Reading in Metro

                                             

The first time I took an underground metro my mother took a half day leave from work, invited her colleague and her kids, packed us all a lunch and hailed an auto. We were all planning a picnic. I doubt whether I would now call it a picnic. Because the instructions to us then were: we will board from Patel Chowk metro station; go to the last station and then come back the same way. We kids were very deflated to see that once inside underground, there was nothing much we could do other than just slide from one silver seat to another silver seat. Climbing on poles had yet to enter our imagination. When I asked my mother why did she not let me carry any of my toys, she said, because it was a different kind of picnic.

Now however I make sure that every time I travel in metro, I have something to read. As much as my first sense of boredom comes from traveling in metro; metro ‘picnic’ was a fulfilling experience that day.

Over the last decade, reading as an activity has become more visible in public transports. I became alert to it while I was on my school bus – people cramming for tests, writing and completing practical file work. I saw Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in hardcover for the first time in the bus and subconsciously made a mental note of its price. Once, I saw a young boy tearing a page from geography notebook, as the ink from his blue gel pen made a nice river all along the page. Our bus conductor would always advise us against reading and writing in bus – eyes will get weak, he would say while reading almost everything written behind trucks and buses. Another day, I took Mockingjay on a short road trip with me, and my eyes regretted it as soon I reached the part where Katniss was moving around in District 12, taking in the ruins and becoming more and more sorrowful, which is to say, my eyes hurt while reading Chapter 1. I slept most part of my reading, my head lolling back.

As I grew up, reading while traveling became important

It was nice to have company. It was a good distraction from the small talk. It was one of the things I could be in control of while traveling. It rendered to escaping – a journey undertaken within a journey.

It was good to make sense (or not) of the visuals outside and the world inside a book. It was absolutely remarkable to realise that not all books can be read anywhere – that there are perfect weather conditions for a book too, ideal reading conditions and these may not always be zones of quietness.

The amount time I have closed The Finkler Question on Violet line is more than the number of times I have registered Rina Simone saying ‘Please mind the gap’.

The God of Small Things co-incidence

On a breezy October Saturday afternoon, I boarded Yellow line at Kashmere Gate. My co-passenger had just gotten up to deboard and beside her was a girl reading earnestly. I saw in small ant-black letters PAPPACHI’S MOTH staring at me. The copy of her book was larger in size than mine and that is how I met A, a first-year student in DU. She was reading The God of Small Things, when I showed her my copy of the same book. Her thoughts were definitely in some other universe when they suddenly reconfigured, as she gave an ‘OH!’ of recognition. Her eyes lit up, “It’s so good na”, mildly melting at the sight of the book. I nodded at her. When I did not look away, she added, “Yeah, but a bit difficult too.” My inner student thanked her for saying that.

I shared with her how I read it wayyyyy back in school and that I was so proud of having finished it in a week. She laughed like she understood the feeling of children wanting to show off after having finished a book. As we chatted along, I got to know that she is a frequent metro traveler, “I usually do make it a point to read in Metro, because I have 30 mins of free time. I don’t get time to read otherwise. I am doing Sociology honors, you know.” “So, do you also listen to audio books or read on other devices?” “No. I like to smell and touch books. I like to hold them.” With a hint of unsteadiness in her voice she mentioned how the crowd and their loud voices in metro sometime do more than just disturb her. “When it is crowded, it is really difficult to read, especially in the morning time. I take the blue and yellow line. So, I literally have to”, laughing at incredulous nature of it all, “fold myself and the book to read. I do love reading in metro though. Sometimes, it is so upsetting… I am in between an important paragraph and suddenly these loud voices would just break the flow.” “But are there no good memories of metro reading?” “Hai na. Once I literally cried (in a crowded metro) while reading A Thousand Splendid sons... My co-passenger got worried and asked me if I was alright. I said ‘yeah’ feebly. But that book made me so emotional. Have you read that book?”

I shook my head and told her about a Ruskin Bond book. I had finished reading Uncles Aunts and Elephants in metro and without realizing, started beaming at everyone in the metro who looked at me because I was so happy. “It was all involuntary”.  What I didn’t tell her was that at that exact moment, words from Ghachar Ghochar were ringing in my head and that too, in Rina Simone’s voice, as if announcing the next metro station no longer interested her – ‘Language communicates in terms of what is already known; it chokes up when asked to deal with entirely unprecedented.’   

