A boy passed by the window selling packets of peanuts. Alok called out and bought two—one for himself and one for Atmaram. It had been a hard day and Alok was glad to be on his way home. The train soon left the bright yellow of Churchgate station and entered the dark patch behind Wankhede stadium. As the stations passed by—Marine Lines, Charni Road, Grant Road—a fitful sleep cast its spell on Alok. And as the train gathered momentum, Alok’s head seemed to acquire a life of its own. It swayed from right to left to right, it lolled back and jerked forward; at times, Atmaram—who could never sleep on trains—worried that the head might come unhinged from his master’s neck, bounce on the floor once like a football and fly out of the window into the slums that ran alongside the tracks.

Occasionally, Alok would open his eyes for half a second and make a note of the station that had just passed—Lower Parel, Dadar, Khar. Sometimes, these eyes would take in a stretch of road—full of yellow and black cabs, a big cinema hoarding; sometimes he would catch a glimpse of Atmaram munching on his peanuts, and, it was at times like these—in the few conscious moments before the blankness of sleep took over—that Alok would find the city begging for his affection. He would reciprocate generously, doling out love like loose change, and go back to sleep happy in the knowledge that Bombay was Bombay and that he could live nowhere else.

Vile Parle station. As a child this was the first railway station he saw. The trains still looked the same although two new platforms—platforms 5 and 6—had been added to the existing two.