Bombay blues

And today the trains stopped.

I took the 5:55 churchgate local after spending a pointless day roaming around with friends in and around juhu barista and the beach.. it was a routine 45 minutes of commuting i faced everyday to get back home to colaba. ..I didnt even have my first class pass yet so i had to squeeze in into second class..

As usual i didnt get a seat till Dadar and i was cursing my day as i had undergone rather drastic versions of the same trial in the morning.. squeezed between a lady i shall call lady A and a kid whom i shall not call anything ..i took out my half read Mumbai mirror and discovered that i hadnt gotten around to doing the crossword yet...i started penning down the first word when i reached Mumbai central..i didnt look up till i'd finished the whole thing..and when i did i saw that the train had stopped at marine lines station.I then proceeded to complete the su-doku and out of sheer boredom finished off the mensa puzzle and the weird little word finding game ..i look up...and the train's still at marine lines..

By then it was nearing 6:45 and the train hadnt shown any signs of moving. The passengers were still pretty cheerful and had proceeded to buy chips and samosas from the railway aahar shops and didnt seem concerned in the least that the train had stopped indefinitely for no apparent reason . There were trains stalled on parallel platforms and by then everyone had gathered on the platforms..

Then came the rumours... "bhayander pe taar gir gaya hai".. "borivili mein teen trian bandh padh gaye hain"... noone seemed too concerned but the people who had their homes near at hand started getting out and walking off..

I hadnt been too bothered but by 7:00 i walked onto the platform and asked around...it seemed there had been a bomb blast between Khar and Bandra..

Lady A finally took her bags and waddled out of the train cursing beautifully in marathi about how people in Khar had no business bursting bombs all over the place when she and the kid(who happened to be her grandson) had to get home..


I was a little panicky as all the phone lines were jammed and my mom was on her weekely visit to the Siddhi Vinayak temple and was a few trains behind me..
i tried calling but i finally walked out and went out of the station..and what a sight i saw..
the road was flooded with people flagging cabs and any vehicle that would hold them..people on trains stranded between stations were walking on tracks or alongside them..and since the exodus was mainly on the opposite side on the road..i tried flagging a few cabs...but they wouldnt stop...i even saw several abandoned cabes alongside the road

i had to walk it down to the nearest bus stop.Luckily i got a bus pretty quick and except for a minor stall in the middle where the bus was checked for bombs i reached home without incident..
then followed the rounds asking if everyone was alright..
distant relatives whom i didnt know called up..friends messaged and called to check..and everything reached a semblance of normality .. before long we got around to wondering if we could get a holiday the next day..

News reports showed that there had been around five or seven blasts on fast trains bound from churchgate at various locations..there had also been blasts in Srinagar the same morning and casualities anf fatalities in Mumbai alone had reached to around 135..

Mumbaikars have always been praised for their cool and their ability to handle any calamity thrown at them ..this has been put to proof plenty often right from 26 july 2005...

but the past two weeks have still been a hard blow ..first the incessant rains and floods and then the riots by the shiv sena.. and now the bomb blasts...
mumbai's lifeline has just about come to a standstill..
amazingly enough noone seems too flustered or panicked.. i bet plenty of people will still turn up for work and college tomorrow if there is no holiday declared...but i wonder how much more one city can take....