(I'm trying not to compare, I’m not saying one is better than the other…)

Quiet. Very quiet. Whatever sound there is, its only in the form of the recordings on the train -"Doors closing", "Please mind the platform gap"... The only other sound is made by sound waves traveling from earphones to the listeners’ ears. You get to hear occasional bits of them as the person sitting next to you adjusts the volume. The songs played on the cell phones don’t change the emotions on their faces. Their emotionless faces and designer clothes and expensive perfumes, and hair that looks like its been conditioned ten times more than normal, and layers and layers of make-up on the women's faces, and slim and trim girls that could walk the ramp...
They sit there staring into space, not talking to each other. Not making eye contact. Waiting for their station to arrive. They get up from their seats not only when the train has reached the station, but when the automatic doors have opened.

Suddenly a typical scene from a Mumbai local flashes by in my mind. The fisherwoman sitting at the door with her smelly basket, the bhikaris, orange peelings lying on the floor, the BMC servant returning home after a long hot day, their body odour, the iron-rust-dust-garbage-dissolved in sweat-smell, the absence of good light during noon, the tension that builds as a station approaches and the travelers get ready to alight, as if they are getting ready for war and the final stampede that follows after a train reaches a station.

The madness of my mumbai- the kalkalaat, the looking directly into a person’s eyes; making contact.
The quite sophisticated atmosphere of Singapura’s MRT.