The Ladies Coupe

A mountain trek, an afternoon on a scintillating Seychelles beach, a lazy boat ride down Kerala’s backwaters, a mind exhilarating bungee jump- these are different experiences one need to live out, at least once in their years on earth. I too agree. I mean, one day I would love to muster all my courage and go bungee jumping. But the one thing a person definitely needs to go through is to travel by the ladies compartment in the Mumbai train.

The word ‘lady’ conjures up different adjectives like gentle, beautiful, tender, honest, kind and the list can go on. Unfortunately such adjectives are flung out of the window when you encounter with the Mumbai train ladies. They are hooligans, cut throat competitors for a train seat, highly fluent in Marathi insults and its other regional dialects, and (unfortunately for people like me) blessed with amazonic strength.

The following points will help throw more light to what I’m trying to convey:

1. The Mumbai ladies’ coupe is the best place to lose weight. Forget about all those subscriptions to VLCC, Fitness One, or Talwalkers. Just step into the ultra modern ladies’ compartment and you get squashed to the figure 5 you have always dreamed of. All your flabs disappear as you try (!) to edge your way in. You achieve the firm arms by holding onto the compartment bars for dear life and your legs and feet, well, bad news- you might not find them in the stampede. Lucky if you do.
2. Are you running late in the morning and you need to get your shirt/kurta ironed AND you need to catch the train??? Not to worry. Don’t bother about the creased unironed clothes. Just run for the train and get into the specially reserved space for ladies. Within few minutes of pushing and mashing and compressing, you will emerge onto your destination platform, all neatly ironed out and perfect.
3. A pleasure note for all the lesbians out there- girls, its all boobs and butts here in the ladies coupe!!! My heartfelt condolences for the males as they do not, or rather, probably will not get to enjoy such an event.
4. If a lady does not get to jump out onto her desired station, the chances of her not letting the other commuters to get onto their stations are highly probable. She will most likely bless you with some marathi abuses, you would be so overwhelmed enough to miss your own station.
5. Mumbai is a huge city so you will have to keep yourself entertained. Many a lady can be seen equipped with headfones stuck in their ears. If you don’t own a portable radio or I-pod, not to worry. There are many shoulders to fall sleep on. A sure shot solution to your most wanted power naps.
6. The best way to get out of the train is to simply SCREAM! The way that these ladies shriek is almost akin to how the people screamed in the sinking Titanic (as per the movie).
7. A word of caution to people who are as blind as me- please wear your contact lenses. You never know when your spectacles will be pushed off your face. Don’t even imagine bending down to search for them. You are close to committing suicide in the midst of all those stomping feet and stilleto heels.

This is just a nutshell of what I have really gone through. Watch out for my up coming bestseller- ‘The Adventures of a Fraud Mallu in Mumbai’.