Mining Joy On A Joyride: Mumbai Metro Aqua Line 3
Mumbai finally has its first ever underground metro line! Currently operational till Bandra Kurla complex, Aqua Line or Line 3 will transport us from the green tribes of Aarey forest right up to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (of the Kasab attacks tragedy). I took a joyride this week and that’s an odd word to describe it. Cities make you eke out joy the same way as they do money, time and belonging.
It wouldn’t quite be right to call it FOMO because the public transport of a city like this embraces you with zero chance of missing out. Mumbai like some of the hardest living of cities demands that you engage with its very visera. Even if you were arrogant enough to exist in a rich bubble, you’d have to align with the power dynamics of how the larger population lives and traverses.
Aqua Line on the Mumbai metro
Mapping Mumbai
I’ve watched my city shape-shift painfully since the 80s. The mayanagari is a constant struggle of money, power and people. We have to think about space differently here from how we think about it in the rest of the mostly landlocked country.
At the Kala Ghoda Art Festival this year, Mrinal Kapadia traced the history of Mumbai through three centuries of maps. It was an eye-opener to realise that different cultures map differently. Through the eons of colonisation, what we call Bombay was no more than minor land spaces eked out from in between numerous rivulets, lakes, streams and other water bodies. They were not inhabited enough or not by important enough people to plot each of these spaces.
As interest in the mainland of the subcontinent grew, landing points turned into ports which turned into villages, marketplaces, forts. It took the British to collectively categorise these numerous spaces into one location. It’s really quite a marvel that it is not just a city today but a metropolis, one of the busiest ones in the world.
Mumbai is a really young city if you consider it in that perspective, a chameleonic living thing that just emerged from the sea and as people flocked to it, continues to grow. Yesterday, Netra brought me the fact that this city was only divided along its current state lines as recently as 1960. I mean, my parents were already around by that time. It’s really really new. How then do we define a city that doesn’t have a history (when you compare it to the others in a country that spans centuries)?
The shifting Mumbaiker identity
I say, the people. Everyone here is originally from elsewhere. As Indians, our histories are older than this city’s. So Bombay is defined by the movement of people to its core. What better way to think about this city than by the way people move around within it? And the city is changing. Bambai ka poora naksha badal raha hain. In five years time, it will be unrecognisable from our current understanding of it.
Mumbai’s identity as a city began with the British establishing textile mills to stabilise the impact of the swadeshi movement. They build cramped quarters to house the thousands of workers needed to run these mills – the chawls that would become synonymous with Mumbai culture. Eventually, they also laid down train tracks to bus in workers from further away. And thus a city began.
The fact that it stayed that way for decades tells me growth isn’t really linear. Human beings shoot up and out in the adolescent years. Maybe this is Mumbai’s adolescence. Too long has the city been defined by employment centers/wealth in the South end and millions of plodders flocking in from as far away as is humanly possible in the most strained of facilities. Delhi media glamorised this struggle as ‘Mumbai spirit’ while Bollywood sold fantasies about the one-minded, cog-in-machine life of a Mumbaiker.
All that Maximum City deserves
As a Mumbaiker, of course I’m furious that my city, the financial capital, whose people generate a third of the taxes of this country – was the last Indian city to get a modern public transport system. The first elevated metro started only in 2013 from Versova to Ghatkopar.
Having been an Andheri girl my whole life, I still can’t get over the relief and joy that it’s possible to traverse from one end to another of this city’s biggest suburb in a mere 24 minutes. It’s almost enough to overlook all the ways the system fails us even after being so long overdue. I just never learnt that such facilities should be par for the course for a city that works so hard and produces so much profit.
That these facilities are also made available with no relation to the greater needs, came to my consciousness in 2009 with the long delayed Bandra-Worli sealink opening. That overhyped connection didn’t change life one bit for the majority of Mumbaikers. All it did was give Bollywood some nice-looking aerial shots at the cost of choking up both Bandra Reclamation and Worli Seaface.