In the same week, while traveling to Durgabai Deshmukh Metro Station, Pink line, a woman dressed in blue jeans and black checkered shirt, purposefully took out her earphones and a hardback with a black cover. She began reading, but was distracted most of the times. I therefore did not have any guilt in disturbing her, so I gently tapped on her arm. She looked at the green leaves floating in water and a resting small pink bougainvillea flower which appeared to have fallen from somewhere – this was the cover of the book and it took her some 3-4 seconds to recognize that we were both holding the same book. I had recognized the book again from the set of words that were in the topmost center of the page, PARADISE PICKELES AND PRESERVES.

She smiled a small smile on recognizing the book and said “This is actually not my book. It is my father’s. Old copy. I am not a habitual reader. I just thought I will read it today”.

Reading might be a solitary activity but reading in metro isn’t

There are people who recognize chapter names, book covers, may even surreptitiously read side by side, may even stop you to ask a review. So many times, we lose track of stations that we are supposed to de-board on, all because we are so engrossed in a book.

“I see a bright deep tangerine book shining every now and then. I don’t even guess, I know it is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. It is interesting for me to see people of a certain age group reading certain books – Every time I go to office, I usually see young urban working class holding the tangerine book. I am seeing less of Chetan Bhagat these days. There is a Jodi Picoult that I just saw today. Women’s compartment usually have a lot of women reading almost all the time that I have travelled,” said a woman in her mid-thirties, who takes metro once a week and also liked judging people for the choice of their clothes and the complimentary books they read. “I even count surfing on Myntra as reading. Every time I refresh there is a quote that appears on screen and tries to make a case in the favor of buying clothes.”

A young content writer working in Noida once mentioned how he sometimes just closes his book and observes people as sometimes it is more refreshing. And it doesn’t pain that it also helps in getting ideas for the characters (of a novel) that he is writing.

When people are looking at you while reading, when you close your book after reading an excellent poem and think, while staring at the visuals that are passing by, as metro on Violet line curves along Badarpur flyover; reading in metro does not remain an isolated experience.

We are driving slowly, the road is glass.  

“Imagine where we are was a sea once.

Just imagine!” The sky is relentlessly  

sapphire, and the past is happening quickly:

The lines above are from Agha Shahid Ali’s Snow on the Desert. One cannot help but feel the isolation that these lines are creating for the reader but we also have to take into account the evocation produced is because of metro too. That as we are traveling in metro, our reading experience is being paved for us.

Try reading Kaveh Akbar’s My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare or Wislawa Szymborska’s View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems.

When body becomes like a book

Early morning rushes are something to definitely fear especially if you have seen Kashmere Gate or Rajiv Chowk. Yellow line would always keep swarming and just keep ingesting people, Violet line would keep flagging pre-recorded sorry messages “There will be a short delay to this service. We appologise for the inconvenience caused… ” at least five times in the journey. Blue line would always be brimming and you would never be able to decide what time is it ever empty.

Even in such desperate times readers can always be seen desperately trying to cling to their book in the crowd, trying to not lose track of the passage, reading by folding the book. They can be seen either leaning against the pole, or standing with laptop bags in front, pressing their two fingers against the door glass for support, and a book in the other hand.

Once a boy was hooked in his reading of Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy so much that at Sikanderpur station he was pushed outside by the Rapid metro crowd, but instead of raising alarm, he quietly stood aside and got in through the next door of the coach.

Reading spaces in metro

We all enjoy a good light, a good chair, a good place to sit and read. At Mandi house, people seat themselves under the tube light lit hoardings. At Green Park, students can be seen taking up circular seating near the staircase. In metro, the comfortable coach junctions are more crowded in the evenings than in metro. The corrugated rubber near the junction is another space that people lean on and read newspapers in the morning as the metro snakes its way along. The reading junta also leans along the poles, supports itself on the glasses of both sides of the door and the doors that do not open at every metro station. The end of metro coaches has also seen scenes where people take out newspaper and sit, as they dig in the bag for Pratiyogita Darpan.  

