Pre - script : This post was supposed to come out long time back but I was occupied with audit plus somebody made me realise that I might be following a pattern - my last two posts being posted on 5/5 and 6/6 respectively and hence this one on 7/7 :D
So I was one of those caught in (yet another) technical glitch in Delhi's sweetheart - Metro.
This was the second time I got stuck, with a drone of "इस असुविधा के लिए हमें खेद है...We are sorry for the inconvenience caused", giving me and other people a monotonous company...
(a little bit of trivia here -
The Male voice of the Delhi Metro — Shammi Narang (Speaks in Hindi)
The Female voice of the Delhi Metro — Rini Simon Khanna (Speaks in English)
)
The first time I was lucky - I hadn't boarded the metro. I kept waiting at the platform but the metro didn't come ! Consequently, I had to miss my office (The clients are on cloud 9 when the auditors take a leave, just saying!) Anyway, I took a bus and got back home...Though I have used DTC a lot for travelling but that was in college...this time I was in formals, carrying heavy books and files...Aftermath - I sprained my ankle (ouch! that hurt...A LOT !)
The second time I got stuck inside the metro for about 45 minutes...When the metro staff finally surrendered to the glitch and asked us all to move out and make our own arrangements, I took a bus (No sprain or injuries this time, thankfully) from the nearest bus stop and reached home in 2 effing hours. For those who have travelled in a DTC bus would be aware of the fact that crowd in the buses is horrendous. A guy got slapped by a woman and I think that would give you an idea that sometimes DTC buses breed potential rapists.
This is why I love Delhi Metro.
You get to observe a wide gamut of people in a comparatively safer and air-conditioned environment.
So notwithstanding the ever- increasing technical failures, my affection for metro continues to grow with the passage of time.
It's become such an integral part of my life that the three hours that I spend in metro daily, I feel like home...that this is where I belong...It might sound insane but sometimes when I feel lost, I have found solace in the metro...when I wish to go neither home nor office, I simply board a metro without any destination in mind...simply to go on...silencing the palaver, it somehow clears out my head...I call it The Metro Therapy (Don't google it up, both the nomenclature and the therapy are of my own creation)
Metro is the storehouse of such hundred thousand stories...there is a beautiful word that aptly describes what I am trying to say here - sonder.
And that is why, to me, metro seems to be a living creature breathing the spirit of ' just keep moving, no matter what' as it makes way through the tunnels of Delhi like a humongous nematode.
Another lesson that metro seems to be conveying to me is about changes...that in order to reach your final destination, you have to embrace changes - get down at one station and take another metro. And that people are meant to just give you a company, the journey you have to make on your own...some started with you from where you first boarded the metro and got down at their respective stations...Some people continue to travel along with you for a little longer but eventually their ways separate too...such changes are part and parcel of life and there is nothing to be sad about it because in the end,everybody has his/her own journey and destination and they just happen to meet you as a co-passenger as your paths cross for a while...
As easy as it sounds to be, a change, no matter how good, is never easy to make...because change means to break free from your boundaries of comfort and venture out into the unknown... just to illustrate my point -
This is my first ever metro travel card...I used it for 5years till a month back when it started giving issues and became unreadable at the AFC gates and the TVMs one day...and it was with a heavy heart that I got a new travel card made :( Because it wasn't just a travel card...for me, it was a loyal companion who saw me through all kinds of situations - when I was running late for college (read daily), when I had my final exams and almost ran to catch the metro to be on time for the exam, when I bunked college and went for movies, when I went for my CA classes, when I started from home for office but went to Manan's (my nephew) place instead, when I had had a serious argument with a friend and left for home in tears, when I used to be so tired because of coaching that I would sit on the floor of the metro (which is prohibited), when I would refuse to eat in the metro no matter how hungry just because I didn't want to litter the clean floor (Only after I lost a lot of weight because my meals got skipped due to coaching, I started eating my lunch in the metro), when my IPCC/Bcom Hons results were out and I celebrated my success with special friends creating memorable moments, when I felt frustrated and boarded the metro just to escape my own self...
