Melee

I was standing in a mob & suddenly I was pushed with a great force by the mob. Oh my god, I was just jammed between so many people. Everyone was just pushing or pulling each other. I tried to turn back & come out of the rushing horde, but it was simply impossible…Just with the push & pulls of so many hands and shoulders, I moved from one point to another & finally entered the gloomy conduit… & after that I can’t explain my exact state in words… , sooooo many people at that cramped place. It looked as if the whole city had got confined to that place. Females were just screeching & screaming at each other. They were just trying to save themselves from falling out of the channel. In order to make their way out, they were just pulling hair, duppattas or whatever they could catch hold of. After observing the whole fiasco, I desperately wanted to come out of the place but it was not at all possible. I felt that the whole conduit is moving at a very slow pace with thousands & thousands of voices floating around me. I was hardly able to stand straight over there.
Finally after sometimeI found a few people trying to move out & I also followed them. I experienced a sudden jolt & then oh lord …… everyone was pushing me, all of them wanted to come out. Some other lady’s duppatta got stuck around my neck & I was actually feeling suffocated & it was so difficult to breathe. I screamed with tears in my eyes. For a fraction of second I wasn’t able to move ahead & then suddenly because of pressure from back I fell down. I was half in that conduit & half on ground, shouting & crying but to no use. People just passed over on my hands & shoulders without thinking even once that they are actually running on a human body. My hands got badly hurt & I started shaking because of pain…but till then I never got the chance to get up from the ground. Then I saw a kid on the ground just beside me who had also fallen because of the mad crowd & he was actually bleeding from mouth. But noone was bothered & the mother of the kid was just crying & trying to pick up her child from the ground. I somehow managed to get up from the ground & I was shaking badly…
Nope, I was neither held in some riot nor at some place which caught fire suddenly. It wasn’t either any natural disaster or bomb blast. I faced this havoc while traveling in a central line local train in Mumbai. Day before yesterday, I just thought of going to Siddhi Vinayak temple & since I wanted to reach fast, so decided to take a train. Also I thought that since it wasn’t peak office hours, so the trains would be relatively emptier. But I was totally wrong. I had traveled by local trains earlier also but my this journey was the worst journey of my life. After somehow coming down at Dadar, I came to know that it was some “Ambedkar Festival” that day because of which the whole city was going towards that side. But the rush, the madness can’t be put in words. Noone was caring about what was happening to others, everyone was just rushing ahead.
I am anyways quite skeptical about traveling by local train & after that day’s incident, I have almost sworn in that I will never take a local train even if I will have to walk for kilometers. But I really feel sad about those who can’t avoid local trains because of their location of job or other reasons. They all lead such a tough & sore life over here. Riding a local train in Mumbai during peak office hours is almost like winning a battle. Not only local train, everything over here, be it finding accommodation or conveyance or any such thing is getting difficult day by day. So, many people are migrating to Mumbai because of job & career but I really wonder if the infrastructure over here is strong enough to support so many people???