CASE STUDY | BYCULLA TRAIN STATION

Platform in Byculla Train Station, Mumbai

Maybe the largest area in the program of a train station is devoted to a single activity that is no activity at all: waiting. Train platforms serve for the simple purpose of allowing people to have the space to stay and adjust the time between coming from an activity and starting their commute to another one. In a sense, the activity developed in a train platform is a passive one. That's why this space becomes so explored by advertising and communication vehicles - through billboards, free newspapers, television etc -, anything to take away people's contemporary dread of having to face the clock with nothing to spend time with. People become eager to find anything to read and spend some time.

Informally, the city of Mumbai found a particularly efficient way of providing means for people to adjust their schedules and long waiting times. They did it by placing low-cost cinemas in the adjacency of every major train station. The Byculla Train Station is no exception to that. Located a few steps from its entrance is the Palace Talkies, a street cinema that has resisted the public's shift to movies in Multi-plex theaters and shopping malls. The main reason behind its long existence is that by offering C rated Hindi movies aiming to a less educated crowd and charging 30 rupees for a ticket (around US$0.25), they managed to establish a fixed crowd: that of the people waiting, or looking for entertainment before taking the train back home to the city's outskirts.