For the longest time, I debated whether I should write a post on Bhiwandi or not. This is because, it is quite an unpleasant place. It is crowded, hot and dusty and the architecture is not charming at any point. It smells roughly like the combination of an open drain, several previously deceased animals, rotting fruit and animal/ human refuse. I kid you not. In the main market area, I saw the carcass of a dog, its intestines spilling out and the traffic happily running over it. The carcass resembled one of those cartoons flattened by a road roller - funny in cartoons, not so funny in real life. Bhiwandi is quite simply as immigrant town, a set of makeshift structures, a purely functional city where people mean to eke out a living and move on. The town's main industries are small scale, low grade cotton mills. Pass through the textile mills area in the day and you will hear the endless clanking of the cotton mills.
I mention Bhiwandi at all because the train journey to it is extremely beautiful and at the same time rather sad. I also happened to have an interesting experience when I went to Bhiwandi for the first time. Finally, the people of Bhiwandi are extremely nice and extremely stylish.
First, the experience. I had no idea how to get to Bhiwandi. Now as per a map of the Mumbai Suburban railway, a line has been built from a station improbably named Diva to Vasai. The first stop on this line is Bhiwandi. To get to Diva, I had to take the Harbour line from Vadala to Kurla and then change to the Central line. And so I boarded the train which was mercifully quite empty to Diva. "Wow!", I thought. "Here's a diva going to Diva!" I didn't really think that but I ought to have. Anyways, the train passes through some beautiful scenery. Gently rolling green hills surround what is known as the Thane Creek - a picturesque but rather polluted body of water. Which is what made the train ride a little sad. While the landscape was lovely, it was also very polluted. Plastic bags literally lined the railway track. The water in the creek was far from clear - it was dirty with plastic bags. Sometimes it was choked with white foam or industry waste. I distinctly remember an area where a stream flowed through a tunnel of trees, a picturesque enough scene - but the stream was white with pollutants and contained the odd plastic bag or two. Kind of like Vishwabharati. I just couldn't help but wonder at the sheer number of plastic bags that seemed to dot the landscape. Believe me, the number was almost at menace levels. There really has to be a way of educating people about using plastic as less as possible.
I reached Diva and found that the train to Bhiwandi goes from Kopar - a station which wasn't visible on my map. I then asked a auto driver if he would take me to Bhiwandi. "800 bucks" he said, without flinching. "Wow", I thought. "Here's a diva stuck in Diva!" Eventually it turned out that the Kopar was the next station after Diva on the Central Line. However, the train from there to Bhiwandi was extremely infrequent. Finally, I took the train to Kalyan and caught an auto from there to go to Bhiwandi. The enterprising auto drivers of Kalyan take you in a shared auto - a normal sized auto into which 5 people somehow squeeze themselves. While it is dangerous, it is also very cheap and efficient - it cost only 30 bucks for me to cover the 12km approx distance to Bhiwandi from Kalyan.
Now about the people of Bhiwandi. They seem to have an evolved form of sign language. Many times I have seen a guy gesture imperceptibly to the other guy, who immediately then knows what to do. A salesman I went with called a auto by waving his hand, pointing in the direction we wanted to go and then showing 2 fingers to indicate two passengers. The auto driver seemed to perfectly understand where we wanted to go. May be auto drivers in Bhiwandi ply on the basis of direction and not destination. That still doesn't explain how once a man got into my shared auto without saying a word to the auto driver. They just made eye contact once and it seemed like enough had been said. It was all very telepathic. The people of Bhiwandi were also fairly warm though more hardened than the Dhulia crowd. I don't blame them, they live in a hard place.
All in all, I wouldn't want to go back there again.
diva stuck in Diva. Lovely!
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