The City, it’s trains, my guilt etc.

 

Mumbai.

We all came to this city from various parts of the country. I can though claim to come from one of the farthest place which makes sure that I have to think twice before I go home which is actually a pain. So when we came and finally we were placed at Wadala, the first feeling that came to my mind was anger. Why so far away from my institute?

Since it was useless to complain I calmed myself and so did others (though not all) we finally got used to Wadala. Of course we all got busy with studies (especially quantum mechanics deserves a special mention). Soon came all the assignments, mid-semester etc.

And we finally got the hang of Mumbai. The city of dreams for millions and I wonder how many can realize those dreams. The city has one great communal element in it. Of course I need not mention it. They are none but the local trains of Mumbai. Thousands of commuters travel by these trains and arguably they are the lifeline of this city without which the city will come to a halt. But it is also in these same local trains that we find the real Mumbai. This too of course everybody knows. I will just try to describe it.

A good friend of mine once told me that if I wanted to know the real Mumbai then it is the suburbs where we must live. I think what he said was really true. TIFR for once did a good job and gave us the taste of real Mumbai. They kept us in Wadala.

Due to some of my personal engagements I had to travel in the locals a lot. I don’t know whether you all feel the way or not but whenever I hop into one of the trains I get a strange feeling. I cannot describe it exactly but the feeling actually connects me to all those who are commuting together with me making me feel one of them and making the statement true that the real Mumbai is found in those trains. It actually feels like that we all are covered by the same fog everywhere except that the fog lies inside the heart.

The travels have revealed a lot to me about the people travelling in it. I was once travelling on the Harbor line to Wadala. The man who was sitting on the place near where I was standing was rummaging his pockets. Having nothing to do I was just watching him and trying to get a clue of what he was finding. Finally came out a fifty rupees note. The thing he was looking for.  I suddenly realized that it was the only amount that he had in his pocket. That man surely had a family to feed, children’s to be send to schools and what not. And there he was with only fifty rupees in his pocket. And I was there with more than a thousand rupees in my pocket thinking about what to buy next. To get out of the guilty feeling that somehow I was responsible for such a state of affairs I quietly moved to another place. I soon got down, a remorseless man, buying whatever I was thinking of buying; with a thought that how could I alone bring a change? After all I am not responsible for such state of affairs.

Such guilt never dies though and you yourself must have experienced it. It comes back to me when I refuse to give a coin to the children who beg on the trains. When I see the people sleeping on the footpath at night while going to Wadala by the bus. When I see an old bullock pulling a kerosene oil tank with an old man sitting on it. When I walk below the foot over bridge at Wadala station and a train is passing by. When I see a fruit seller near the same station not only selling fruits but also massaging the feet of his ailing father by rubbing oil on it.

I finally realize that there is no escape from the guilt. To be free you should not feel it in the first place.

So the city of dreams finally made me realize all the guilt within me. It made me see through myself. How I have changed all over the years from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to selfishness and much more.

But of course dear readers(whether you think or not that reading this article was a waste of time) don’t take my words to be the ultimate truth. As Pamuk has rightly said in his novel ‘The Black Book’

“at the end of the day there was nothing to be gained by reminding people that everything that had been ever written, even the greatest and the most authoritative texts in the world, were about dreams, not real life, dreams conjured up by words.”

Maybe what I thought about what I saw was just a dream. I hope so.

 

 

Dipankar Nath

First Year,

Research Scholar

DHEP,TIFR