The temperature has crossed 40 degrees, and it is hot! Not the kind in which you see videos of people cooking an omelet on car bonnets but the kind which makes you sweat in places you never thought had sweat glands.
Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. It transports you to the past. One random moment and you feel an instant connection with something you did earlier. Almost like magic. But, not all magic is good. Like today, I was dreading the hot weather and my mind responded with, “You know what else you did in such weather? You travelled in a train back in the college.”
Nostalgia and ‘mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell’ can come up at anytime. They don’t follow societal rules.
I hope this introduction made it clear that this isn’t an essay we wrote in class 4, titled ‘My Favourite Mode of Transport.’
This is about the unfiltered, high-stakes, slightly smelly, semi-spiritual chaos of India’s most democratic mode of transport — the local train and why I love it.
Please don’t mistake the local trains for just another means of travel. And for the ones that are new to the Indian railway scene, there’s more to Indian railways than the Rajdhani and Vande Bharat trains. The majority of the travelers still use the local train/EMU.
Mumbaikars, you all know it better than everybody else. Here in local trains, seats are dreams, elbows are weapons, and the only thing more unpredictable than the train schedule is the level of human closeness you’ll experience during rush hour. Personal space? That's a western concept. Out here, we’re hugging strangers with our eyes open, wallets clenched, and one hand clinging to a metal bar for dear life.
And yet, like a toxic ex with great playlists, we keep going back.
Because no auto, metro, Uber, Ola, or private jet can offer the drama, diversity, and digestive challenges of a morning local train ride.
It all begins at the platform.
There’s no line, only tension. People aren’t waiting, they’re calculating. Where will the train stop? Will I face the door or the abyss between two coaches? Which co-passenger looks the weakest?
If Mr. Darwin was Indian, he would’ve seen people fighting for seats and this would’ve formed the basis for his theory of “Survival of the Fittest.”
You see office-goers stretching like athletes. Aunties doing pre-battle squats. Uncle ji cracking knuckles like they’re about to enter a wrestling ring. No one makes eye contact. Eye contact is weakness.
You spot the train at a distance. The crowd tightens. Breath shortens. Bags are clutched closer. The train screeches in like a drunken Bollywood villain making a dramatic entrance. And then, chaos!
Human bodies collide with steel and each other. People push, pull, climb, slide, wiggle, and perform stunts that would make Jackie Chan rethink his career. The only thing missing is background music and a slow motion montage.
You try to be civil. Maybe you even wait a few seconds to let others board. Aww, cute. You’re not making it in.
Because while you were being decent, a 4-foot-tall aunty with the aggression of a football striker and the upper-body strength of an Olympic shot putter has already entered, secured a window seat, and is currently rearranging her dupatta like nothing happened.
Looks can be deceiving.
They look like they’re going to their workplace, but the moment the train halts, they morph into Luis Suárez with a Chanakya-level understanding of timing and angles. Their handbags swing like medieval weapons. Whatever comes in there way is crushed. Feet get crushed first followed by your morale.
Not sure about you, but they can definitely bend it like Beckham.
And don’t let the kids fool you either.
The five-year-old are not passengers. They’re seat-acquisition prodigies. They've grown up on bedtime stories about how their grandfather once elbowed his way into a Dadar fast and secured a seat between two uncles. These kids are carrying forward a family legacy. They may be small, but they’re mighty. And they know how to dive when it is a matter of life and death, unlike some instances where we were in the semi-finals and a dive could’ve saved us. Shit, sorry. It’s all in the past now.
Now, if by some miracle — divine, karmic, or simply because someone else sneezed at the wrong time and you manage to get in, you’re faced with a new challenge: what now?
If you’re seated, congratulations. You have been chosen. Go buy a lottery ticket immediately or ask for something else. Who knows, maybe Gods will grant that too.
But if you’re standing — welcome to the land of intimacy.
Suddenly, you are no longer a person. You are a geometry problem. You must fit into a space that defies logic. Your back is pressed against someone’s front. Your side is touching someone’s side. Your hand is stretched above your head in a pose that makes you question your anatomy.
And there’s no escape. You are now one with the crowd.
You learn to breath in tandem with your neighbors. Because it only helps to breath when the Indian bellies expand and collapse in unison. And you really thought harmony and collaboration can be taught via projects? Lol.
The train jerks. You sway together like seaweed. Someone sneezes. You question your immune system. Someone coughs. You question your life.
And amidst all this, the worst is yet to come. The smell.
A unique blend of sweat, talcum powder, disappointment, and hope. The kind of smell that sits on your clothes like an uninvited relative during wedding season.
People who travel by train never get caught cheating because no one survives sniffing the collar drenched in that scent.
