Madness to the Metro Method

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The Delhi Metro has made the travel of many women, within the city and in its peripheral spillage, possible. A separate women’s compartment, well-lit premises and coaches, the presence of gun-toting security men, constant announcements which can be overheard through the phone, etc., create an image of safety, even if it is only an illusion. A 17-year-old unaccompanied girl travelling 44 kilometres within the city to go to college everyday would not have been readily accepted, even in 2015, had it not been for the metro. The ease of travel has now enabled girls from as far as Sonipat, Faridabad and Bahadurgarh to come to the city daily, to study or to work, something hard to imagine without the now familiar and continuously outreaching lines snaking over and under the cityscape.

However, though the commute by the metro may seem especially dandy superficially, it takes an acclimated traveller to recognise the madness there is to the method of the Metro. A nonuniform suspicion, gendered and caste/classist, blankets the commuters as they enter the station where CCTVs record each move. Security personnel give you tough looks if you enter the pat-down cubicle talking on your phone or wearing headphones. One has to visibly submit to the frisking, the mere act of walking into the cubicle isn’t enough compliance. As I walk inside the Kashmere Gate metro station, the female frisker asks me to throw away the apple I’m eating since it’s not allowed in the metro. Done eating anyway and too tired to call out the nonsense like I usually do, I do as she says. A few convenient dustbins dot Delhi metro stations now, a delayed compliance with 2015 High Court orders trashing concerns about bomb planting.

In spite of there being a no-eating policy inside the Metro, it is obvious how lax, nonsensical even, it is, considering the number of eateries within most stations, most with no place to sit and eat. The policy is now misused by the authorities to discourage people from eating home-brought food. A law with no practical insight, the one prohibiting spitting too is no different for there are no spittoons within the metro premises.

As I move two floors below the ground to board the Violet line, the familiar unpleasant feeling of entrapment makes my movements lethargic. The station is flooded by LED lights and conditioned air, making it seem totally disconnected from the reality outside. In here, you can only rely on mechanical time to tell of its natural passing. A girl boards the general compartment with me. As she expertly edges her way by women carrying suitcase-sized purses and swift-stepped men to win the corner seat, I know she is a seasoned traveller. She plugs in her earphones, rests her head against the glass and closes her eyes. The timing made impeccable by experience, she winds her earphones just as the train pushes out of Sector 28, the 27th station, needing no visual or audio announcement. I see her feet clad in sheer skin-colour socks and practical flats and recognise a traveller who has to use another public conveyance, perhaps a bus or a share auto, to and from the metro. As she whips out a chunni and her MetroCard while de-boarding at Badkhal Mor, I know I’m right.

This is a generation of city cruisers who travel from one end of the city to the other with no idea of the places they pass. The obscurity of underground tunnels disables any sense of movement, the telltale jerks and the screeching of metal wheels the only means of cognition.
I have been travelling in the metro for years, and know most lines like the ones on my palm. Yet never have I been able, in all this time, to visit the Akshardham Temple, the Red Fort or the Shivaji Stadium as pass through their namesake stations. Metro has made Delhi just a city of names. It has made it possible to move through the city without even the soles of our footwear soiling. The train is packed with girls in pretty ballerina flats and boys in flip flops, both of which would have been impractical to wear in any other public transport system.

Never before have we travelled so far, made such long journeys within the city, taking the very same route, listening to the very same announcements over and over, day after day. This maddening mode of modern travel can be battled only with tools of modernity. Travelling such long distances without a source of distraction is nearly impossible. It is true that some people have companions but for most, it is a solo journey to be taken every day, whether for education or for work. It is only the products of modern science, like smartphones, books, newspapers, etc. and perennial sleeplessness which make the journey more bearable. A large part of the route in the Delhi metro is underground. Staying calm and disciplined while travelling in a dark hole through space and time with absolutely no interaction with people one brushes shoulders with would have been impossible if not for virtual connectedness or tiredness.

I overhear a middle-aged man, 4 stations before CS, dressed for office talking on his phone. “Bas pahunch gaya, CS pe houn.” In response to a recent RTI, it has been revealed that as many as 99% metro trips, since 2013, have been on time. Punctuality is a stringent demand of modernity. However, commuters can always rely on the disorienting experience of frenzied interchange stations as an excuse which is hard not to buy. Before the Violet line linked Central Secretariat directly to Kashmere Gate, I used to change for the yellow line at CS. Having spent a few months running maniacally out of the train as soon as the doors opened to separate myself from the slow-moving mass of people approaching the stairs, I discovered an escalator on the adjacent platform I could use without battling every day. Each time I was brought to a level above, a W.H. Smith store stared me right in the face, checking all the boxes of well-researched consumer behaviour. Each of us navigates the public space, trying to find the shortest, the fastest, the most convenient way to travel, a unique route best suited to us, only to realise it is a futile attempt. Every decision we make is predetermined for us, every ‘new’ manoeuvre scripted.

 De-boarding at the last stop, standing within a crowd, I can’t help but remember the times sleazy hands have touched my body. For all the CCTVs and security guards, there is no less molestation. Perhaps only the method has become quieter, cat-calling being impossible in the rigid schedule and relative silence of the metro. As I make the journey back to Kashmiri Gate, one which I have undertaken countless times, two smartly dressed women in salwar-suits enter at Bata Chowk, talking in Punjabi-Multani. They discuss their kids, the work left to do at home and go over some relative-sent photos of lehengas. The older woman slides out her feet from her heeled shoes and massages them; she cracks her toes and fiddles with her toe rings. They get off at Mandi House, the interchange station for the Blue line, probably to go to Chandni Chowk. Only today isn’t a good time. As the metro dived underground at Jangpura, 5 stations back, I saw the first drops of a heavy downpour spot the soundproof windows, incongruent with Delhi’s September weather but consistent with the unceasing rainfall of the past two weeks. Inside the metro and under the ground, it is impossible to know what's happening in the world we come from.

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As we near Kashmere Gate, a man enters talking loudly on his phone, in seemingly rude Haryanvi. People turn to look at him but he stands unconcerned, one foot propped up against the wall, right below the sign prohibiting such a posture, combing his brown curls streaked with golden highlights. A security guard enters the metro at the next stop, shouting at the people sitting on the floor of the metro to stand and asks the man to put his foot down. He steps off making sure everything is visibly organised. As personalised as we try to make our trips, there is no scope for individualism. Announcements tell us where to stand, how to wear our bags, where and how to get off and what to do after we do. Everything in the metro is micro-managed, each step of every traveller imprinted on stone, literally. It is perhaps only the sexism people come wearing that the authorities are yet to factor in. Women in the metro wear the most uncomfortable footwear. In the four years I have been travelling in the metro, taking it twice every day, women slipping on the stairs, tripping over uneven floor and stumbling on the escalator with dupattas getting snagged and ripped is not a very strange sight. Though DMRC prefers a myopic view and has segregated women to protect them from men, this internalised sexism is a serious security issue and a tougher nut to crack.

Retracing the journey back home, I can’t wait to get out. The general compartments echo with innumerable variations of “Madam aap ladies coach main chale jao na”, in words and in actions. Women travelling in the unreserved compartments, it seems, are considered to be encroaching, an inconvenience to the male travellers. Having been told multiple times by random men and even women to go to the women’s coach for demanding civility, I now make it a point to travel in unreserved coaches and sit on unreserved seats, to the general irritation of the men around. There is only so much one can do, swimming through the madness every day.