After being born and brought up in Mum­bai, I left it in 1997. Over the years, many peo­ple have asked me about why I shifted from Mum­bai to Pune. It is time I wrote about it.

For me, life in Mum­bai was all about trav­el­ing through the sub­ur­ban local trains. The first time I started trav­el­ing alone on the local trains was when I was 10 years old. I trav­elled from Ghatkopar to Charni Road to attend Yoga Classes dur­ing the sum­mer vaca­tion. I remem­ber even as a child, instead of sit­ting on seats inside the women’s com­part­ment, I used to stand in the door. I remem­ber some elder women scold­ing me for doing that as I was just a small kid.

After grow­ing up a bit, next set of mem­o­ries are of trav­el­ling through the local train in the early morn­ing at 4:30am to attend “Agar­wal Classes” dur­ing the 11th/12th grade. By then, I had a “First Class” “sea­son pass”. Even at 4:30am in the morn­ing, there was no place to sit, so I trav­elled stand­ing in the door. Life con­tin­ued as the years flew past.

By this time, after trav­el­ling so much by stand­ing in the door, I knew every pil­lar and obsta­cle that came too close to the door as the train passes it. There was a story asso­ci­ated with each pil­lar and obsta­cle – how a friend’s friend had his head smashed by it, and so on. I could never travel “inside”, as I needed fresh air, so always trav­eled stand­ing in the door.

A strong mem­ory comes from col­lege days, when I was the youngest mem­ber of an ama­teur Astro­nom­i­cal Group, ‘Khagol Man­dal’ in Sion. We used to travel to Van­gani for full-night sky obser­va­tions. In order to carry our huge tele­scopes, we needed to board a Kar­jat train at Vic­to­ria Ter­mi­nus (VT). Imag­ine doing that, when each seat in the train is booked using a hand­ker­chief well before it comes to a stop on its way in, 10 min­utes before it starts on it’s way back.

After that, came the work­ing years. Trav­el­ling to VT every day for work. 9:51 was my reg­u­lar fast train from Ghatkopar to VT. Avoid­ing watch­ing peo­ple from hut­ments defe­cat­ing along­side the train tracks was a reg­u­lar rou­tine to which I was very well accus­tomed to by then.

By this time, I was a proud “Mum­baiker”. After the 1993 blasts, I remem­ber get­ting goose-pimples and swelling in pride the next day when going to work, see­ing bill­boards that pro­claimed in huge let­ters: “Fri­day: Bomb blasts. Sat­ur­day: 93% atten­dance in Offices”.

Then, some­thing hap­pened. I was once trav­el­ing in a train stand­ing in the first door behind the driver’s end. I liked to watch the sur­round­ings go by from that “first per­son” point of view. Between Sion and Chem­bur, a girl, scream­ing, tried to jump in front of the train. Some­one pulled her back at the last instant. It is a mem­ory I will never forget.

On a dif­fer­ent day, some years later, I tried to board a fast train from Dadar for Ghatkopar. I could not get in, even in the “First Class”. I became des­per­ate, and decided to be adven­tur­ous. I climbed the win­dow, with my fin­gers on the rain chan­nel at the top of the car­riage. Yes, I trav­elled from Dadar to Ghatkopar, for about 30 min­utes, hold­ing on to dear life, while my fin­gers and hands were in excru­ci­at­ing pain, while the train was hurtling along at 85 kmph. An unfor­get­table experience.

And then on a usual day to work, I was wait­ing for my daily 9:51 at Ghatkopar. The train could be seen in the dis­tance, approach­ing the sta­tion, when it sud­denly stopped. Some­one sui­ci­dal jumped ahead of it and was killed. So the train was delayed. Does any­one think about the life of Mumbai’s local train dri­vers? They face such sit­u­a­tions all the time. And when­ever it hap­pens, they’re not able to sleep at night.

My response? Like the innu­mer­able num­ber of other pas­sen­gers wait­ing for the train, my response was of irri­ta­tion and anger at get­ting delayed for work. I was not con­cerned about the loss of human life, my only con­cern was about get­ting delayed to work. My dehu­man­iza­tion was com­plete. When I later thought about it, I decided that I needed to leave Mum­bai. I did and have never regret­ted it. I am a human again, and value human life the way I wasn’t able to, when I lived in Mumbai.