The metro is changing the face of this city
This is why I was so thrilled when an actually useful (and much needed) line finally opened up connecting Andheri, (the biggest and most centrally located suburb of the city) with Dahisar (far out North). Dad with all the cynical perspective of an outsider to the city observed that it didn’t have the technological finesse or even the capacity to fulfil what it was built for. I was just so relieved. Andheri to Dahisar on one unbroken line? In airconditioning? Can a Mumbaiker even dare to dream of that?
And finally, another arm has opened up, this time an underground track, Mumbai’s first. I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I do know now that a joyful investment in any public transport is a hallmark of a true Mumbaiker.
This is the Aqua Line or Line 3, currently running from Aarey to Bandra Kurla Complex but eventually slated to extend upto CST. There is a whole bundle of extra special for me personally with this line.
I grew up in Marol at a time when people as nearby as Mithibai college hadn’t heard of it and would ask if I lived in the city at all. Aarey was Sunday morning walks, the almost jungle to my kid eyes. And people would say “Aaj Bombay ja rahe hain” when they were going to South Bombay, as if where we lived wasn’t good enough to be considered a part of the city. It was also as if we barely deserved to even be allowed into the hallowed airs of SoBo and if at all, only through the arduous struggle through potholes, unlit roads and a very long and packed train journey.
And you’re telling me it’s going to be Aarey to CST in one go with AC and no switches? Unbelievable!
The Connecting Points
I boarded the line at Marol Naka. Connecting points often become bottlenecks in this city so I wanted to see how it would look at the intersection of the Aqua Line and the Blue Line. The historic connecting points of Mumbai are:
- Dadar railway station: Western line + Central line
- Wadala railway station: Western line + Harbour line
- Ghatkopar railway station: Central line + Harbour line
Each of these stations has designated tracks for the two lines it handles. Tickets can be purchased for via routes so commuters don’t need to queue up each time they switch. Signages are reasonably clear. And since it’s been around for a century, you could just ask a passerby and you’d be directed accurately.
The first Blue Line metro also brought us connectivity with the railway network at Andheri station and at Ghatkopar station. The names of the stations were retained from the railway network.
The Blue Line metro plugs right into Ghatkopar railway station so you just ride Eastward, alight and walk out to turn left or right to go North or South as needed. Andheri didn’t fit quite as seamlessly since it is in the middle of the line and also a really crowded location. The metro station is still the narrowest and smallest of all I’ve seen despite it being the busiest in the whole city.
For months after it was opened, commuters had to trickle out of a narrow staircase onto the main road before squirrelling into the dingy ticket counter entrance of the railway station. Fortunately the railway station has moved its entrance and ticket counters to a spacious bridge and the metro station connects to it over ground now. The railways and the metro ticketing still functions differently though, more is the pity.
The later connecting points are not quite as seamless and for a pretty silly reason. The Blue Line touches Red Line at W.E.H. station (awkward name, isn’t that?) and Yellow Line at D.N.Nagar station. But because Reliance runs the Blue Line and MMRDA runs the Yellow & Red Lines, the designating connecting stations stand separately and have different names.
Till now, if you were travelling from Goregaon East to Ghatkopar, you would use the railways and switch at Dadar station. But now, you may take the metro and switch at Gundavali/ W.E.H. It gets even more convoluted with the Red Line. Want to get from Infiniti mall to Saki Naka? You were always going to need to go through Andheri, of course. But wait, you’re going to pass three different stations called Andheri and it’s not because it’s the biggest suburb in the city.
First you ride the Red Line to its end point which is called…errr, Andheri West. Then you switch over to the Blue Line by crossing a bridge the width of a road and miraculously the station is now called DN Nagar. Get into the metro and try to ignore the bustle at a metro station called Andheri. And if you should happen to get down by mistake, don’t get swept into Andheri railway station because that’s not going to take you anywhere near your destination.
