The Mumbai local trains.
This meandering web of locomotives that run through the city is Mumbai’s lifeline and perhaps the biggest part of its identity. Since the Mumbai local trains are such a huge part of an ordinary Mumbaikar’s life and over a million people travel on it every day, there are millions of stories that come out of it. The people who travel on these trains go through the struggles of traveling on it yet always have a weird sense of attachment towards it. We bring to you some of the great stories from the Mumbai local trains which bring out the love affair of the city with its most favored means of transport.
1 I remember funny incident about a man who had boarded the local for Matunga, but accidentally took the wrong local which didn’t stop at the Matunga station. The man got really worried upon realizing his mistake. Watching the man get anxious, a sympathetic co-passenger tried to help him out. This co-passenger had traveled on the same train for six years and knew that just before Martunga station the train slowed down considerably to allow one to de-board.
He told the guy to de-board the train then and to keep on running or he might fall down and hurt himself. When the moment of action came the train slowed down as the co-passenger said and the man got down running at full speed. Such was the speed at which he was running that he almost got ahead of the train and the passengers in the carriages ahead thought he wanted to board the train and so helped him aboard again onlyfor the man to tell them that they had undone what he managed with such difficulty.
