Quotable quote

"Paresh Nathvani, a kite dealer from Kandivili, performs a singular social service: He provides free shrouds for those killed by train accidents. About a decade ago, the kite merchant saw a man run over by a train at Grant Road. The railway workers tore down an advertising banner to cover the body. 'Every religion dictates that the dead be covered with a piece of fresh white cloth,' he realized. So every Thursday, Nathvani visits four railway stations and supplies them with fresh shrouds, two metres each. The biggest station, Andheri, gets ten shrouds a week. The stationmaster initials a ledger that Nathvani maintains and stamps it with his seal. He runs through 650 metres of cloth a year. But it's not enough; it's a long way from enough. The trains of Bombay kill four thousand people yearly.

The manager of Bombay's suburban railway system was recently asked when the system would improve to a point where it could carry its six million daily passengers in comfort. 'Not in my lifetime,' he answered. Certainly, if you commute into Bombay, you are made aware of the precise temperature of the human body as it curls around you on all sides, adjusting itself to every curve of your own. A lover's embrace was never so close.

Asad bin Saif works in an institute for secularism, moving tirelessly among the slums, cataloguing numberless communal flare-ups and riots, seeing first hand the slow destruction of the social fabric of the city. Asad is from Bhagalpur, in Bihar, the site not only of some of the worst communal rooting in the nation but also of a gory incident where the police blinded a group of petty criminals with knitting needles and acid. Asad, of all people, has seen humanity at its worst. I asked him if he feels pessimistic about the human race.

'Not at all,' he responded. 'Look at the hands from the trains.'

If you are late for work in the morning in Bombay, and you reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run up to the compartments and find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outwards from the train like petals. As you run alongside the train, you will be picked up and some tiny space will be made for your feet on the edge of the open doorway. The rest is up to you. You will probably have to hang on to the door frame with your fingertips, being careful not to lean out too far lest you get decapitated by a pole placed too close to the tracks. But consider what has happened. Your fellow passengers, already packed tighter than cattle are legally allowed to be, their shirts already drenched in sweat in the badly ventilated compartment, having stood like this for hours, retain an empathy for you, know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss this train, and will make space where none exists to take one more person with them. And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning or whether you're from Malabar Hill or New York or Jogeshwari. All they know is that you're trying to get to the city of gold, and that's enough. Come on board, they say. We'll adjust."

-- Suketu Mehta, "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found"