So far, you might have gotten scared. But, all is not that bad. You get to study human nature and psyche when you travel daily in a train.
Inside the coach, there is life. There are characters. Every train compartment is basically an episode of Bigg Boss, but with fewer filters and more real conversations.
You have the human switches, people who enter a deep coma the moment their bum touches a tiny bit of seat. They don’t even flinch when the train halts. You’d think they were dead if they didn’t wake up exactly five minute before their stop. These folks have tuned their body clock to the train’s rhythm. Sleep. Wake up. Exit. Repeat. What’s even more surprising is the fact that their sleep isn’t time dependent, it is destination dependent. If train is late, they sleep more, else it is a power nap.
Then there are the teenagers and college kids who look like they walked out of a music video and into your personal space. Hair defying gravity. Headphones blasting Honey Singh or DJ Wale Babu. They stand like it’s a fashion shoot, holding the pole with one hand, adjusting their sunglasses indoors.
Then there's the Card Game Syndicate, a group of uncles playing cards like their life depends on it. And it does. “Yeh seat Suresh ke liye hai,” (This seat is reserved for Suresh) they tell you when you try to sit. Who is Suresh? No one knows. He’s a myth. A legend. A man who never boards but always has a reserved spot.
And yes, all these different types come together once the Complainer-in-Chief starts their drill. Usually 50+, looks to convince all that they’ve seen enough, armed with an opinion on everything — government, weather, cricket, millennials, neighbors, train punctuality, his partner, your partner, your neighbor’s dog. You name it, he has a hot take. He’ll say things like “System kharaab hai and bhaisahab hmare zamane mein to…’ (the whole world is corrupt and in our times…) thirty times before the next station arrives.
Whole year all this is still fine but then comes the monsoon.
If you think the train ride was bad in summer, you’re not ready for monsoons. Everything becomes slippery, sticky, and somehow wetter than scientifically possible. Armpits glisten like wet waterfalls. And if someone taller than you stands in front — your nose is now dangerously aligned with their underarm. You discover new limits to your lung capacity as you try to survive via shallow, sideways breaths.
At this point, you start questioning life and begin to consider meditation and spirituality as the only way out.
But just then — something beautiful happens.
The boy across the aisle shifts to make space for his younger sister. He places his slippers/handkerchief on the seat beside him, the age-old Indian tradition of reservation. You smile.
An elderly couple share a bidi and gossips about some stranger’s daughter-in-law/son-in-law. You’re happy to see how the poisonous smoke goes in and venomous words come out and yet they’re together after so many years. It’s weirdly romantic.
A bhajan starts in the far corner. The Satsang Mandli has begun. There’s dholak. There’s clapping. It’s loud. It’s off-beat. It’s glorious. Irrespective of your stand on religion you sing along anyway because the prasad they’ll pass around is worth it.
A man passes you his newspaper after he’s done. You pass it to someone else. In 30 minutes, one paper has gone through six people, two arguments, and a critique on Shahrukh’s latest movie.
The train pulls into a station. Someone gets up. A mad dash for the seat ensues. Someone wins. Someone loses. Someone complains. Life goes on.
You stare out the window. You see balconies filled with half-naked men scratching their stomachs like they’re trying to solve a riddle. You see kids running barefoot. You see a man on the tracks with a water bottle. You look away.
But not always. Once in a while, there’s an eye contact between someone trying to relieve himself by the tracks and you trying to catch a glimpse of the outside world.
You take it all in — the chaos, the humor, the unintentional intimacy, the unsolicited gossip, the armrest wars, the perfume attacks, the biscuit sharing, the card tournaments, the spontaneous bhajans, and the random life advice.
You realize this isn’t just a ride.
This is a play. A sitcom. A therapy session. A cultural deep-dive. A daily test of willpower and balance. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once. And it costs ₹10.
So yes, I took the local train. Not because I loved pain. But because there’s no other place on Earth where you can experience humanity — raw, messy, annoying, beautiful — like this. Also, it was dirt cheap and saved time, but please go with the humanity rationale. It sounds cooler.
The local train makes you laugh. Makes you rage. Makes you question life choices. And yet, the next day, you’re back.
Bag ready. Phone charged. Elbows sharpened.
Because for all its flaws, there’s nothing quite like it.
Your turn. What’s your wildest local train story? Who’s the weirdest co-passenger you’ve ever met? And are you, by any chance, Suresh?
Drop a comment. Let’s swap trauma, stories, and maybe, just maybe, start our own card gang!
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I love this 😂 You took me on a whole train journey with your words.
😂ROFL, really felt like i was inside a local train. Your descriptions are wildly funny. 🤣 i think i will keep coming back to your substack space, whenever i need a good laugh. 🤭