I wrote this post a year into my transition in Mumbai (circa September 2010). My tryst with trains in the city continued till June 2013. I have since left Mumbai and looking back at this post, I pity my past self. Haha! If you have no stories to share from myriad train journeys in Mumbai then, I dare-say, your tryst with this city is incomplete. There is no evading those trains and also no denying their inevitability. Whether running at leopard-speed or crawling at snail-speed on the rat and litter-infested tracks, trains truly are and as popular parlance would have it, the ‘lifelines of Mumbai’. Long distance road travel in this busy and over-populated city is frustrating and utterly time-hogging, leaving the host of commuters with a rather sensible, economical, quick and preferable option of train travel. Sit in a train compartment and you will quickly notice how welcoming this mode of transport is to people across different strata of society. Affluent and chicly...