[Reader-list] Walking the Station with the Girls

[zainab at xtdnet.nl]

Dear Tripta,
Thanks for initiating the conversation after my last posting. Owing to
exams, I could not respond. Yes, I do have a copy of The Railway Journey
and it's high time that I read it. Given some of the thoughts you raised
in the last conversation, I am posting the experience and questions from
my next walk at the railway station. Thanks for beginning the conversation
...
In continuity and perpetuity,
Zainab!

13th April 2005

Walking the Station with One Girl
This evening, I land up early at the railway station. I want to see the
‘rush hours’ as Sushanti and Suparna and their other colleagues had told
me. It is about 5:00 PM. I go up to platform number 3, looking for
Sushanti and the home guard gang. “Arre, you have come early today?”
Sushanti exclaims, adding, “You reached home safely the other day nah?
Mummy did not shout at you nah? We were getting worried that your mother
would be concerned.” I responded to her saying that everything went
alright that night, on Saturday. “I have come to see the rush hour today,”
I tell them. “So would you want me to come with you?” Sushanti asks. I
tell her that I will manage on my own. “Yeah, that’s better. When you go
on your own, you can make your own choice and decide what you want to
see,” says she, much relieved at the prospect of not having to take me
around. Perhaps, in this situation, she feels pangs of anxiety, wondering
whether my research agenda is being fulfilled with her various
commentaries. She perhaps wonders whether her responses are appropriate to
my research, whether the places she takes me to fall in line with my
‘hypothesis’!?!?!?!

I dash off to platform number 7 – the danger zone that her colleagues and
she have been telling me about. The crowds are gradually beginning to
increase. Platform number 7 has long distance fast trains. A look at the
railway station and you can imagine the work force which comes from
distant places, almost outside of the city, to work in the city. Later,
when I meet Vijaya, she tells me, “How these women come from places like
Karjat and Kasara? I find it difficult to commute from Khar. I don’t think
I can ever work like them. Where is then the time for family and all?”
Labour travels long distances in the city and yet, when I classify this as
labour, I think the very notion of labour in the city has changed – from
the industrial mill workers to the now middle class service sector
workers. Then, is the railway station a site for transport of labour? What
kind of modernity is this?

I stand at platform number 7, the conventional space where women stand
i.e. at the beginning of the EMU halt. As I have mentioned previously,
several times, this space has been carved out by women, exclusively for
themselves. It protects them from being jostled in the crowd – one of the
forms of organization at the station. I am trying hard to look for
something, until I meet another Sarai Fellow – Prashant Pandey. Now, I am
beginning to realize that mathematically, I end up meeting at least two
persons everyday in my escapades around the city – either at the promenade
or at the railway station. And when I think of this mathematical
calculation, I wonder whether the city is as dense as I imagine or is it
that I just about know too many people by now.

Prashant is looking up in the air and walking. I call his attention and we
have a brief chat. “You must study Dadar station,” he tells me, “It is way
too crowded.” Hmmmm.

After talking with Prashant, I start to stroll around carefully between
platforms 6 and 7. The space which is covered by the first three coaches
of the train is heavily crowded because people make their entry into the
station from South side. The North end has a bridge but is not even a
quarter as much crowded as the South end. This is mainly because most of
the offices in which the commuters work are located further South and
hence, they arrive into the station from the South. I am walking and
covering the area of the middle train coaches. The very density of the
station begins to decline. And as this density declines, so does the
anonymity. I become conspicuous and this conspicuousness increases more
and more as I move towards the last few coaches. The space of the fag end
of the railway station is absolutely calm, very contrary to the space at
the entrance of the station. Here, at the fag end, the station is almost
like a halting space. It is largely occupied by the men – the working men
folk – middle class and lower middle class. The men lean out towards the
track, looking out for the arriving train and then, as the train starts to
touch the platform, the men folk jump into the train, pretty much like how
the women do. Yet, women seem funnier when they jump inside the moving
train. And I wonder whether this mental divide stems from gender
conditioning.

