I’ll meet you at Wheeler’s

Illustration/Uday Mohite

I'll meet you at Wheeler's then" was a phrase I once used very frequently, Wheeler's being the book stall at Churchgate station, tucked into the corner by the ticket counter.

Once upon a time, work, romance, sea-breeze, English fillum, Fashion Street, Bachelor's ice-cream or the urgent work of timepass took me to Town all the time. Sometimes even twice in one day, because hopping onto a train, especially outside rush hour, was no biggie. A friend would call to say "oye, let's go to Marine Drive for a walk". "Ok, meet you at Wheeler's at 6," I'd say. Another would call with that partner-in-crime voice - shall we go to Gokul and get drunk?" And I'd say "Ok, meet you at Wheeler's at 9."

Last week I was meeting a friend in town. I reached and called. Both said, "Where are you?" Our voices echoed. Like a French farce, we stood back to back on our cell phones. A cell phone means we don't look hard for each other with our eyes. Not like when we'd, you know, meet at Wheeler's. We'd scour the crowds in anticipation. Our smiles would bloom, our hands wave like flowers in the breeze when we saw each other. How many ways we'd be saying, we're together, what fun, even if we'd met just two days ago!

Sometimes, we'd even run into each other, buying gajras or earrings on the train and start laughing in delight. "Grant Road is the special station" said my friend Hansa. Once, she spied me on the platform, from the train, creating thrills. Once I saw a friend on the opposite platform, sped over the bridge to say hi, then cheerfully changed direction to accompany him on some pleasure-project. Coincidence revived us, made us shiny and magical. In a city of millions, it said gosh, I found you! How joyful it is. How lonely we're not.

In a course I've been teaching on Bombay beyond Bollywood, we watched Nidhi Tuli's warm and affectionate film Ladies Special. Women do haldi kum kum on the train, tell tales of exchanging recipes, delivering babies, claiming seats, fighting bitterly over fourth seat and being whacked across the face by a fish. Surely, the word frenemy was coined for co-travellers on the Mumbai local and perhaps the city and its inhabitants. Watching that ‘other' cinema, documentaries of the 90s and 2000s, films where we looked for each other in the crowd so to speak, our eyes not trained on distant work-lands, chronicling the city's dense daily textures, its adversity and its generosity, I remembered why I loved the city so much. I also felt afresh how much harder life here has become, despite surface luxuries, how much harder it is to make a connection in every sense.

I responded to the hardship by working hard for the privilege of a 15-minute commute and the isolation of Ubers, in which I do more work. I'm embarrassed to admit, it's been six years since I took the local. When my friend said, let's take the AC train, I croaked, astonished, "AC train? Ticket app?" We jumped on. I checked out the rose print on someone's dress. Someone put a claim on my seat. I peeked to see what was making a woman smile at her mobile, while chatting with my friend. It's so nice, Bombay, to meet you at Wheeler's.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com