Life in a Metro

That’s what it feels like when you stay in Dwarka and take the metro to work, literally. You end up spending half your life in the metro. So love it or hate it, you’re stuck in it. For a good 3-4 hours of your day.

And SO much happens in a metro.

For example, if you’re not very fat, and don’t have an extremely menacing look on your face, chances are you’ll be an easy target for the thoda-adjust syndrome. It doesn’t matter that the seats are made for a fixed number of people, with indents marking the same. It doesn’t matter if there are already more than that many people on the bench to begin with. There is always room for +1. And you’re likely to be the one who has to thoda-adjust, namely, have the indent of the seat ride up your bum while someone literally sits on you. Literally.

Having said that, the fact that now there’s a ladies coach makes the metro journey much more bearable, given that you’re not worried about random men sticking to you anymore. It’s just random women now.

The fact that the ladies coach is NOT sponsored by Stayfree Secure came as a bit of a shock to me. Like, really?! Then why the hell do you have all those pink and white flowers all over the platform?!?!

And apparently, now that there's a ladies coach means that if I travel in a general coach, I end up the subject of taunts and annoyed looks. “They have an entire coach to themselves, still they come here!” Thanks guys. We wouldn’t need that separate coach to begin with if you could learn to behave yourselves. But now that we have it, apparently we need to remain jailed within it. Like, seriously?

Women sometimes make rather daunting co-passengers as well. Especially the demanding unassuming ones. And for some weird reason, there are a LOT of them. So the other day, I was sitting in the metro reading a book, and this aunty stood in front of me, and dumped an exceptionally huge purse on top of the laptop bag lying on my lap. Now don’t get me wrong, I really don’t mind carrying her bag for her, given how annoyingly crowded the metro gets, but I’d rather not be treated as a piece of furniture by her. I mean, we have men to do that to us, right?

Not only did she dump her bag on me without a please or a thanks, she then proceeded to open it on my lap, so that the handle and the flaps now covered my novel, and went on to luxuriously finish her make-up, completely oblivious to my exasperated look. I did consider objecting, or shifting my position a bit so that her bag drops, or at least to make her realize that there is a live human being in front of her. Instead I kept staring at her. And she kept ignoring me. Till I smiled at her and gave her my seat. Mission accomplished. Hers.

On a completely different note, I have a HUGE amount of respect for people who manage to catch a few winks in the metro. Really. It’s happened to me a few times during college years, when I’d manage to catch a corner seat, so I could rest my head on the oily glass pane and drift off to sleep…only to be jarred out of my sleep two minutes later with the announcement of the next station. And then the next. And next. For 32 stations. Yes, I counted.

But worse than the being woken up, is the fact that every time you wake up, you look up at the hundreds of squashed people standing in front of you smiling at the little trickle of drool that you were unaware of until that moment…

Aah...memories.

All in all, the Dwarka metro just stops short of being a Mumbai local simply because you can’t hang out from the doors, and are stuck without fresh air from the windows to take care of the numerous body odours you’re subjected to.

But that said and done, it probably never hurts to remember, that no one is in that metro because that’s where they would love to be at that moment, stuck between someone’s exceptionally huge…err…bag and someone else’s arm pit. They’re there just like you, because they have to be. So instead of frowning and fighting with that aunty and that bossy girl, next time, maybe try an understanding smile instead?

Hmmm....

Okay, who am I kidding. Some of those women are plain bitches. Use your elbows mercilessly. Period.