What united them all was not language, not drudgery, not the wait for the Borivali Slow or the Andheri Fast, not the copies of Saamna or the Afternoon Dispatch & Courier, not the dinner at home still waiting to be cooked. It was perspiration. It was almost as if a giant, rude, mean-spirited tidal wave had risen from the Arabian Sea, crawled in through the tiled subways like an octopus and drenched the huddled commuters in a torrent of salt and glue.

Alok’s white shirt, now yellowing with wear, stuck to his back like a magnet. In his left hand he carried a striped nylon bag full of leather-bound tomes—he was a law books salesman. Standing next to him, carrying a much larger and heavier bag, was Atmaram—Alok’s flunkey and drinking partner. Atmaram was thin, tall—taller than his employer—stoop-shouldered, extremely loyal. ‘Sala, no train,’ muttered Alok, unbuttoning yet another button on his shirt. Then they both exchanged bags—Atmaram taking charge of the relatively lighter one while Alok held the heavier one with both hands and struggled to balance it somewhere between his middle-aged paunch and his large shiny belt buckle. This exchange of bags took place without the exchange of a single word. It was a reflexive act yet not completely spontaneous and arbitrary like picking one’s nose.

In the small space between Alok and Atmaram, on the grey dusty floor of platform 2, stood a small brown box made of packing case wood. The box contained fifty of the finest alphonsos—the best of the season. Alok was going to Vile Parle to see his father and sisters—he himself lived further down the Western line in Malad—and the mangoes were a present for them.

The Borivali Slow arrived three minutes late as announced. But before this happened, before the vacuum train sucked in the dustball crowd, Atmaram, along with several other enterprising Bombayites—especially those who had a long journey to make—had jumped on to the train while it was still in motion. When Alok staggered in later with Atmaram’s bag and the box of mangoes he found his flunkey sitting proudly at a window seat. His own leather bag was placed strategically on the seat opposite.

Alok settled his luggage on the long rack that ran above the window and down the entire length of the compartment. The space between the luggage rack and the roof was covered with posters promising cheap, safe abortions and painless electrotherapy for curing depression.