The carriages are the most dangerous, rickity things. No glass in the windows, just bars. No doors because, yeah, why would you have those? When the trains get busy, people hang on and hang out the side of the carriage so they don't miss their stop , and everytime the train slows down passengers- men, women, kids- swing on and off, definitely not feeling the need to wait until the train has come to a complete stop. I was trying to look cool and nonchalant, but I'm pretty sure my horrified face gave me away. As if a bunch of giggly white girls wasn't conspicuous enough already.
It was our first real experience of segregation in India. Maybe my first experience of segregation ever. Still a very patriarchal country, Mambai trains have a designated 'female' carriage, so that women can travel seperately from the men. The carriage is at the same location on every train, so there's a sign on the platform- "Female"- and we stood there and got on the train that stopped in front of us.
It was a very tiny thing, getting on that carriage, and if I'm truly honest and remembering rightly, my first genuine reaction was relief. The train station was intimidating; the crazy haphazardness of it and - being a claustrophobic freak- I was grateful to get on the least crowded carriage and be surrounded by women, whom I at least felt a little bit safer with.
The train creaked all the way to Mumbai Central, dirty and dusty and no-one checked our tickets. It felt like we could've been going anywhere and, with Vasu in the men's carriage, I think we were all a bit nervous. Not knowing who was going to leap onto our train as we sped through the countryside.
On the railway platforms, skeletal dogs and skeletal children sleep on the concrete in plain view of the commuters. Some come and beg, some come up to us with huge trays of penny trinkets, flashing these huge white smiles and goading us to buy something, because we're the rich, white foreigners. But mostly, at the railways, they're just spread out on the platform, sleeping. Vasu warns us not to give them anything, because we'll get mobbed, and these kids probably have to turn whatever they get over to their owners anyway. It wouldn't go towards helping them, it would fuel the crime.
But none of that felt like a good reason. We were giddy from surviving our first train journey; but stepping over a flea-ridden seven-year-old on our way to church was more sobering than pretty much anything I'd ever experienced.