of a very accurate watch. Also having their paths cross daily, at the same time and same place, each day offers the mellow comfort of familiarity. Then there are those penetrating body odours, sweat and smells that there is just no getting used to!

You soon learn to recognise the tell-tale signs, the mood, pointing to the disposition of your fellow passengers, like that lady seated across you… that vermillion red sari – a definite indicator of the Friday fun she is looking forward to, after office hours or maybe it’s a movie after work with colleagues. Mr. Rao’s gentle dozing (Oh yes! over time, you put names to those faces) next to her is a sure indication of the rough night he’s had. You know the regulars – you recognise them while culling out the rest from that daily dose of overburdening humanity.

Within that compartment for an hour each day, every day, lies a sense of entitlement and belonging. For that one hour, while the world races past you at the speed of those engines, a false sense of calm and peace rocks and lulls you with that calming, rocking motion. Outside, the earth disintegrates into fragments of speed while within there’s nothing but routine and regularity for preserving one’s peace of mind. They make this journey a thousand times over and learn to love it and live it the best they can. They talk in curiously crisp, familiar voices, clipping their words and spitting them out hard and loud, small and quick. While you may lose a sentence or two there are places where the words fall discernible, and quite surprisingly heard over the choo and the chug of that rhythm. They become your friends – these few from that sea of familiarity. Cause after all, you are that friendly canary in that 9:00am local!