Inspired by StPancras station in London, Victoria Terminus was built in 1887 as the largest British edifice in India. It’s colossal – an amazing mix of domes, spires Corinthian columns and minarets, once defined by the journalist James Cameron as “Victorian-Gothic-Saracenic-Italianate-Oriental-StPancras-Baroque”.
Over two million passengers go through here on a thousand trains per day!
Renamed ‘Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus’ in honour of a Maratha Warlord, the locals still refer to it fondly as ‘VT’ [pronounced “vitee”] though it’s always ‘CST’ officially. There are one or two photos amongst the collection on FB or Flickr.
My local guide pointed out that one masterpiece of the past British presence bestowed upon India was the railway network. India’s is the largest in the world (in terms of mileage of track, not ‘express performance’ ☺ ) and once the Britishers left after independence in 1947, the Indians just carried on building the way they’d been taught!
In Mumbai, the peninsula is not unlike a large bottle, where the top represents the open neck (or ‘the way in’) and the body is the rest of the bottle where liquid (or in this case, the people) have poured in and have no place left to go. Thus, Mumbai is stuffed to bursting point with people, and it ain’t gonna change anytime soon! The only ‘relief’ from this situation are the large ribbons of land occupied by the railways that were constructed under Britisher guidance, and later after they’d left and the Indians carried on. If these narrow strips of land had not been taken up and kept by the railways, my local acquaintances tell me that the Indians would have built haphazardly all over every space of land they could find (which is what they have a tendency to do) and there would now be even more misery and chaos on the peninsula!
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