A stampede at a railway station in our city was inevitable. Those who use public transport always knew that it was a matter of when, not if
Consider a child, aged 5 or 6, out in the city on a trip with his or her parents, travelling from one end of Bombay to the other in the hope of being able to see the Gateway of India. Consider the manner of this child's commute, and the options available to the parents.
If they're rich enough, they may consider driving, or booking a cab, so the child can stare out the window at traffic for a few hours. The commute which, on the basis of kilometres that need to be covered, will supposedly take a half hour or less, will end up taking a large part of the child's day. Much of this period will be spent at traffic signals or behind buses, with patience giving way to anger as everything crawls. The child may want to use a toilet, as children want to when stuck in the same position for hours, but there will be no access to one. Where on the highway, for instance, can a man, woman or child find a clean, functional toilet? Let's ignore that for now.
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What happened at Elphinstone Road station wasn't a surprise. The saddest thing is how we continue to be saddled by leaders who don't know or care what this means
If the parents can't afford a car or taxi - as millions in our city can't, despite every government's strange obsession with making life easier for drivers rather than pedestrians - they will have no option but to take a bus or train.
Try taking a bus at rush hour, or during the monsoons, or outside a railway station or market, to get a sense of just how horrific this seemingly simple task really is. It involves queues that go on forever, with commuters patiently waiting in the most miserable weather for vehicles that rarely park correctly, forcing them to dodge traffic as they clamber aboard in the hope of an elusive seat. Look at the thousands of young and old people forced to deal with this daily.
And so, a train. The child in question, holding a parent's hand with blind trust, manoeuvring past hawkers and missing paver blocks towards a crowded maw that is the entrance to every railway station.
The wait for a ticket in a dismal, filthy area, followed by the pushing and shoving that accompanies every step down a crowded staircase to a platform that is infinitely harder to walk through. Imagine this chaotic world through the eyes of a child, desperately holding on to a hand in the hopes of making it onto a train safely.
A year ago, an NGO that works with children and child rights released a statement saying that the number of children who went missing and remain untraced across India had increased by approximately 84 per cent between 2013 and 2015, with Delhi and Maharashtra recording the most cases. Apparently, there were 62,988 untraced children in 2015, and 9,414 children had yet to be found in Maharashtra. It's hard not to travel by local train on any day of the week and not think about these children, considering how hard it is for them to find their way around even when accompanied by both parents. Any commute offers daily passengers views of these harassed young ones, crushed between a hundred other older people, gasping for breath as they hope and pray for their destination to arrive sooner rather than later. Any commute offers images we have grown immune to, of senior citizens abandoning trains because the possibility of ever entering one simply does not exist.
The reason I try and imagine what our city is like through the eyes of a child is because I've been there. I travelled by train often enough as a child, and daily as a college student. I still see hundreds of children and senior citizens struggle to get on board daily, from the moment they approach hawker-choked railway stations to the risks they take while simply trying to get down the right staircase.
What happened at Elphinstone Road station last month wasn't a surprise. For people who rely on public transport in our city, we always knew it was a matter of when, not if. The saddest thing is how we continue to be saddled by leaders who don't know what this means, don't care what this means, or are extremely aware of how dangerous our commute is, but can't be bothered to do a thing about it. The writer Pearl Buck once defined the test of a civilization as the way that it cares for its helpless members. Ask yourself: Would she have referred to us a civilised nation?
When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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