by Vrushali Haldipur
This is a story about Bombay before it became Mumbai. A time before cell phones, before the internet, selfies, and WhatsApp.
Like everyone else in Bombay, I had a destination to reach, a train to catch.
Around me, the restless crowd murmured and suddenly went silent, muscles tensed to make the next move. I was at the end of a sea of people, stuck close to each other, toes holding on to every inch of space they could get on the platform.
The train arrived honking loudly, with people spilling out of its sides. Even before it stopped, it disgorged the men holding on to the doors, as the crowd magically parted to give them a spot to land on to. That too was an art, knowing when to leap off the moving train at just the right moment, so you could safely land on solid ground, and not fall through the gap. Maybe it wasn’t art, but luck, or the grace of the gods that decided if you would step out into another day or end up losing your life.
Then the stampede began. Hordes of women jumping on board the still-moving train. Like wildebeest they rammed into any obstacles, screaming triumphantly as they entered. I didn’t have to move, I was pulled in by the collective strength of this human tide, into the common compartment. Inside frantic women grabbed seats wherever possible. Their eyes had a manic glint as they scanned the compartment for empty seats and any slim, vulnerable passengers they could shove aside to get half an arse on the seat. I poked a sweaty woman on a bench, pretending to be asleep. ‘Where?’ I demanded. It’s the unwritten code on the trains to ensure I will get sole rights to her seat when she gets off the train. ‘Next stop’, she blurted, clearly surprised at the aggression in this thirteen-year-old in a uniform.
Unlike the others on the train, I was not going to work, but running away – from school. Today was a good day to bunk – it was our Annual Sports Day, so everyone was expected to be at the sports ground at Churchgate. After giving my attendance, I had managed to slip out unnoticed and sprinted across the grounds to the station. I knew that the consequences would be severe if anyone noticed I had skipped school – from my teachers and my family, but as they say, no guts, no glory.
Holding on to the overhead straps, I prepared for the next battle – to breathe. I was trapped between women on three sides, bums nudging into elbows and backs. If I turned to one side, I’d have to breathe into the armpits of a woman who had never heard of deodorant; on the other, my nose would jut into the thick oily braids of the woman with her back to me. I leaned forward and twisted my neck into a unique spot where there was a tiny, empty space, and took a deep breath. All this for an actor.
Film stars, like the gods, demanded their sacrifices. Some did Amarnath, the Hajj, and Lourdes. Swaranjali, the South Indian megastar had a temple dedicated to her. On her birthday, impassioned fans would roll their bodies on the road, the searing heat on the tar roads burning their skin, all the way to her palatial home where they would finally collapse with exhaustion at the gate. Their reward was a glimpse of the once-beautiful actress who appeared on her viewing terrace. This little train ride was the very least demanded of me in my quest to see in person the magnificent Kabir Khan, the brash new superstar of Bollywood. He rode horses, jumped from helicopters and rescued heroines in distress, with his pet sidekicks, usually ‘Wonder Dog’ – Tuffy the Pomeranian, or Chum Chum the monkey, pitching in to distract the villains at the right moment. He delivered his dialogues with a snarl and raised his eyebrows for emphasis. If I could see him just once, I would die a happy soul.
When I managed to get a seat, another woman spotted a sliver of space left on the edge of the seat and decided to claim it with a quarter of her bum. She sat like that, perched precariously on a smidgen of flesh, but half a seat is better than none when you have such a long journey ahead. I could get back to dreaming about Kabir Khan.
In an industry which was run by the sons, siblings and uncles of actors and directors, Kabir Khan, an orphan without a famous name, magically became its biggest star. When the papers reported that he was bitten on set by an aging and rabid Tuffy, his fans all over the country prayed for him. He lived through it, Tuffy didn’t. But he did move into a new home in Bandra, the queen of the suburbs, with Chum Chum.
The steamy stink of Mahim creek brought me back to reality. It is all about timing, if you don’t reach the halfway point between the seats and the door before Mahim creek ends, forget about getting down at Bandra. I pushed and shoved the bodies in front of me till I was a few feet away from the exit, the gust of noxious air refreshing after breathing in a mixture of coconut oil, sweat and talcum powder inside. That’s the choice you make in the local trains of Bombay. You choose to sit or breathe. I believe the last person to achieve both feats together was in 1975, but I couldn’t tell you for sure because that was before my time.
As the station neared, the crowd again carried me into its collective embrace, and together we swarmed out on the platform, functioning like one organism, till we stepped on solid ground and scattered out into our individual selves.
I flagged down a rickshaw with a little plastic garland strung in the front. My driver needed no directions. “Kabir Khan’s house,” was all I said. He smiled, he knew the place well. God is Great, read the sticker on his dashboard. This was a positive omen.
The speakers began pounding out a Bollywood song with remixed jhankaar beats. Your voice is like the cuckoo, sang the hero, clucking in rhyme. Outside, a few red-orange tandoori chicken carcasses were strung out next to leather shoes in front of the stalls selling these. I could feel a headache coming on.
My driver was an expert, maneuvering through the traffic, shooing away the beggars who approached at signals, and even warded off a hijra who was just going to bless me for free. Bandra’s old Portuguese style bungalows passed us by, holding their own amidst the high rise buildings that threatened to swallow them, stubbornly reminding the city of its past. The rickshaw groaned as it trudged on the uphill, winding roads till we reached the home of the biggest star of them all.
On the seafront, the rickshawallah pointed out the bungalow to the left, Khwaish, which looks out to a beautiful view, is mostly hidden from the public view, the very public that spends its last hard-earned rupee on a ticket for his films.
Across the street from the imposing gates, a few fans had gathered, waiting for Kabir Khan to appear.
We stood there, hope in our hearts, craning our necks to see if he may look out from a window. Some had brought his posters along, another fan was rehearsing reading an Urdu sonnet he had written in praise of Kabir’s glorious fame. Yet another, who called himself Junior Kabir, aka JK, proclaimed to all he was really and truly the greatest fan and demonstrated a few of the actor’s dance moves to prove his loyalty. JK then got into a minor scuffle with another fan who claimed he was the greatest because he had written Kabir one hundred times on just one tiny dry grain of rice and everyone knows what dedication and skill it takes to do that. I just had my autograph book, in which I had only managed to get a few teachers’ autographs wishing me all the very best in my exams.
As we waited, the rays of the sun caught the glass, blinding us with its sudden flash. The gate opened, and a security guard came out. Quickly and efficiently, he shooed the men away with a stick, saying Saab ghar pe nahin hai. The great Kabir Khan is not at home. B@^#d, said someone in the crowd, frustrated. B@^#d, that summed it all up. Yes b@^#ds all of them, all those useless heroes.
As the others dispersed I lingered on.
‘Boss’, I asked the guard. ‘What’s the story?’
Taking pity on me, he said, ‘Beta, he’s going to be away a while, he’s in town. Chief Guest at some school’s Annual Sports Day at Churchgate’.
As I walked away, I could hear Chum Chum chortling away behind the walls.
Picture by Hitesh Harisinghani, published on rediff.com.
