It was never supposed to be like this, the first post on my blog. But as mysticity would have it, I start it with the Energy Principle of the urban mystery called Mumbai, where I work as a journalist.
I am a train-ee, one among the 25 lac people who daily squeeze and hang themselves in the 12 and nine-coach Electro Magnetic Units (EMU) or local trains, running over the backbone of this linear city, to reach office and again at the end of the day, to reach our pigeonholes. No wonder the back hurts badly.
During one of these daily ablutions, when none of my body parts except the brain could function in the constipated compartment, I stood sweating in wonderment. Where does this City gets its Energy from? Mumbai has a sea of sewage, crows and dogs as the neighbourhood wildlife and people stuffed into trains like ants knocked out of an anthill. Why still it is the dream which people all the way from Muzzafarpur, Pratapgarh, Mangalore, Surat, Ahmedabad, Valsad, Indore, Bhopal, Patna, Ranchi, Kolkata, Chennai come here dreaming?
We breathe water vapour,we buy vegetables from places with puddles of drainage water, we crawl into our homes and in the night make love to our spouse, sweating profusely, not because of the heat of the moment but humidity.
And the answer came with the rush of fresh air hitting the nostrils, expanding my diaphram and supplying oxygen to my shriveled brain cells as the train came to a halt at Dadar Station and unloaded scores onto the platform.
The answer was the linearity principle of the city and the train which runs it.
Imagine the energy of human resource of 25 lakh people bundled together moving in a single direction towards town.The sea of humanity swells up with every station and piles up over each other into the already stuffed trains.Inside is the humid furnace. You are bound together tightly like molecules. You cannot expect gyrating your bum without bum-bumping into atleast three people. Even scratching yourself will mean rubbing upto someone.If you try to move your eyes, you might think of trying a career as an Ear, Nose and Throat Expert as you have the most closest view of the interiors of these organs.
The sweat mixed deoderants make the breathing bearable in the I Class compartments but the bonding here is more closer as there are only three of them in a train.
So with hardly any options, you think about life, about work...along with you the other 24 lakh too would be thinking about life and work. A single-point thought as you travel from point to point in a single direction. A thought to work...work harder so that you can climb out of the ordeal of the furnace...work so that you could buy a sea-facing apartment...work so that next time you climb over your wife, a breeze of conditioned air will prolong your performance.
And the unanimous force of mankind thinks in unison to be industrious and work its ass out in the week so that it comes an inch closer to making the Mumbai dream a reality.Like the electromagnetic charge running overhead the trains you become a part of the flow of human energy.
As the train hits the terminus, these molecules fly into the financial district like splinters of glass in cabs, buses or on foot rushing to one or the other sky-kissing condominiums to hide behind cubicles...their sharp thoughts stuck in work.
As the dusk comes, these molecules slowly start coming together, tiredness of the day written clear on their faces but a jump in their walk. They come together to be again bound, packed and packaged to their abodes in a reverse flow of human energy, riding over the backbone of the city in these EMUs. This is probably the Energy Principle which helps the City to flow and flourish in a workoholic orgy. Thus Spake the Mystic
I am a train-ee, one among the 25 lac people who daily squeeze and hang themselves in the 12 and nine-coach Electro Magnetic Units (EMU) or local trains, running over the backbone of this linear city, to reach office and again at the end of the day, to reach our pigeonholes. No wonder the back hurts badly.
During one of these daily ablutions, when none of my body parts except the brain could function in the constipated compartment, I stood sweating in wonderment. Where does this City gets its Energy from? Mumbai has a sea of sewage, crows and dogs as the neighbourhood wildlife and people stuffed into trains like ants knocked out of an anthill. Why still it is the dream which people all the way from Muzzafarpur, Pratapgarh, Mangalore, Surat, Ahmedabad, Valsad, Indore, Bhopal, Patna, Ranchi, Kolkata, Chennai come here dreaming?
We breathe water vapour,we buy vegetables from places with puddles of drainage water, we crawl into our homes and in the night make love to our spouse, sweating profusely, not because of the heat of the moment but humidity.
And the answer came with the rush of fresh air hitting the nostrils, expanding my diaphram and supplying oxygen to my shriveled brain cells as the train came to a halt at Dadar Station and unloaded scores onto the platform.
The answer was the linearity principle of the city and the train which runs it.
Imagine the energy of human resource of 25 lakh people bundled together moving in a single direction towards town.The sea of humanity swells up with every station and piles up over each other into the already stuffed trains.Inside is the humid furnace. You are bound together tightly like molecules. You cannot expect gyrating your bum without bum-bumping into atleast three people. Even scratching yourself will mean rubbing upto someone.If you try to move your eyes, you might think of trying a career as an Ear, Nose and Throat Expert as you have the most closest view of the interiors of these organs.
The sweat mixed deoderants make the breathing bearable in the I Class compartments but the bonding here is more closer as there are only three of them in a train.
So with hardly any options, you think about life, about work...along with you the other 24 lakh too would be thinking about life and work. A single-point thought as you travel from point to point in a single direction. A thought to work...work harder so that you can climb out of the ordeal of the furnace...work so that you could buy a sea-facing apartment...work so that next time you climb over your wife, a breeze of conditioned air will prolong your performance.
And the unanimous force of mankind thinks in unison to be industrious and work its ass out in the week so that it comes an inch closer to making the Mumbai dream a reality.Like the electromagnetic charge running overhead the trains you become a part of the flow of human energy.
As the train hits the terminus, these molecules fly into the financial district like splinters of glass in cabs, buses or on foot rushing to one or the other sky-kissing condominiums to hide behind cubicles...their sharp thoughts stuck in work.
As the dusk comes, these molecules slowly start coming together, tiredness of the day written clear on their faces but a jump in their walk. They come together to be again bound, packed and packaged to their abodes in a reverse flow of human energy, riding over the backbone of the city in these EMUs. This is probably the Energy Principle which helps the City to flow and flourish in a workoholic orgy. Thus Spake the Mystic
