Standing still while the world travels around-In a railway service carrying 7 mln commuters daily.

Passengers are drawn to the train like iron pieces to a magnet. I watch. Learn. Push. Push harder. Manage to fling one foot on the train, and pull myself into it. The train moves. What a miraculous achievement in the last 20 seconds! No entry perhaps, since my birth, has been as forced as my entry into a Mumbai local. Someone behind me taps on my shoulder, “Which Station?” “The Last”, I reply. “Go inside!” These words follow me as I am pushed inwards. I look around. My Jaw drops. Approximately 120 women stand in the space for 20. Each clinging to the next, almost making it look like a massive orgy-on the move! I raise my hands. The slings are inverted hollow hearts. I catch hold of one. There is an acute sense of awareness in me as I rearrange my body parts around other women and their belongings- bags, tiffin boxes, packets, books and newspapers- to move forward. I stop five steps from the door. All the 20 women ahead await the same station as me. Often a halt in the journey is about reflection. Mine brings to attention the beads of sweat on my neck and back!! The hair of my successor, blow right into my eyes. I tell her to take charge of them. She smiles and plaits them to her left side. The woman behind me breathes on my neck now. My own personal heater in this furnace! I look around for distractions. I bend on my knees to look out of the two sole windows on my right. They are guarded by metal grills reminding me of prison bars. But it is the vision beyond that shakes my heart. I see men from the lining slums take a dump on the tracks. Their testicles hanging nonchalantly as they stare at the train. I close my eyes. I take in the maximum city. I can smell the odour of human labour, of un-dying spirit and the valour of their being in this city.
A flower seller enters the compartment, “Ten Rupees for 2 garlands of Champa flowers.” She makes a quick sale with her time pressed customers as they adorn the flowers in their sweat filled hair. I look at the last woman ahead of me, near the edge of the door-less train. The wind playing with her hair. Destiny chooses that moment for her to faint. The women behind her catch hold of her frail body instantaneously and bring her inside. She crouches on the floor. The others surround her. Like a child in the womb. Almost as if Moses had raised his staff splitting the red sea into two halves for a safe passageway of kindness.