Riding The Train Of Dreams To Mumbai

The "Pushpak Express is a $6, 24-hour ride ferrying migrants from India’s bleak heartland to the thriving coastal megalopolis of Mumbai, formerly Bombay."

"These passengers are also part of a great migration that is changing the world. Goldman Sachs, which has published projections about the Indian economy, predicts that 31 villagers will continue to show up in an Indian city every minute over the next 43 years — 700 million people in all. This exodus, with a similar one in China, helped push the world over a historic threshold this year: the planet, for the first time, is more urban than rural."

"To ride the Pushpak Express from Lucknow, in Uttar Pradesh State in northern India, to Mumbai is to see a snapshot of that global metamorphosis."

"The Pushpak is a peculiar train, swallowing heroes from the village and spitting them out as nobodies in the big city."

"These migrants will become Mumbai’s anonymous, floating underclass: taxi drivers who sleep in their taxis, electricians who wait for days for a $2 job. In leaving the village, they are doing something noble for their families — and yet the life they go to lead feels anything but. They toil so that others may eat."