I’ve grumbled about this long and hard and been merely pacified by a common metro card that can be used on all three lines. The catch? You can only purchase it on the Red and Yellow Line stations and you can only refill it there. I’m thinking of all the school debates I sat through that argued against privatisation of key infrastructure. They were right.
Marol Naka has arrived!
Well, here’s where the Blue Line meets the Aqua Line – on Andheri Kurla road’s pavement. I can’t see a way that they’ll connect an over ground line with an underground line and it looks like they didn’t bother. The picture shows you but a short hop. Except within the entrance on the left is an escalator that only goes upwards. The pavement is too narrow to put a staircase as well so they’ve put it on further down. Clearly this is meant for people commuting from South Bombay into the Andheri extremities. I was a bit surprised to see the geographic snobbery reversal. But I corrected myself realising it’s likely about shoddiness rather than any planned effort.
I wandered out of the hitherto familliar Marol Naka metro station (Blue Line) asking passersby how I could get to the Aqua Line. At the base of the staircase, I paused and looked at the line of small shops. The shopkeeper closest immediately pointed to his left. I laughed and said,
“People have been asking you for directions all day?”
He nodded with the merest hint of a smile. It’s not helping that these two disconnected stations on two different lines are both called the same name. Still, we soldier on. The journey still lies ahead. I suppose there is some joy in the fact that the shopkeeper wasn’t a lecherous lout (Delhi), a lazy bum (Kolkata), an abusive asshole (Chennai) or a passive-aggressive freak (Bangalore). Efficiency of expression and message is my city’s own special flavour.
The Marol evolution
I still can’t believe that the shabby, semi-jungle area that grew up with me is now a bustling uber metropolitan location. This very signal where two metro lines jostle to offer connectivity, I would pass on my way to school every day. I was a little afraid to look in that direction because there was what my mother described as a ‘shady looking hotel’ there and this to my young self meant bad things happened there. The fire station across the road from this chowk has gone too, severing my last link with the valient protectors of all life.
The village life is a thing of the past. Will anyone care that a century old church once stood here, a fishing village sprung up around it, hundreds of lives were laid to rest in the graveyard, many thousands were conceived, learnt to walk and eventually fly as I did? Here. History is always passing. Like graffiti, mine is being overwritten to.
Oh well, onward bound. What new wonders or horrors awaited underground? For my love of this city, I have never been below ground here. And ooh, it’s reallly not a great feeling. Yet, capitalism tries hard to distract us from the soullessness of no windows, with imposing staircases, endless escalators, shiny vestibules and neon lights.
Take a look at all the screaming angles and monstering metal lines! In a few weeks, the mayhem of this city’s population will render you unable to take it all in. The metro will have absorbed you into its fibre.
The Aqua Underground
Anu who accompanied me was bemused by my sheer excitement about this joyride. Unlike with my last metro joyride, I noticed several others partaking of the same, albeit with much more dignity and silence. Maybe it’s not that Mumbaikers feign introversion. Anyone that rides the metro is openly impressed at facilities that this city has never had. It’s a quiet wonder, a hesitant “Am I really allowed this too?”
I saw families with babies and little kids. I know when they grow up, their parents will tell them they rode the metro line when it first opened up. And it will be with the same pride that my parents tell me about their weekends spent riding the train into Flora Fountain, memorising station names and perusing street books in their new home city. Mumbaikers, we are very aware that we are creating history and we want to document it for those that follow.
To be honest, I don’t know if I will be able to use the Aqua Line much. If this had come up 25 years ago when I still lived in Marol and was just beginning my adulthood, I’d have immersed in it never knowing any different. But now I have accumulated fears and health issues. Claustrophobia is never far away, having forced itself through my big city lifestyle in the gaps that COVID created. I have kept the rising temperatures and the need for enclosed airconditioning at bay by staying close to windows. Line of sight, line of survival.
But underground, there’s nothing to latch on to. It could be any hour of the day or night, any kind of weather and in any place in the world. The Aqua Line brings me no new discoveries like the Blue Line did about Andheri’s greenery or the Yellow and Red did about the power politics. And instead, I feel all semblance of belonging and identity wiped away as I enter the vestibule.