At the metro stations with interchange facility like Hauz Khas, INA, which also amounts to people walking a lot and reading books but not bumping into each other. Reading in metro then can also become about learning about metro station as a space. Reading in these spaces then can make us hopeful that there is a future where reading books can be seen as normal as the pitter-patter of metro is. 

The pain of reading

In the summer of 2018, I was commuting in metro for three hours every day. I was reading Many Lives and Many Masters only during my commuting hours. It is a book that I would never go back to, but it didn’t make me realize where my time went while reading. Somehow my physical pain of standing was taken up by the act of reading which immediately wafted into imagining a connection between two different worlds.

Orhan Pamuk in his book My Name is Red, has a beautiful prose: “When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you'll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favourite promontories”.

It is not hard for me to understand why I loved reading Ruskin Bond more in a metro than at home– the noise, the smells, the terrains of some world cannot be felt when you are static. Delhi metro creates a world of its own as soon as you enter, but this world serves as an entry point also to the book as I opened it. The sight, chatter and the whiff of women’s coach evoked a new memory. I can no longer read the same book without thinking about how colourful the coach looked.

I believe some words only make sense when you are literally traveling, so as to understand the metaphorical passage of immersing yourself into some other world. Some words are better felt with the passage of time and space.

Books on Delhi Metro (BoDM)

“This is a very strange incident. The doors of the car had just opened at Pragati Maidan metro station. I saw a book kept on twin railings of the staircase. I ran towards it, got hold of it, and dashed back inside the metro. Later, I wrote to BoDM asking them if I could join them as a volunteer.” The sunny afternoon of November in Connaught Place Park was privy to many of such stories as a bunch of around fifteen volunteers met to discuss their next month’s drops.

But unlike this enthusiastic reader, there are people who get suspicious of books dropped, although if you see the places of drops, you will realise that the books are very strategically placed – to catch the eye of a commuter: Kept on the side of escalator, railing of stairs, between door handles, seats on platforms- places where they will not get in the way of walking.

However sometimes the results may be funny. “They think it might a bomb or they fear getting caught in the act. I personally therefore do not make it a point to stop there to see the book being picked up. Sometimes we wait, sometimes we hide, sometimes we leave. Sometimes people pick it up, flip through it and leave it there again… We trust people who take these books to re-drop them. There is also a BoDM sticker on front cover and a note from us inside. The staff of Delhi Metro, CISF people posted in metro stations are also curious about books and ask us for books… We have started dropping books of Hindi and Urdu too.”

Team BoDM persuades  readers to re-drop

Another book fairy shared this observation, “I have come to realise that reading books in metro is also about knowing your metro stations. Vidhan Sabha is empty during morning hours so I tend to not drop there. If I have a Hindi book, then I usually drop at Chandni Chowk metro station, because I know there will be more takers of such a book.”

Making Reading more accessible and visible

As I was listening to these stories, I realized that in so many years of commuting in metro, I have never been able to see any books being dropped. Since the volunteers are usually using yellow and blue line, the frequency of drops at these stations is highest. However, the incidences of drop at Red and Green line are increasing. For Pink and Magenta line there was only one book fairy. “People connect with us on social media. They ask us where we are going to drop and have sometimes asked us to wait for them before we drop. Sometimes we wait, after all the person is showing so much effort in order to pick that one book”, said a volunteer. “But the re-drops are around 40 percent, not as much as one would expect. The only way we get to know about a re-drop is when they share on social media and tag us. And it is really something to say as our main motive is that people should start reading more.”

But do dropping books on metro is equal to reading books in metro? I think not. What BoDM is trying to do is foster reading. It doesn’t matter whether people read in public or private. The important thing is that people read.

Since people are travelling long stretches of time and distance every day, reading a book in metro helps in focusing. It serves as ‘me-time’, as a jumpstart to another refreshing evening, as a meditative exercise, as a space to conserve energy, to concentrate and get away from distractions. Isn’t it ironic that to close off the distractions of this world, we are ready to plunge in another world with distractions all around us?

To see people reading in metro, is like seeing libraries walking. There is so much to know - read, learn, communicate, understand, marvel and wonder about everything, that finally just the presence of seeing people read, gets the ‘picnic’ started.

We need books. We need citizens who read. The more people see reading in public places – be it reading to each other, reading from smart phones, reading from newspapers, reading from kindle, the more chances are we will be able to understand how much there is yet to know!