Trains

Asad, of all people, has seen humanity at its worst. I asked him if he felt pessimistic about the human race.

"Not at all", he replied. "Look at all the hands from the trains."

If you are late for work in Bombay, and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, you can run up to the packed compartments and you will find many hands stretching out to grab you on board, unfolding outward from the train like petals. As you run alongside you will be picked up, and some tiny space will be made for your feet on the edge of the open doorway.

The rest is up to you; you will probably have to hang on to the door frame with your fingertips, being careful not to lean out too far lest you get decapitated by a pole placed too close to the tracks. But consider what has happened: your fellow passengers, already packed tighter than cattle are legally allowed to be, their shirts drenched with sweat in the badly ventilated compartment, having stood like this for hours, retain an empathy for you, know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss this train and will make space where none exists to take one more person with them.

And at the moment of contact. they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim of Christian or Brahmin or untouchable or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning or whether you live in Malabar Hill or Jogeshwari; whether you're from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you're trying to get to the city of gold, and that's enough. Come on board, they say. We'll adjust.

Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

Oh, that's so beautiful. I can't top it, but will make another contribution.

Railroad owner Thomas Peirce designed the town of Marion, halfway between Seguin and San Antonio. He created a thirty-six-block grid, laid out in four rows of nine with eighteen on each side of the tracks. The Peirces had a daughter named Marion, as did the Dove family, who owned the cotton plantation that provided the right-of-way for the line. As to the question of whether the town was named for Marion Peirce or Marion Dove, the answer is yes.

The Railroads of San Antonio and South Central Texas
by Hugh Hemphill

#1 Great! Hands like petals. Love it.

On the Paris metro:

'the Surface is hardly livable!...it's true! so I don't hesitate, not me!...my genius in action! no formalities!...I ship all my friends off on the metro, correction! I take everybody, willy-nilly with me!... charge along!... the emotive subway, mine in a dream! no drawbacks, nor congestion!...never a stop nowhere!...straight through! destination! in emotion!...powered with emotion! only the goal in sight: full emotion...start to finish!
Thanks to my streamlined rails! my streamlined style!
Streamlined on purpose!...special! the metro and its rails, I bend them! I do, I admit! its rails so rigid...I give them a helluva twist...all it takes!...it's style shall we say!...I distort them one certain way, so the passengers, daydreaming along...don't notice...the sorcery, the magic, Colonel! the violence also!...admittedly!...all the passengers enclosed, locked in, double-bolted! everybody in my emotive cars!...no fuss!...I don't put up with fuss! no question of their escaping!...no! no!
And the whole Surface comes with me! you see! the whole Surface! on board! amalgamated on my metro! all the Surface ingredients! all the distractions of the Surface! by sheer force! I leave the Surface nothing!... I make off with it all!...
...everything into my emotive metro!...houses, guys, bricks, broads, pastry cooks, bikes, cars, shopgirls, cops, as well! heaped up, 'emotive cells!'...in my emotive metro! I leave nothing above ground!...everything in my magic transport!...
Violently!...you're the magician! yes?...no? then have your power perform!...some readers balk? billy club, Colonel? some prefer the movies? billy club!...prefer pop stuff? billy club...you are the master of enchantment...you prove it to them by enclosing them, locking, double-bolting! you intend to be obeyed!...spoken language through the written form!...your invention!...no fuss! Pigalle-Issy nonstop! no special treatment allowed!...under the spell!...you don't tolerate arrogant intellects! dialecticians, for example! no more crossroads, no more yellow lights, no more cops, no more dragass buttocks!---No more trucks ramming into you! artist that you are! your metro stops at nothing!...you've streamlined yourself a style!
...everything! eight-story buildings!...ferocious rumbling buses! I leave nothing on the Surface! I leave nothing there! no kiosques, no badgering spinsters, no bridge bums!---Bridges too!---powered with emotion...nothing but emotion!...breathless emotion!
But watch out! detail!...detail! you are not on ordinary rails!...your story is no ordinary one!
The least slip...you'll destroy the whole system: roadbed! arches!... a breath! a cedilla!...ass over end! thousand miles an hour! your story tilts! derails! your metro plowed to a stop! a stinking, smashed-up pulp! shameful! you and your 600,000 readers!...demonic disaster! because of one breath! one breath, more or less!...reduced to a jelly!
...that's where the genius lies!---The genius of not derailing, b'God! never derailing!---I summarize! I resummarize!...not ordinary tracks at all! not ordinary style rails! no! no!
Rails specially made, they look straight, but they really aren't!---That's the whole trick!...the delicate touch! the mortal peril, also! this absolutely special style!---If your rails are straight, in classic form, well-knit sentences...---Your whole metro overturns! you smash up the scenery! roadbed! ass over end! you shatter the archways! kill all your passengers! a shambles, your metro! your whole string of cars stuffed with real estate!---So watch out!...extreme risk!...don't go sending your metro car down ordinary straight rails! no! no!...no!...I adjure you! only on the 'special' bent rails! streamlined 'special'! by yourself! don't trust anyone else to do the job! polished to within one hair of a micron!
Just let your metro falter by as much as a hair!...your metro packed with readers...those bewitched by your style...and catastrophe!...ass over end!....a pile up! by one hair's breadth! and you responsible!
The wet nurses, the paper venders, the cyclists, the ladies' men, full platoons of cops, sidewalk cafes jammed with plagiarists, truckloads of sentiment that you have carefully stowed away, sweated over, shut up in your book, one thousandth of an inch deviation from your style, off by one shadow of a comma, the charge into your decor! smash everything! trample themselves to a pulp!
My three dots are indispensable!...indispensable!...I repeat: indispensable to my metro!---to set my emotive rails on! clear as day!...on the roadbed!...they won't hold up by themselves, my rails!...I need ties!...---the gimmick of the 'metro-all-nerve-magic-rails-with-three-dot-ties' is more important than the atom!

Conversations with Professor Y
by Louis Ferdinand Celine

On the Singapore metro:

She liked the sensation of moving fast, standing and surging rhythmically, her chattering mind unable to keep pace. The train played peek-a-boo with silvery skyscrapers interrupted by broad streets and green swaths of land. After a while, she focused within the compartment, amused herself with the catchy match-making ads, and caught the headline from today's Straits Times that a seated business-type held under his nose. Who but a humorless bureaucrat would say: "Singaporeans should smile more often."

unpublished novel in progress
by Bharti Kirchner

So that, on the stroke of midnight, in one direction or the other, the Zero could tear through, without losing speed at the turn, nor even on the rumbling, groaning bridge. One hundred wagons, doors battened and sealed, two locomotives in front and two behind, chug-chug, u-u-u! One hundred wagons. Point of departure not known. Destination top secret. Hold your tongue. Your job's a small one: to keep the track in order. Only that, but know it well. Everything to a T.

The Zero train
by Yuri Buida

Oh it's very pleasant when you have found your little den
With your name written up on the door.
And the berth is very neat with a newly folded sheet
And there's not a speck of dust on the floor.
There is every sort of light - you can make it dark or bright;
There's a button that you turn to make a breeze.
There's a funny little basin you're supposed to wash your face in
And a crank to shut the window if you sneeze.

"Skimbleshanks: The Railway Cat"
in Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
by T.S. Eliot

Margad--I use to read those poems all the time to my daughter when she was little.

My daddy used to read them to me. We had a cat named Jennyanydots.