It’s hard to get into the men’s First Class compartment during rush hour on a normal evening. But this is not any evening. Its a day after the blasts, at 6pm, roughly the time when, yesterday, the first of a series of seven bombs ripped through the first class gents compartment. And on this jittery Wednesday, unlike a normal day when there is only toe-room in coaches on the Churchgate-Borivali run, there is space enough to sprawl.
“It’s like a ghost train today, eighty per cent of the passengers have not turned up,” said businessman Zack Titus. Despite media tomtomming about Mumbai’s spirit, commuters were clearly divided about their options for reaching home. People like Vaman Shenoy and Prakash Deshpande, Canara bank employees, got into the First Class compartment of a Borivali slow after a lot of apprehension about another possible mishap, and some superstition (they wanted to take an Andheri slow instead, just because no explosions had been reported on it). Then there was businessman Ashish Gupta, who gave his fellow passengers a long look-over before picking his seat, and said he’d decline if anyone asked for help to put their baggage on the overhead rack.
Tejas Shah and Malay Shah said they didn’t care - but only after checking under their seats. Almost all stations on the Western Railway line had some show of khaki: A few baton-swinging GRP personnel, rifle-toting RPF men and at a Churchgate station, a sniffer dog-and-reflectors wielding bomb squad. Still, corporate Subodh Dahimal doesn’t feel safe and wants to form an office pool and get a ride from Kandivali to his workplace in Worli.
Resilience and never-say-die? Sure, but laced with a need to make a living, no matter what.
