By Andrew Strickler, for the San Francisco Chronicle (class of 2005)

Photo by Mimi Chakarova, for the San Francisco Chronicle

MUMBAI, India, November 12, 2004—On a muggy evening, Dipak Gandhi stood on a pedestrian walkway at Andheri Station, watching throngs of commuters push in and out of jam-packed cars on India’s most congested suburban railway.

“People go mad,” said Gandhi, president of the Bombay Suburban Passengers’ Association, an 800-member organization he founded in 1980 to lobby railway officials for improvements. “Every day, this is their ritual. Or should I say their punishment?”

Bombay, also known as Mumbai, is a city of 16 million inhabitants, of whom 6 million ride the city’s three main lines daily — more riders than all of New York City’s subways, buses, trains and ferries combined. Trains designed to hold 1,700 passengers carry as many as 4,700 during peak hours in a bone-crushing 1.4 bodies per square foot of space.

As a result, some 3,500 passengers, or 10 a day, are killed annually in grisly accidents. Some are crushed to death by fellow riders or under speeding trains after falling out of doors that are typically left open to accommodate more riders. Others are killed by moving trains while crossing tracks to avoid crowded pedestrian walkways.

Bombay’s trains are a far cry from New Delhi’s new $1.5 billion futuristic cars. Passengers in the capital use smart cards or smart tokens to ride the spotlessly clean Delhi Rail Metro, which will open the city’s first underground rail link next month.

But in Bombay, most commuters have little choice but to use the 79-year- old train system. Because Bombay streets are typically clogged during peak hours, trains are the only way to get home or to work on time.

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By Andrew Strickler, for The Christian Science Monitor (class of 2005)

Andrew Strickler reporting.

BOMBAY, India, August 4, 2004—At Mumbai Central station in Bombay, a thousand tired passengers disembark from an overnight train. Businessmen with briefcases, barefoot laborers, and wealthy families followed by luggage- toting servants make their way through crowds of waiting passengers seated on the station’s marble floor, toward a swarm of taxis outside.

As they disperse, a group of about 25 young people remains behind. Ranging in age from 10 to 20, they are among the permanent residents of Mumbai Central. For them – and countless other children across India who have no other place to live – the station is much more than a transit point; it is an escape from a troubled home, a meager livelihood, and a veil of protection from the chaotic streets of overcrowded Bombay (Mumbai).

On a sweltering May afternoon, Siraj, who has wavy black hair and the taut muscles of a luggage porter, tells his story as he waits to unload a train that is already six hours late. Nearly a year ago, he hopped a train 1,100 miles away in Calcutta after his mother, overwhelmed by his father’s illness, kicked him out. “I just got on the train and thought I would find work,” he says.

Siraj came to Bombay because that was where the train was headed. He stayed because he had nowhere else to go.

It is difficult to estimate the number of children like Siraj who live in Bombay’s stations; their mobility and the overwhelming number of homeless defy surveys. UNICEF estimated in 1994 – the latest year for which figures are available – that India has 11 million homeless children, with a significant percentage living in urban areas.

An estimated 30 unaccompanied children arrive at the city’s 125 train stations every day, according to Aasara, a nonprofit organization that supports Bombay’s homeless children. They’re attracted by the perception that there must be jobs available in the country’s most prosperous city, and also by the image of glamour that gives Bombay the reputation of being the Los Angeles of India.

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