Slow Train, Fast Train

Little pocket books being hawked, old uncles with hawk eyes

peering into black-and-whites, not their own, of the men next to

them, in Cambridge shirts, and trousers that have been sewn, frayed

now, by tailors under tin-sheds, just like this one beyond the fence, facing the

tracks, while children with grimy faces, looking like they've rubbed themselves with

bars of coal, coal I've thrown, drunkenly, when it was not required to heat my hookah,

with its tin polish, play with sticks and stones and I don't know what else because I'm past

them in a flash. There they are, the huts, lying on top of each other, like crocodiles under the Bombay

sun, and on top of the top-most ones, there is Dish TV and Videocon, white plates, like saucers, receiving, yes,

signals from space, from a place where there is actually space. I must be between Khar and Bandra, ah, there it is,

Bandra, a place-of-in-between in a place-of-in-between. Sudden swell inside the box of metal. Sweat, fish, bitterness, currency,

mobile phones, expectations, their shattering, everything. Today, the Western Railway is taking us all to Churchgate, no one will get off at

Mahim, Matunga Road, Dadar, Elphinstone, Parel, Mahalaxmi, Central, Grant Road, Charni Road, or Marine Lines because today, we will sit in front

of the water, the saltiness of our disappointments mingling, mingling with the saltiness of the sea, till it all dissolves, dissolves in time for the nine-thirteen fast to Borivali.