Mumbai train reflects rural-to-urban shift
By Anand Giridharadas
The New York Times
ABOARD THE PUSHPAK EXPRESS, India — The man with neatly parted hair stood in the doorway of the hurtling train. And then, at the perfect moment, he jumped.
This was not about suicide, however. It was about tea.
Having popped out of the door, he clung to the knobs and rods of the train's exterior with one hand. His other hand gripped a vat of scalding tea tied to his belt.
He glided like a rock climber across the train's epidermis, from one foothold to the next. He reached the steel beam that connected the cars and walked it like a tightrope. Then, arriving at the next car, he hopped onto more footholds and, at last, ducked inside to utter his sales pitch: "Tea! Tea! Get your hot tea!"
Such acrobatics are not required on most of the world's trains, nor in this train's first- and second-class cars, which are connected with inside passageways.
Third class
But this was third class on the Pushpak Express, a $6, 24-hour ride ferrying migrants from India's bleak heartland to the thriving coastal megalopolis of Mumbai, also known as Bombay. And in an echo of the ancient caste system, these passengers are physically sealed off from the compartments of the luckier born.
These passengers are also part of a great migration that is changing the world.
Goldman Sachs, which has published projections about the Indian economy, predicts 31 villagers will continue to show up in an Indian city every minute over the next 43 years — 700 million people in all.
This exodus, with one in China, helped push the world over a historic threshold this year: The planet, for the first time, is more urban than rural.
To ride the Pushpak Express from Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh state in northern India, to Mumbai is to see a snapshot of that metamorphosis.
In Lucknow, migrants leapt to their feet when they heard the train roll in. They surged toward the train as it decelerated, and mob rule erupted.
Tranquillity was ultimately restored, and before long the train was lumbering toward Mumbai.
As evening surrendered to night, the passengers settled in. Most were migrants; most were men. Some sat on wooden benches; others lay on the floor. A few climbed into the luggage rack near the ceiling.
Wide-eyed new migrants mingled with hardened veterans.
"New men"
Sonu Gupta, 15, was one of what the veterans call "new men." With his wiry frame, he looked more like 10. He was traveling with a friend from his village. If he could find work in Mumbai, Gupta would become his family's breadwinner. "I'm happy," he said, "and I'm scared."
Nearby, Deepak Kumar, 18, would not confess to being scared. But he had every reason to be, because he was a runaway, with no helping hand. His mother had died, and he said his stepmother treated him like a useless holdover and beat him.
Friends from Mumbai called him, urging him to move to the city. So he boarded the train for the City of Gold, as Mumbai is often called, with the clothes he was wearing, an empty wallet and a cellphone SIM card.
For old-timers, the hopes are less lofty. Alok Misra was going to Mumbai for the third time in six years. He, too, had Mumbai fever once.
"You see in the movies, 'Bombay, Bombay, Bombay,' " he said, striking a Bollywood pose every time he said the city's name, which has officially been changed to Mumbai. "So people think, 'I want to go to Bombay.' "
He had dreams of being a Bollywood star. Instead, he found work as a parking valet. "Dreams don't go away in Mumbai," he said. "They just get smaller."
These migrants will become Mumbai's anonymous, floating underclass: taxi drivers who sleep in their taxis, electricians who wait for a $2 job. In leaving the village, they are doing something noble for their families — and yet the life they go to lead feels anything but. They toil so that others may eat.
"I don't live for myself," said Nowshad Ali, who has traveled 15 times to Mumbai since 1986 to work in a bakery.
Kumar, the runaway, listened to the tales. His eyes welled with tears. Misra and his friends tried to make him laugh. One man took his hand. Others told of their foibles in Mumbai, as if to say: "We've gone through this. You will survive."
But Kumar had a discouraging start in Mumbai. His contact did not meet him.
To ride this train was to recall that India remains in many ways a village nation: the effortless involvement of people in other's lives, the ceaseless generosity.
The migrants showed kindness to those just shades poorer than they. Beggars paraded through third class, the only class where the authorities don't hamper them.
And yet to beg from the desperate requires special creativity.
Two hours beyond Lucknow, a blind man's voice began to waft through the car. "Oh, my brothers, if you have no eyes, you have nothing," he moaned, his hand outstretched.
Nearly every migrant offered a coin; upper-class Mumbai residents rarely do.
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