Malad to Bombay Central in the chuk chuk gaadi !!!

"When the first train on the Indian soil made its maiden journey from Boribunder to Thana on the 16th of April 1853, very few might have imagined how strong the bond between the city of Bombay and the railways is going to be.
Today the two are inseparable, and therefore, the railways, and more specifically, the Bombay Suburban Railways are rightly called the lifelines of the metropolis" said Shirsh Paranjape (on Indian Railways,2001).

I by all means agree on every word spoken by Mr Paranjape and personally speaking it has become my lifeline to go for work in Malad every working day in 40 mins. After the brain-damaging early morning 7 o'clock shift i was on my way home in a fast train. Well people have described trains as stinky and crowded but i like to look over these negative aspects. Local trains carry people from of all class, creed and religion and believe me you get to learn so much if u observe. There are muslim girls who enter in burkhas and by the time they get out of the train are in jeans with the brightest lipstick and the tightest tops. There are some women who try to finish their household work which includes knitting or cleaning vegetables.

There are teachers correcting school papers and mother's trying to entertain their toddlers so that they dont make a scene by screaming and yelling their lungs out. The lattest fad is following Swami Ramdev's steps ...some of them rubbing their nails, the others exhaling and inhaling (its really gross sometimes that they dont have even a lil problem taking in all the aroma of the sweat around them and exhaling smelly wada pav breath) and some of them doing crunches while sitting kicking the ones standing which slowly but surely instigates a fight of swear words and challenges to come to the akhada (fighting ring) !!!

Ok so to come back to the topic what i started with ..... After the brain-damaging early morning 7 o'clock shift i was on my way home in a fast train. Along with me an old man boarded the train from Malad into the ladies compartment wearing a tattered shirt and pant and started begging. He said "khaali ek rupiyaa" (only one ruppee), he said that everytime he went to a passenger, he made that sad face and stressed on ek rupiyaa..."khaali ek rupiyaa". Believe you me half of the passengers took a ruppee out to give it to him in his almost black katora he was carrying. He earned atleast Rs 50 in just one walk i.e one end to the compartment till the next. Now the point that got me so amused was the Marketing technique here, he asked for a ruppee which a Mumbai-ite would not think twice before giving. Like he said only one buck, i mean how many of us would think about spending a ruppee.

The moral that i learnt from a pennyless man earning atleast a good sau rupaiyaa from Malad to Bombay Central was that one should ask for little in life and to end up with a bagfull of goodies !!! :)