Operation Sunrise

Taking over as the head of DNA’s Interactive journalism department (a job I was hired for, but one that has gaily danced away from my perverse clutches) should have been a moment of great rejoicing, and it was, until the pin dropped. The pin in question being the fact that I would now have to report at 11am, rather than the far more agreeable time of 2pm.

Now to many rats that run the proverbial urban rodent marathon, 11am seems hopelessly late to start one’s day, but for the journalist it could very well be the middle of the night.

The timing, however, wasn’t the worst of my worries...that position was reserved for the crowds that I imagined would be buffeting me like a hooker at a stag party.

The first day had dawned and I emerged from the safety of my parents’ flat, neatly framed by the trees that line this scenic street. The sun wasn’t harsh, but it nevertheless made its presence felt in the refracted rays that fought their way through the green canopy.

The walk to the Bus Stop takes about five minutes (or the time it takes to smoke one cigarette) and apart from the looming threat of being run over by a bus, it was rather uneventful.

The bus stop boasted the regular motley bunch of office workers and college students, unfortunately the college girls comprised oily-haired, pasty-faced, 50-pinters, rather than the sought-after buxom, hip-hugging-jeaned variety. But, no matter, the bus duly arrived, and lo and behold, it was empty.

Thanking Zeus’s phenomenal libido I promptly settled into a window seat and perused the latest New Yorker (picked deftly from one of DNA’s saving graces...its great library). People embarked and got off at the various stops that marked the circuitous route from Four Bungalows to the Andheri Railway Station, but not once were there more than five people standing in the bus.

The station itself had the de rigueur bunch of unwashed, tree-hugging Greenpeace activists handing out leaflets about some stupid whale that would be better off on my plate. A simple “Fuck Off” and they were on to the next person with their environmental nonsense.

I was on schedule to catch the 10.32am train that started at Andheri, and already the creeping dread was...well...creeping up on me: the dread of a human wave that would certainly engulf me, when those 12 carriages pulled in.

But the platform lay relatively empty, like a town in the Wild West that had just heard the Baker Boys’ posse was riding down.

The train emerged from the haze conjured by the heat and pollution that rose up from the earth entwined in a macabre dance of warmth and putrefaction. Yet the wave did not break.

As the First Class (it’s only the best for me) bogey approached my anxiety, I found myself a straggler. And then there it was; its vacant doorway gaping at me like a 16-year-old at his first strip show. I stepped in and the seats beckoned with their empty embrace.

I sat down, by the window, and exhaled a breath that had been caught in my chest for a good minute. I had caught the morning train and Moses and the promised many had not materialised. Victory was mine: the little man had triumphed over the thronging behemoth.

“Operation Sunrise has been completed successfully sir,” the voice of my inner Colonel proclaimed.

“Good work son,” I replied in my best rendition of Rommell, “Next stop Paris!”

OK so maybe not Paris, but hell, Elphinstone Road can’t be all that bad