More on Commuting....

More on commuting. By the by this blog is turing into a commuting special of some sort, don’t you think?

Yesterday I was deeply into Salman Rushdie’s “Enchantress of Florence” and lost all track of time. Stations came and went, the rain turned to drizzle and then back to rain. Suddenly it descended a decline and I thought it was Wadala. I gathered raincoat and queued up to disembark. People weren’t moving, as they do when the train comes to Wadala. I struggled a dying man’s struggle before giving up. The wall of flesh in front of me wouldn’t move.

They all were staring at me, not knowing what was wrong. I asked a man which station it was. “Mahim,” he said.

Oh! So that was it. It was Mahim, not Wadala, which was two stations away. But the way I was stared at, grrrr, I got a funny sort of creepy feeling contrasting with the goody feeling I described here.

And then, thinking of the tykes one meets on one’s daily commute, what do you say to the guy who uses your head as a reading table, and the guy who pokes his book at your nose, and the guy who carries a big backpack, and tears my shirt to shreds as he swivels around inside the packed train.