As I sit quietly at the fag end of the station, I am amused and smiling in
my head – what a railway station! And then, even the railway station
cannot be classed as a single entity or a homogenous space. How do spaces
derive their character?

After a while, I start to proceed towards the entrance side of the
station. It is 5:30 PM and now will be the start of the rush hour. As I
reach the beginning of the EMU halt, a smiling face greets me. “Hello!”
she says with a glint of happiness and sparkle in her eyes. This is
Vijaya, the home guard I had met at the other railway station on Saturday
night. I greet her, “How come here?” I ask her. “Duty has shifted. Now,
for one week, I am going to be at this station. Would you like to drink
something?” she asks me. I refuse and ask her, “You have your duty on
platform number 7?” “Yes,” she responds, adding, “I am deemed as one of
the most brave lady cops around here. Platform number 7 is a very
dangerous area. That is why my seniors have put me here.” “Why is platform
number 7 dangerous?” I ask her. “Because of the gardulay (drug addicts).
They do lots of salushan (solution) here. Because of the salushan there is
so much smell. Commuters complain about these gardulay. So we have to keep
a watch on them and make sure that they don’t enter the ladies
compartment. The gardulay kids run and enter the ladies compartments and
then, they cut their handbags and steal. So we have to keep a watch.
Platform number 1 is also a very dangerous area. The harbour line trains
depart from there. That area is infested with thieves. Once, my seniors
told me that they want to put me permanently on platform number 1 and I
should patrol in civil clothes so that I can nab the thieves. But I
refused. Lots of robbery goes on over there.” I listen to her carefully. I
am trifle bit surprised about platform number 1 being infested with
thieves because it is an area of immense activity. But Vijaya points out
that due to multiple entrances, the thieves make it in and out easily.
“Come here, stand beneath the fan,” she tells me, “hava aata hai.” I stand
with Vijaya. The train is arriving at platform number 7. Women commuters
are leaning outwards and readying themselves as if they are about to run a
relay. Just as when the train touches the platform, the women jump in. I
can almost see the train shaking with the jumping and thuds! Vijaya smiles
as she sees me watching all of this. We then stand guard, watching around
the platform. Suddenly Vijaya tells me, “Just a moment, I am coming.” She
dashes off to a place where two drug addict children are loitering. “Come
on, out from here,” she says, beating her danda (stick) to the ground,
“Out, out! Out I say! This is not the place for you. There, go there. That
place is meant for you.” She shoos them out towards the thin border which
separates the local station from the outstation-station. Apparently, the
character of this border, with several benches put on it, appears to be
one of a public space, almost like the space of the promenade, where
anybody can come and sit and do what they like, including lovers talking
out their problems and resolving disputes.

I ask Vijaya if we can walk the platform. “Sure!” We start to walk. “Lots
of rush in the beginning, but now on, the rush decreases,” she says as we
pass by the middle compartment. “That’s it,” she tells me as we approach
the last ladies coach, “We are not allowed to go beyond the last ladies’
coach,” she tells me. I then begin to wonder about boundaries about spaces
which are created – individually, mentally, by authority (as is the case
with Vijaya and the home guards who cannot go beyond the last ladies’
compartment), by convention, culturally, politically, through the media,
etc. And I also wonder whether these boundaries enable us to organize the
space mentally without really physically examining how true the boundaries
are? Is this a character of the city where all spaces cannot be examined
personally and we have to rely on boundaries to negotiate and understand
them in our own minds? I start to think of practices of marking in a
similar vein. It is not about the goodness or badness of marking, but more
the system which leads us to mark – the system of density and
crowd!?!?!?!?