I can go on and on about the memories this special card held.
Notice the past tense...because I gave the card back to DMRC. Though I wanted to keep it as a souvenir but then I realised that as time elapses, everything fades away...people who were with you at the inception of your journey might not be there as you reach your destination...your perceptions change...sometimes your course of journey changes...so how could this little card be with me till eternity...I knew that I had to let go of the emotional stuff attached with it...because only when I clear out the old things can I replace them with new things and experiences...it was like losing a part of my heart but what can not be cured must be endured...and so I did...
This one saw me through my CA IPCC and the new one is recording my journey of CA Final :)
And, of course, my articleship.
I am allocated in a freight company at Mahipalpur these days...and I use the Airport Express line for commuting...Albeit expensive, it is so far one of the best means of public transport that I have ever used. It is totally different from the normal metro in the following aspects :
1. While you have an overzealous reaction (OMG...it is a lucky day !!!) when you manage to get a seat in Blue line metro, the Airport line has only 5% occupancy on an average.
2. It runs at 120kmph vis à vis blue line metro's 80kmph.
3. The platforms have enormous glass panels which open when the metro enters.This provides extra safety as highly stressed people of India attempt suicides quite often.
4. It is so clean that you actually have to remind yourself that you are still in India.
On the flip side,
a) It is quite expensive which perhaps is the reason behind such a low occupancy.
b) It has a waiting for 20 minutes on an average as compared to 1 minute in Blue line metro! So if you miss one, you are bound to get late !
c) The quintessential people of India are conspicuous by their absence -
- There is no auntyji elbowing her way out in the waiting line.
- There is no girl applying nail paint while talking to her boyfriend on phone.
- There is no middle-aged lady, who has just been scolding a guy for calling her aunty, pretending to be a senior citizen just to get a seat.
- There are no kids doing 'pole dance' :P
- There is nobody staring at you (people in India generally believe that they have the right to stare just because they have been given eyes.)
- There is no aroma of achaar-parantha that a famished soul might be gorging on.
- There are no bespectacled CA students with Accountancy or Costing or Audit books in hand, catching up on sleep.Only the MBA-looking people reading orange newspapers - ET or Business Standard. :D
- There is no auntyji looking at you with beseeching eyes to vacate your seat for her.(Some even go to the extent of saying "beta hame seat de do, aap to jawaan log ho")
But the good things are that -
- There is nobody judging you as a slut if you are in a skirt.
- You are not sandwiched between the pervert male population who strip you with their eyes and have sex with you mentally.
There is no dearth of experiences that I have had in metro. When I come to think about it, this is a really stupid topic to write a blog on...but there is this deep connection that I feel with metro...it is actually a Surbhi-thing...I like the way my thoughts fall into place while I am travelling...The strangers look more familiar than the people you thought you knew so well...I have had so many memorable random conversations with strangers in metro...especially with foreigners...I have this silly habit of going up to them and asking about their experiences in India [60% of them have turned out to be Russians and loved Delhi and Bollywood and SRK (the females, obviously)]...I start talking to any Tom,Dick or Harry with a novel ! I have befriended so many CA people I met in metro because you happen to see the same faces at each coaching you attend...There have also been some bizarre incidents when people have come up to me to say things about my fingers (I have abnormally long and thin fingers that catch every body's attention) and been told different theories about it - people with long fingers tend to be really rich, people with long fingers are known to be arrogant, people with long fingers are possessive and so on and so forth!
Dear Delhi Metro,
Thank you for making my life so comfortable...No matter how much people grumble about your technical failures (This is what they say- metro ab buddhi ho gayi hai!), I want you to know that I am immensely grateful for your presence...you carry lakhs of people daily who sometimes litter or even damage you...Thank you for giving me so many memorable moments...it's like you have been making my journey of life along with me...I don't know what I would do without you, I would be stranded in every sense of the word !
Yours sincerely
A commuter.
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