It's Just Dadar.
A day spent at Dadar Suburban Railway Station and you begin to question yourself..."Just how important getting on to a local train can be??". People start running alongside the train as soon as it enters the station. The adventurers on the foot board swing sideways, with less than half of one foot still on the train, holding the nearest window grill with one hand and the water-conduit on top of the entrances with the other, to allow people getting off and on. Within milliseconds of the train stopping a hoard of people just gush in irrespective of whether the alighters have finished or not...and in that small instance a train that looked way too full for any more people to put even a foot in somehow fits in as many more! (This whole exercise would also be accompanied by a particularly vicious and scary sound as if a million hoofed animals were scrambling for their lives). Incredible.
One really can put some logic to the fact that people really are desperate. To get back home in time in Mumbai where commute kills possibly all the time one could have for oneself, their kids, families...in a city where everyone is scrambling to make ends meet...all this mad rush, it is faintly understandable. But the point is...the madness is not just limited those few hours when everyone is scrambling home. Most any time of the day, irrespective of the fact that trains move fairly frequently and most of them are quite empty so as to accomodate all and many more of the commuters during those off hours...come Dadar and the sound of hoofs is still there and you'd still see the mad rush. People would start running alongside the train and hop on to it as if this was the last train of their lives! People would still rush to cross the railway-tracks to catch that one local lest they become 3 minutes late!
Maybe it's really a matter of habit. Its just the way we are expected to behave, in a given set of circumstances. Talk about Indian bad habits and we HAVE to become defensive. Praise the beauty of a city / country in fornt of us we HAVE to go "Oh but India / my city has better...". Come Dadar...we HAVE to get on, on the train first...even if doesn't really matter.
It's just Dadar.
A day spent at Dadar Suburban Railway Station and you begin to question yourself..."Just how important getting on to a local train can be??". People start running alongside the train as soon as it enters the station. The adventurers on the foot board swing sideways, with less than half of one foot still on the train, holding the nearest window grill with one hand and the water-conduit on top of the entrances with the other, to allow people getting off and on. Within milliseconds of the train stopping a hoard of people just gush in irrespective of whether the alighters have finished or not...and in that small instance a train that looked way too full for any more people to put even a foot in somehow fits in as many more! (This whole exercise would also be accompanied by a particularly vicious and scary sound as if a million hoofed animals were scrambling for their lives). Incredible.
One really can put some logic to the fact that people really are desperate. To get back home in time in Mumbai where commute kills possibly all the time one could have for oneself, their kids, families...in a city where everyone is scrambling to make ends meet...all this mad rush, it is faintly understandable. But the point is...the madness is not just limited those few hours when everyone is scrambling home. Most any time of the day, irrespective of the fact that trains move fairly frequently and most of them are quite empty so as to accomodate all and many more of the commuters during those off hours...come Dadar and the sound of hoofs is still there and you'd still see the mad rush. People would start running alongside the train and hop on to it as if this was the last train of their lives! People would still rush to cross the railway-tracks to catch that one local lest they become 3 minutes late!
Maybe it's really a matter of habit. Its just the way we are expected to behave, in a given set of circumstances. Talk about Indian bad habits and we HAVE to become defensive. Praise the beauty of a city / country in fornt of us we HAVE to go "Oh but India / my city has better...". Come Dadar...we HAVE to get on, on the train first...even if doesn't really matter.
It's just Dadar.
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