Another trip to Dharavi

Last weekend Valentin again went to Mumbai to meet some friends of ours on Friday and Saturday night and to visit Dharavi again. The trip to Dharavi was similar to our first trip one week ago. We wanted to see more of the slum and especially I wanted to do more photography there for a potential photo exhibition or illustrated book.

The happening that actually worth a report is our experience with the Indian Railways and Indian Police on the way back to Valsad as both proved to be really incompetent. On the internet we found the 23.35 train from Bandra Terminus to Valsad as the last available train on Saturday night. So we reached Bandra Terminus some minutes earlier, purchased tickets and were on our way to the platform. There was only one train there which was already about to move and we still had to run through the underpass. Confident that we would still be getting the train we were running as fast as possible and jumped on the moving train what is quite a normal procedure in India.

So somehow we got on the train but came to know that it was totally empty. We thought that there might not be that much travellers on a Saturday night so we did not question this any longer. But when the train stopped after a few kilometers and went back some meters things became really strange. We found ourselves in the washing bay. Now we were quite sure that this train would not be going to Valsad and walked all the way back to the station. Fortunately it was too long and and took the ticket seller to ask why he sold us a ticket for a train that was obviously not running but was mentioned in the online reservation system. We then came to know that our train has been rescheduled or whatever.

Anyway we had to spend the night there in the Bandra Terminal Building and wait for the first train the following morning. First we wanted to spend it on the platform but were told by some policemen that we would not be allowed to stay there but that it was possible to stay in the newly built terminal building. We went there, settled down were also other passengers were sitting and after some time we were asked by two police men to leave the station. They did not pay any attention to all the other passengers who were resting there and obviously we were really pissed. Not only because we did not have any other opportunity to sleep but rather because it was just us who were asked to go we got really pissed. We started arguing with the police men although it is quite senseless to argue with them because they are just so licentious. So also we did not give an inch as they usually stayed there but the bad impression about Indian police men stays.

Finally we got on the first train at 6.50 AM next morning where a stupid train conducter asked us to pay a penalty because our ticket that was for the last night train was not valid for that train. We came to know by another passenger that train conducters in India just have to charge a minimum of penalty fees per day and we just became another victim of their disposal.