The price of openness

As a New Yorker in Bombay (official name Mumbai), one of my greatest thrills is taking the fast train downtown. I clamber into a wide, sturdy train carriage without closed doors, sealed windows or comfort of any kind. The carriage, done up in stamped steel, has the spartan appeal of a military jeep. I lean out of the open doorway watching the city slip past neatly-manicured train tracks. I skim my shoes over the tops of the low fences separating the trains. For maximum stylishness, I hop off while the train is still easing into the station, turning sideways to avoid the herd of salarymen thundering aboard to grab a seat.

Riding Bombay’s local trains is much more interactive than riding the New York subway. The trains have open doors, partly because of the tropical heat, partly to let Bombay’s 6 million daily commuters jam onto trains at maximum speed. For robustness, the carriages have no window glass. Bombay’s overground train system handles a third more riders every day than the NYC subway, where a rush hour crowd means nearly touching other riders; in Bombay, it means your chest is crushed, your arms are pinned, and you’re intimate with your neighbor’s deodorant or lack thereof. You must plan your sweaty escape two stations before your stop arrives and advertise it loudly so as not to be carried away by the tide of humans coming in.

Despite the volume, trains run as fast as in Manhattan. Taking an express train will get you there three times faster than a taxi during rush hour at a PPP-adjusted price of only 40¢, and trains pause only a few seconds at each station. In order to handle this ridership and speed, Bombay’s local train stations are left completely open. You can stroll onto a train from any of a number of uncontrolled entrances or even from the tracks while the train gathers speed. Instead of turnstiles, railway police do random ticket checks on the platforms.

In contrast, the NYC subway already has controlled entrances and exits, fare turnstiles and security cameras. Adding random bag searches to an already sealed system was a logical step for the city after the 7/7 London subway bombings, albeit of questionable effectiveness. Once reliable explosives scanners are developed, they will make the system markedly safer.

I always clutch my bag a little tighter when I hurry past the bag check tables at Manhattan’s Union Square subway station, convinced that no matter what the cops may say about the randomness of searches, suspicion falls heaviest on those who look vaguely Arab, Muslim or South Asian. I even considered getting a transparent shoulder bag but discarded the idea because it would reveal every gadget I carry to potential thieves. And I’m far from the most affected: My turbaned Sikh friends, raised a religion which has little to do with Islam, dressed in religious signifiers common across the world, often draw the most attention from police and street hecklers alike.

But ethnic profiling of potential terrorists is a non-starter in Bombay because the potential suspects look exactly like everyone else. I’ve seen people on Brooklyn subway platforms pay close attention to a devout Muslim in beard, round cap and kurta. In Bombay, a man with such a mundane appearance might be your doctor, fruitwallah or cabbie.

I’ve heard subway workers in Brooklyn tell passengers that large packages are more likely to be searched, though I’ve never actually seen anyone check an upright double bass case on its single finicky wheel. In Bombay, street hawkers cart their entire stock between home and work every day.

The heart of the terrorist explosives problem is the ever-familiar technology cycle: high tech becomes low tech over time. What was once specialized becomes commoditized. Bombs become turnkey, McTerrorism is franchised. Making time-synchronized bombs used to be a skill reserved for the criminal elite. Now a single bomb maker can pay petty criminals and teenagers to deliver their murderous loads. Humankind will always have troublemakers. What’s changed is that the troublemakers are now far more lethal.

There is, however, one area in which Bombay’s open train system is somewhat safer than the NYC subway. Bombers seek out enclosed spaces because of the laws of physics – an explosion loses strength rapidly with distance from its source. Bombers want closed compartments to amplify the blast and generate shrapnel, which can be flung great distances to maim and kill distant victims. Any train carriage with open-air doors and windows is potentially less lethal to those inside because blast energy has ways to dissipate.

The trading port of Bombay has always valued openness. Like Manhattan, this narrow, vertical island is a polyglot riot of immigrants. Portuguese Christian names jostle for space on the walls of its apartment buildings with those of Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Parsi and Buddhist descent. Bombay is also a high-speed city. Vada pav vendors on the street are as quick as deli chefs in New York.

And Bombay is a crowded city. The victims of yesterday’s bombings purchased first-class tickets not for luxury, for first class is jam-packed during rush hour too. They did so to escape Bombay’s relentless demands on your space: to rent a bit more elbow room for an hour or two, to negotiate a sliver of extra air so their commute could pass a tad more comfortably.

In a cruel twist of real estate, shrapnel intruded.