As we walk back to the entrance of the station, Vijaya suddenly enters the
ladies coach. There is a drug addict boy inside and she is diligently
getting him out. Just at the beginning of the platform, an old lady,
ragged, is lying on the ground. Her only possessions are a plastic water
bottle and a steel drinking cup. Vijaya sighs, “Oh no, this maaji (old
lady) is here again.” Maaji is lying right in the middle of the crowds.
But each passing person is careful not to trample upon her. Vijaya starts
yelling,” Maaji, this is not a place for you to lie down. Please move away
from here. Come on.” Maaji is too weak to even stand up on her own. Vijaya
summons two hamaals (vagrant drug addicts who act as porters for GRP cops
and home guards). “Isko udhar le jao,” she instructs them. They lift her
up and put her on the boundary line which seems to be at the receiving end
of everything. After the exercise, Vijaya tells me, “What to do? All of
this happens at the station everyday. We have to deal with this. I
maintain good relations with the hamaals even though my other colleagues
scream and shout at them. They can be very useful people. Now see, in
situations such as these. This old woman must have been put in the train
by some people and she has arrived here. Now someone else will put her in
another train and she will land up at some other station. Like this,
daily, up and down and up and down she must be doing with someone or the
other putting her on the train. I can’t lift her up and put her at the
other side of the station (i.e. the border area). She is dirty. These
hamaals can do the job.”

Vijaya now insists that I must have coffee or cold drinks. I tell her that
we will both go and have tea. However, she keeps repeating coffee or cold
drinks and I can’t seem to understand. Ultimately, she takes me to the
coffee stall where the most expensive coffee (seven rupees as against the
usual five rupees) is available. She orders for coffee and my mind goes
back to Arjun bhai’s practices of ordering coffee for me. It makes me
wonder whether coffee is the global middle-class/service sector drink. How
does Vijaya perceive me? An upper middle-class English speaking gal who
drinks coffee? Commodities and the railways station then have a link, a
link perhaps brought in by advertising, images and notions of
globalism?!?!?!?!

“Time passes quickly at a big station,” Vijaya tells me as we drink our
coffee. “At smaller railway stations, it is boring. I like it when people
come to meet me.” After finishing coffee, we go back to platform number 6.
“Yes, it is boring everyday to stand like this all the time, watching,”
Vijaya tells me when I ask her if she finds her job boring. Suddenly, a
man calls out to Vijaya, “Eh, havaldar, come here, come here now.” There
are two men and one lady with some suitcases there. Vijaya is dealing with
something and after about ten minutes she comes back, saying, “Oh, that
man there, is a Ticket Checker (TC). The other man and that woman are
husband and wife. The wife has a mail train pass and the man has a harbour
line railway pass. The wife entered the harbour line on her mail train
pass which is not allowed. Now, when the TC caught them and asked them to
pay a fine of Rs. 250, they are refusing saying, ‘but we have a pass –
pass to hai nah?’ The man wants me to explain to the TC this. I told the
man that the TC has more powers than I do and my job is just to keep a
watch on the station. Beyond that, I have no powers. Now they have gone to
the station master to resolve the issue.” After about half an hour, the
man and his wife come walking by. They wave out to Vijaya. She asks them,
“What happened?” “Oh,” said the man, “we had to pay the fine. But this is
unfair. We had the pass no. We were not traveling ticketless. And my wife
only came into the harbour line train for about three stations – for a
five rupee ticket mistake, we had to pay Rs.250.” The man was evidently
irritated. His wife kept telling him to shut up and walk. Vijaya tells me,
“What people? They should buy the ticket nah? We home guards are allowed
to travel free between our home and the station of duty. But on holidays
and personal occasions, we also have to buy tickets. I don’t buy tickets.
I dress up half-civil and travel free. But yes, I get my kids to buy
tickets.”

Time goes by. I have spent about three hours at the station now. I tell
Vijaya that I have to leave now. We walk towards platform number three
where I will get a relatively empty train. Sushma is there at the
platform. “So, strolled around today as well?” she asks me. She had seen
me on Saturday. “Yes,” I reply. “What is your name?” she asks me. Vijaya
is also listening carefully because she hasn’t caught on. I give her my
name and Sushma’s next question is, “What is your caste?” Vijaya is
listening with rapt attention. “Muslim,” I tell her.

I get into the train. Vijaya happily waves out to me! Bye, bye, bye, bye ....