Netra remarked that it looked exactly the same as every underground train station in the world. Why does that have to be so? Cities are testament to the fact that one logic and unidimensional science does not work. Design solutions have to work around local lives, not demand that they be erased to fit one size. For example, why the single line escalators that make even a young person’s head spin?
Could they not have split it into multiple levels with visual angles and spatial breaks? And how about that endless corridor? I bet it’s even longer than the Dadar station overbridge. Now imagine being in a tunnel three times its size with solid walls on either side, no doors, windows or pillars on either side, just one blind turn at the end. That’s what the route from the base of the escalator to the track is like. I don’t know if my finances will permit me to ignore this transport line altogether and I also don’t know if my health will let me step onto it.
Riding the Aqua Line
The inside of the metro looks exactly like the other lines we’ve seen so far in Mumbai, albeit with aqua toned accents. It remains to be seen whether this line will also cram in the kind of advertising that the Reliance run Blue Line does. It won’t make a difference on the windows but I do hope they steer clear of the blaring audio ads that the Blue Line favours. I can’t imagine anything more torturous in an underground dungeon like setting.
I’m not sure if the Aqua Line repeats the practice of the Blue, Yellow and Red Lines to have doors open only on one side through a single trip. It was possible to plan it that way on above ground tracks. But the train line has stations appearing at random on either side, necessiting the crowd lurching constantly mid trip. That’s because the railway stations came up and expanded in unplanned and mostly reactive ways to the population growth.
Our plan was to ride from Marol Naka to BKC and then back all the way to Aarey. I joked at one point that it would bizarre if the metro also kept stopping randomly between stations like the railways did. Yes, my humour got rather dark underground. I couldn’t stop thinking of calamities I’d seen filmed on underground trains in movies – right from Sandra Bullock handcuffed to a rail inside a runaway train (Speed) to a bio bomb hidden in a baby’s milk bottle (Kahaani). And then curiously, the train slowed to an awkward halt and the screens flashed with a message I hope I’ll never have to see on the Aqua Line.
“EMERGENCY MESSAGE: Krupaya lakshya asu dya. Tantrik karnyamude honarya vilambabadal amhi dilgeer aahot.
(Please take note. We apologise for the delay caused by technical difficulties.)
I was only relieved to see that the train had stopped at a station and the doors were open. So I hopped out and burst out into the rush hour mayhem of Seepz. I did take two metro rides back home. And I didn’t anticipate how exhausted I would be with this. After all, I hadn’t walked all that much or done anything physically gruelling.
But as Raamesh pointed out, the switching of lines, figuring out where to turn, how to go is very wearing. Over a year into the Yellow and Red Lines, I still struggle to understand which exit to take because the stations all look identical within as well as the same from every angle. That just got even more complicated with an underground line where one doesn’t have the sights and sounds of outside for reference. And zero thought to what it’s like being an actual human being riding this transport line.
I want to cling to the idea that maybe once the line is fully operational and the crowds pick up, this city will make it its own. I pointed to the efficient shopkeeper as an example of the Mumbai personality. The underground station feels cold but also unsafe, with blind turns, disorienting inclines and exhausting lengths. But like Dadar feels crowded in a uniquely Mumbai way, might the life that fills these cold spaces warm it with this city’s spirit? I hold my hope.
I recall the first ever time I saw a metro in Dubai, it was mostly underground. So travelling in Mumbai’s metros was a different experience. Traveling on the new aqua line did feel both familiar and unfamiliar in equal measures, because of those experiences I think.
This was such a valuable piece, especially because it captures both the newness of this experience and the discomfort of it, and how disorienting it can be when the most familiar experience of riding a train is looking out the window and taking in the entirety of your city – finding something new to notice almost every time. ❤️
I look forward to experiencing Mumbai with you via train, however uncomfortable it may be. It’s still your city.