ABOARD THE PUSHPAK EXPRESS, India: The man with neatly parted hair stood in the doorway of the hurtling train. And then, at the perfect moment, he jumped.
This was not about suicide, however. It was about tea. Having popped out of the door, the man clung to the knobs and rods of the train’s exterior with one hand. His other hand gripped the vat of scalding tea tied to his belt.
He glided like a rock climber across the train’s epidermis, from one foothold to the next. He reached the steel beam that connects the cars and crossed it like a tightrope. Then, having arrived at the next car, he hopped among more footholds and, at last, ducked inside to utter his sales pitch:
“Tea! Tea! Get your hot tea!”
Such acrobatics are not required of vendors on most of the world’s trains – nor even in this train’s cars in first class or second class. Those are ordinarily connected from the inside. But this was third class on the Pushpak Express, a $6, 24-hour ride ferrying migrants from India’s bleak heartland to the thriving coastal megalopolis of Mumbai. And in an echo of the ancient caste system, officialdom had judged it necessary to seal off these passengers from the compartments of the luckier-born.
These passengers are changing the world. In one the greatest migrations in history, an average of 31 villagers are predicted to show up in an Indian city every minute for the next 43 years, according to a study by Goldman Sachs – 700 million people in all. This exodus, along with China’s, has helped push the world over a historic threshold this year: the planet, for the first time, is more urban than rural. [read the rest]
A couple of comments:
- The initial scenario reads like something William Gibson would make up in a novel.
- God’s will is being done. We are becoming a city planet.