The Underground Jungle

I sit on the train and watch a blur of buildings float by, soon the descent begins. The train starts burrowing underground, deeper and deeper, the blur of buildings give way to a dust crusted brick walls replaying the same monotonous pattern again and again giving the illusion of absolute stillness, broken only by the loud clatter of the train as it goes deeper underground (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDtLatRbCo8&feature=related  - jump to 1.31 seconds).

The brick walls soon form the backdrop for the sea of wires and pipes. As I sit in the train I watch as the piped waves continuously rise and fall – rise and fall – rise and fall, quickly realising the need to snap out of hypnotic trance, my mind shifts to the people on the train. This is where I discover the underground jungle.

Train (from now on shall be referred to as the tube, quite fed up typing tube each time and then back spacing to replace it with train) rides are quite dull, one has little else to do than observe your fellow passengers or risk being hypnotised by the wired and piped waves. On this particular tube ride, everyone seemed to resemble some sort of animal – whether it was the puma in the overcoat standing near the door, quiet, unassuming, but as soon as a as a seat opened, he would pounce on it – only to succumb to British politeness and offer his seat to a slightly older lady behind him.

Or it could be chimp in the school uniform who is flinging himself from the hand bars only to settle down when handed a banana (seriously!) by his mother. Then there was the squirrel in the tweed coat, a small little thing, with eyes which darted all over the place – scanning the name of station stops and then eyeing the map, re-confirming the name of the station and then counting down the stops to her actual destination. She sat nervously on the edge of her seat for a good twenty minutes, until her stop came and she shot out of the train. Next I spotted the giraffe with the briefcase, gripping the hand rail and stooping to fit into the tube, didn’t observe him for much longer, my height insecurities seemed to creep in.  

As I reflected on my five foot two inch self, I also caught my actual reflection in the window, and realised I was also transforming into a tube animal – and it got worse – I truly and most sadly resembled a bespectacled cow!  I was sprawled in my seat, had the most uninterested expression pasted on my face and was chewing my gum in a cud like fashion! That’s when I decided to do what I did in Mumbai locals, listen to my music and stare at my frayed shoelace (More to come in my next blog post “The Frayed Shoelace”).

 Of course in Mumbai locals - sigh, how I miss them, one has little choice, when one is tucked neatly between a moist arm pitt and an oddly angular hip, but to stare at one’s shoelace – assuming that your lucky enough to see it!