LTT

Indian Father.
Going home from the city. 

LTT

Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

Welcome to Mumbai. Ladies and Children first at this drinking water fountain.

We Mumbaikars takeour drinking water very seriously. From free drinking water for everybody at Udipis to the many fountains around town that are replenished by people for free, it's traditionally considered one of the most noble charity work in a city where everyone sweats by the gallon.

The spirit of Mumbai tastes like sweet cool water on a hot summer Mumbai. 

Lokmanya Tilak Terminus

East Coast Matsyagandha.

An E Co railway rake* from Bhubaneshwar was catching its breath after a long run from the other end of the Deccan. It smelled like the southern end of Mumbai locals in the mornings but yet not quite like it. It was less salty than our sweet smell of the Arabian sea fish and it was sprinkled with the smell of a soil of some far off land. The train was carrying fish from the eastern parts for Mumbaikars with the nose for authentic taste of the east.

* East Coastal Railway. HQ: Bhubaneshwar and covers parts of coastal Orissa and North Coastal AP 

East coast landscape between Bhubaneshwar and Puri.
  The Mahanadi at Cuttack

Packed in thermocol boxes with ice, they travelled overland through one of the most fascinating landscapes one can imagine. Starting from the Mahanadi Valley, through the hills of the interiors of Orissa. It's all electric throughout from coast to coast. Through the Russian factories of Bhilai that look straight out of the cold war days and the green garden of eden of Chattisgarh which reminded me of South Interior Karnataka in winter.

Even thought it's electric, the smell of this railway live is coal. All along the routes, you pass kilometer long coal trains every few minutes until you reach Nagpur. After Nagpur, the coal train frequency reduces a bit but the landscape takes of the sad, dry,  everybody (especially Ajit Pawar & Co.) loves a good drought landscape with sick and wanting to look fluffy cotton hanging from frail branches. There's Wardha which was holy for Gandhians and will always remain a pilgrimage spot for for the rail fans of India.

This is a route for railfans, because then comes Bhusaval and that beautiful loco shed at Igatpuri where AC meets DC or some such electrical problem for which trains had to be decouples and coupled to continue a journey. Pure railfan porn.

I think it was in an old Rudyard Kipling story that I read a child that I first read about this place. The ghat section did not exist then and there was a description of the trek up hill through the Kasara/Thal Ghat. It passes in a few minutes now but it's good enough to take your breath away, especially during the monsoons.

From Kasara downwards it's our Matsyagandha territory. That's my favourite kind of matsyagandha, the Arabian Sea ones.

Kurla

A typical General Compartment Queue.

For most trains, especially the ones going to the Cow Belt, East or South, there's a queue that forms many hours before the trains actually leave Mumbai. There are RPF cops, ropes to control the line and when the train arrives and the doors of the general compartment are opened, lathis (batons) fly, tempers rise and compartments can get as crowded as the Virar Fast during the peak hour. Once you have found a seat or a luggage rack where you can perch, you stay there. You can also imagine what you need to do if you need to take a pee!

This was for a train that was going to Vishakapatnam on the East Coast on the No. 3 Platform of the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus.

Luckily if there is one thing Mumbaikars can create with unparalleled understanding, it's a queue.

 

LTT. Kurla

Rail Life.

Bath. Food. Gum. Cigarettes.

Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT)

Where to start

when you land in Mumbai

with only a shirt on your back.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- Emma Lazarus - 1883


The dirty platforms of Lokamanya Tilak Terminus or Kurla. That's where a majority of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly youngsters, from the caste and poverty ridden parts of the country first set foot on the island of Brihan Mumbai. The promise is that you will never go hungry in Mumbai and the possibilities, endless. The truth is that you will most probably end up living in the dirtiest slums on this planet but the sweet smell of freedom this city offers will make up for the centuries old status-quo on the suffocating mainland.

Gateway of Mumbai.

A "Missing" poster with a picture of a young girl from New Delhi and an instant job offer greets the new Mumbaikar at the railway station. For a new arrival without education, the following job would look the most appetizing, a job in a hotel (restaurant).

For some, there's one more option. To them, the Island is a springboard to jobs across the Arabian Sea in the oil-rich middle-east. And a majority of them make Mumbai their home while they make the crossing.

Unlike getting off at the majestic Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Kurla Terminus is a very dreary place to start off. But the smell from the open drains close by, is probably a better welcome message.