Boxed into a boxcar on Boxing day!

26th DECEMBER

I ventured into Mumbai to spend boxing day with our family friends David and Anjali in Colaba. The train ride there was quite an adventure! I decided to travel second class – it reminds me a lot of London Underground in rush hour…except there are no doors on the trains! So people are still trying to “jump” into a non-existent space inside the train as it pulls out of each station. Standing up for the hour to Mumbai was not as difficult as you might imagine, since you are essentially supported by compressive forces on all four sides. People kept asking me to move further inside the train since I was getting off at it’s terminus, and hard as I tried it took 10 stops to go 3 feet inside the carriage!! The best way I can describe it is if you imagine trying to fit about 20-25 people into a 9 square foot space. There is barely room to put two feet next to each other. This was actually not an unpleasant journey since it is around the mid 20s at the time I was traveling, and most people were fresh from their shower on their way to work. But just imagine it in the height of summer on the return journey, at 40 degrees in the shade, complete with BO etc etc.

Unlike London underground. however, people here are much friendlier and will strike up a conversation if they have any English so I ended up having some very pleasant chats with 3 or four people on the way in. Because Thane is not touristy, I didn’t get hassle from pickpockets or any similar rogues plying their chicanery so the journey was uneventful. One of the things I couldn’t help noticing was the way that rail tracks don’t just serve as a route of passage for trains: there are huge numbers of people wheeling bikes or carrying things on their heads, or even just kids playing cricket in the spaces beside the lines. It appears that the rubbish scavenging pickings are also plentiful by the railway lines so there are many rubbish sorters also.

I couldn’t get a photo of this, as one hand was clinging to the railing of the train and the other was wedged firmly inside, but picture the rows of slums along side the railtracks as you pull into Mumbai. The wall that borders the tracks has a number of large pipes which pour sewage outfall into the gulley alongside. Just behind this low crumbling wall is a huge vista of corrugated shacks, with a maze of alleys a child would struggle to squeeze through. I was trying to imagine what life there must be like in the height of summer, no wind, no running water, no sewage drainage, the beating stifling stinking heat….and then the thrashing rains of the monsoon, leaks pouring in everywhere, barely a dry corner to seek refuge in, the alleys awash with rainwater and the effluvia of the roads and sewers and families in the surrounding shanties…it is not unusual for 10-15 people to live in one such small shack and with conditions like that, little wonder the floods from this year caused such a public health disaster.

My head filled with these thoughts I arrived at VT station, the central terminus to Mumbai. The taxi ride is a short one from here to Colaba,. Colaba is one of the more luxurious and affluent areas of Mumbai, every bit the crumbling Raj remains, somehow retaining a stately sedate air. One pleasant aspect here is the tree lined roads which provide greenery and respite from the sun. What a striking contrast with the abject poverty I had just seen. That said, it retains the incredible dusty grimyness that characterizes most of India’s cities. Everything is carpeted in a thick sooty dust which is composed mainly from the carbon emissions of Mumbai’s 25 million inhabitants: fires, cars, burning rubbish etc. Apparently, living in Mumbai and breathing its air is the equivalent of a 20 cigarette a day habit in terms of particulates deposited in your lungs. I have certainly noticed an effect on me: I seem to have a sore throat and chest most of the time when I am in the city.

Finally arriving in the oasis of David and Anjali’s flat. Boxing day was spent largely relaxing. But there were also some interesting discussions sparked by the judges ruling in the intelligent design law case in the US. More of this in the next prayer letter.