Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Mumbai –Pune General Compartment travels!!!

Now a day’s many people travel to Pune from Mumbai and vice a versa due to many reasons…major reason people travel on weekends is Job!
People travel for various reasons they may be studying in one of the city and once they find long weekend they travel. People also travel to appear for various exams such as MA, B.ED, some government job’s entrance etc, etc. So moral of the story is regular travel through general compartment is becoming more and more obvious and there is rare opportunity that you get reservation for weekends travel. (Unless your don’t plan before Wednesdays :) )
I am one of them who travel on weekends (and also one of them who prefer this, instead of travelling daily in Mumbai for Job :)). It is but obvious that I see some faces weekly and some are new.
I get to see variety of people here. Especially in general compartment you see all kind of background people travelling. So this is one of the places, where I meet distinctive people working/studying in assorted fields. This is one point where I get friends to share various kinds of things. Indeed to mention, I get all type of sweet and sour experiences when I travel.
Out of these varieties of experiences one of them insists me to write this blog is “fighting”!!!
Yes you will get surprised by reading how come fighting ignites any one to write? Well, there is a reason why I chose to.
Every Monday morning I catch train at Dadar, superfluous to say compartment starts flooded after Thane. After thane rather in Thane itself many of them cannot find place to sit so they start jumping on upper birth. Now here on words the mystery starts…
Girls/women whoever climb on upper berth take even their shoes, sandals along with them. Seems they have fear of losing them. (God knows who is interested in stealing their foot wares which may not even fit into one’s foot!) The moment rest other crowd starts suffering from their foot wares starts shouting…ladies who have taken their foot wears along with them get enough of energy to argue! If someone says, “Why don’t you think about folks sitting down? They have to face dust coming out from your foot wears…Please keep it down!” Argument comes from ladies who have taken their dearest sandals along with them replying “show me where exactly dust falls down? Show me where exactly this has cause problem?” and on and on…we cannot even imagine to what extent they can drag this simple thing and till which station this argument can continue. If there is someone who knows obscene words or have habit of using as common language can lead such fights to any bullshit way. There is no sense in putting this but no sense in bearing as well. I don’t know why civic sense is missing in between us? It should be common sense rather than a civic sense when someone is sitting at upstairs and rest are at downstairs berth. We should be careful enough for the act we are doing, be it any though. I don’t know why but I found people here are least bothered about having curtsey for others!
Once train halts at Kalyan there is more fun. Ladies who think they can catch train while running and start experimenting nonsensical things. They try to catch train while running for getting place. They obtusely start getting in and start falling down….at acme time they all in crowd fall down on track. As ladies compartment comes immediately after motorman’s this is one of the obvious thing happen when someone sleeps through on platforms. Yes I have seen bad accidents happening but never had courage to see what has happened with those ladies. But I’m not deaf that I cannot listen to their screams and cries.
Once I had seen students going for exams and had met with an accident while getting into trains.
Whenever I see such accidents I ask myself why we don’t form queue and why can’t we have little more patients for getting in to trains? Why we cannot do that? Of course we can do that when we have enough of space in compartment we are getting in to. Of course we can follow discipline if after following we all get same kind of benefits. But is it possible in India where we the ratio shows always inverse figures? Though this is not possible, why can’t we avoid such accidents? Now for that student what was most important than to find place in compartment? Just to catch certain sighs in life now she is suffering from most of the things in life.
Why people don’t think that when compartments are already full there is hardly any possibility to get place. Then why to put our precious life at risk?
I have seen enough of fightings due to obtuse reasons…one of them may be someone just reserves place for her friend and those who do not or cannot sit there starts fighting…someone is just too stubborn to shift and adjust for someone and forget about rest others….
Why can’t they adjust for time-being? I remember once I had given my seat to one lady who had 4months old baby and small daughter with her and I had asked other lady to shift for another daughter …Gosh! She had started with all type of crap things. Sounding like you might be here for social work but not we!
Sometimes I find arguments are ridiculous. But true I cannot change everybody the way I want!
Still I have few questions…do we really have civic sense to behave in public places? Do we really care about rest others when it comes to no relation or masses? Do we really have humanity?
I rotate my head again and again and I find many incidents like 26th July, 2005, bomb blasts in Mumbai and at various parts of India, Tsunami…etc etc. But still I cannot get rid of question from my mind is that, why can’t we have that kind of sense in normal situations or in day to day life? Will that cause any harm? Why we are just educated and not cultured?
Questions go on and on …somewhere deep down I again sit and rethink over them and find there is hope when I see someone offering help to someone in public places without any self interest. Someone gets up from their sit’s and offer the same to old people….
There you go with hope and joy….!!!