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11 types of expenses you are bound to incur if you take the Mumbai local

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Akshata Kamath
Akshata KamathJun 15, 2022 | 13:44

11 types of expenses you are bound to incur if you take the Mumbai local

Are you considering traveling by the Mumbai local train and feeling happy about how much money it will save you every day, as compared to cabs and autos?

Though traveling by Mumbai local is pretty inexpensive as compared to other modes, you may not have considered these costs:  

BEFORE GETTING INTO THE TRAIN 
1. AUTO: It's a Thursday morning and right when you are leaving home, you realize that you need to withdraw some money from the ATM. So, you walk to the nearest ATM, withdraw some cash, and get into an auto-rickshaw to quickly get to the railway station. Say it costs you Rs 30 one way and you travel for 22 days a month. Your auto fare for the month is Rs 1,320/month (30*2*22)

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2. CHANGE: Well, now that you have reached the station, count yourself lucky if the rickshaw guy gives you change without a snide remark or an eye-roll. Else, get ready to follow the old tradition of

  • asking for change from a nearby store,
  • begging for some change from the other auto drivers or worst,
  • buying a couple of biscuits (that you don't need) to get that change and then handing it to the rickshaw guy.

Say this routine happens twice a month and the biscuits cost you Rs 50/ month

Once you are out of your auto, next up is getting a train ticket or a pass. 

Photo: Getty Images

3. TRAIN PASS: You buy a one-month AC coach train pass to travel which costs about Rs 1800/month.  

4. SHOE POLISH GUY: As soon you step onto the station, a line of shoe polishers and cobblers wait to shine your shoes and repair your broken sandal. This is needed for Mumbaikars, who experience overcrowded trains all year long and have the most probability of getting out of a train with a broken sandal or a torn bag. The shoe cobbler & polisher turn out to be 'work reputation-savers' at the unlikeliest of times, especially since most office-goers adorn formal shoes. Say a person normally spends Rs 100/ month to get his shoes polished.  

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Photo: Pexels

NOW THAT YOU ARE ON THE TRAIN 

5. HAWKERS

Photo: Twitter

Hawkers carry all sorts of curiosity-driving things that will tempt you to just buy something you don't need. There is this one person who gets all the plastic necessities of life like combs, earrings, rubber bands, clips, etc. There is always an ever-growing and unending demand for weird innovations like that tiny machine that helps people insert the thread in a needle, plastic phone covers, fancy long black clips that twist and make your hair look like Cinderella in less than 30 seconds, etc. There are also hawkers who sell these numerous homemade mouth fresheners, and packaged bhel, especially on the evening trains. You cannot help but spend at least Rs 100/ month to buy those tiny amusing creations. 

6. SINGERS

There are all kinds of people who enter a compartment and sing songs like 'Pardesi Pardesi' and tug at your heart (& purse strings). Also, numerous eunuchs and needy beggars make their way on specific trains and people usually cannot say no to them. Let's take an average of Rs 50/ month.  

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7. FRUITS & VEGGIES 

Photo: Twitter

Wholesale fruit sellers only enter the ladies' compartment with their big baskets of fruits, especially because they know that the men don't really give them a lot of business. If you are asleep or engrossed in your phone, you don't even have to lift your eyelids to know that the chikoo guy or the fish lady has entered the compartment. The strong scent does its job. Within 1 minute, there will be one lady who asks for the price, and suddenly everyone wants to know the price. In 3 minutes, a lady will buy half a kilo of chikoo and that indicates that the seller's mission is accomplished. 5 stations later, the chikoo guy gets off the train with an empty basket and a wad of cash. The average cost of one kilo of chikoo is Rs 40/kg and say a lady who buys fruits once per week pays about Rs 160/month. 

8. STATIONARY

You will always find a couple of very young kids selling cheap plastic pens to young ladies who buy them even though they don't need them. Sympathy, you see. It's very difficult to turn down a young kid who tries to pull off cute puppy faces for a minute, says lelo na, and then does so with good eye contact (so well-trained). All while, you can see the mother standing in a corner far away, waiting for the young son to make his sales for the hour, so that they can get down 5 stations later. Say you pay him Rs 10/ month

ONCE YOU ARE OUT

9. FOOD & VEGGIES

Photo: Wikipedia

Say you are going back home in the evening, and you are done with your journey. Now that you are out of the overcrowded train (where you could not even put your bags down), you will easily get caught up in the various aromas of hot samosas and vada pavs that automatically draw you in with their magical power. If people even get 1 Samosa and 1 vada pav for themselves even once a week, they will spend about say Rs 20 to Rs 40 .

Photo: Indian Railway

But then there is another trend of getting out of the station, heading to the nearest Vadapav store (where 5 people are dishing out hot vada pavs), and spending between Rs 50-100 bucks and taking away some hot snacks home for your family. Say a person spends Rs 100 per week, that's a total of Rs 400/month

Also, how can you not down your hot vada pavs with orange slush or ice-cold sugarcane juice? So keep aside at least Rs 30 per week, which is Rs 120/month

It is very normal for people to also do their fruit and vegetable shopping outside the train station. (Ever stopped at Dadar market? You can literally hop, skip and jump from the Dadar station to the market and come back in seconds). Thanks to the dozens of fruit vendors who line up the roads, say you end up spending say Rs 500/ month on veggies.

 

So, the total cash spent amounts to a whopping total of Rs 4,210/month, which is nearly 2.3 times the cost of your train pass. And you thought traveling by train was cheap coz your brain only counted the cost of a train pass. Lol. 

ADDITIONAL OPTIONAL COSTS

10. FINE 
May God help you if you travel without a ticket and the ticket checker catches you at either Dadar, Andheri, or Mumbai Central station. You cannot leave without a fine of Rs 500. 

11. THEFT
And may God help you again if someone slyly steals your wallet that has your valuable train ticket and the TC catches you the same day. You are bound to lose whatever cash you have on you and never find it again. Plus you have to get a train pass again. 

Last updated: July 07, 2022 | 18:35
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