Before the Shutter Clicks

“To photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.” – Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others.

Photography has evolved significantly over centuries. Not just the process of photographing but the intent has changed with time. The shift from commissioned photographs of the early nineteenth century to the “shutter, non-professional” photographs of this century can be traced easily. Camera Obscura or the Dark Room Camera of the nineteenth century, now comes to your fingertips in the form of smart phone cameras. Photographs are a pivotal part of the 21^st century mass culture where images are just a snap away.

Photographs and memory are deeply connected. The use of photography for memory or remembrance goes back to the 20^th century ethnographers, Margaret Mead and Geoffrey Bateson, who used camera for the first time in the field of ethnography. Mead says, “I think that we must squarely face the fact that we, as a discipline, have only ourselves to blame for our gross and dreadful negligence.” She wrote that camera could have “caught and preserved for centuries” dances, rituals performed perhaps for the last time, animal sacrifices and so on. She emphasizes to “memorialized (everything) on film, before it all disappears in front of everybody’s eyes.” Susan Sontag, in her book, ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’ says that photographs indeed provides a quick way of apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing.

Photography is something which did not come naturally to me. All the more, it is even too early to call myself a photographer. But it is fair to say that I compulsively take photographs, which are of course an amalgamation of a technology at-hand and opportunity. I have delved myself into capturing everything that catches my attention over the past year. So when I had to write a paper on photography and its ethicality, I did not know where to begin. Photography came to me as an instinct—an instinct when words failed me and I was left with camera to express what I saw in front of my eyes.

The question of ethics, insider-outsider, subjectivity-objectivity, and larger histories of colonialism and orientalism are closely knit with photography. I carried these questions with me everywhere I went. A few days ago, I was walking by a relatively lower middle-class housing colony and spotted two boys playing cricket. Unlike the most gully cricket, they were throwing a plastic doll’s head as a ball. The sight of a head being thrown into air became grotesque and interesting at the same time. But seeking consent of the subject, which is the first requirement in the ethics of photography became live, the moment I took out my smart phone to capture. So instead of going ahead with the photo, I went near them and stood in one corner. They stopped playing. I smiled and asked if I could capture them playing. And that was it. One of them, who had the playing stick in hand, rushed inside the house. The other, smilingly followed him. Both of them now stood as close to their house as possible and waited for me to leave. Their father came out, laughing and told the boys that I just meant to photograph. I apologized and left the place with a heavy smile. Throughout the metro ride, I kept thinking about what had just happened. I had lost on a ‘beautiful’ shot but I told myself that at least I asked. But the truth is, I lost a good photograph. I again soothed myself saying that I respected the desire of my subject. But it is also true that I lost a good subject. The photo along with a few hashtags could have bagged a few hundred likes. But I was happy or at least that’s what I told myself that I kept the ethics of photographing as priority. This was the turmoil.

I still contemplate why did I choose to photograph only the boys who played with the head of the doll and not otherwise. The image of a human face being swung in the air and then tossed by a bat invoked what Susan Sontag in context of war photography calls, “the image as shock”. And juxtaposes it with “image as cliché”. She says, “images be jarring, clamorous, eye-opening seems like elementary realism as well as good business sense. The image as shock and the image as cliché are two aspects of the same presence.” In other words, the so-called conscious choice of the photographer to capture a moment of shock, is done with an intention to unite the good will of the people in the form of likes and comments; who in economic terms also become the consumers of that photograph. Like Sontag says, Shock has become the leading stimulus of consumption.

Now that we are talking about shock and its cosmopolitan consumptive implications, it is important to talk about Mayank Austen Soofi, whose work both fascinate and disturb me. 

Mayank Austen Soofi. Photograph by: Dayanita Singh

Austen Soofi, whose Instagram bio reads, “The self-proclaimed hyperlocal Homer”, popularly known for this long-time blog The Delhi Walla, remains an inspiration for me. One of the Instagram followers of Austen Soofi, Taruna Khatri, commented on his post which echoes perfectly with what I feel towards his work. She says, “Who would’ve thought captions could have genres of their own. “Mayank Austen Soofi” is my favourite caption genre and if it weren’t for my conscience that begs me to be original I swear I’d begin to write captions like that all the time. Sometimes I’m walking down the road and I see a dried up Bougainville with a few flowers in front of an old wooden door and I go like “Emily Dickinson’s outhouse” or something like that. I find a street dog looking at me and I go like “A loyal stranger’s direct gaze” or I go into the old city for a case study and immediately think of the “The disappearing element of the hyper local architecture”. Very less people have had impact on me like this. There’s wes Anderson and then there’s you. Everything you post is a delight. Consider this “Sylvia’s self-confessional poetry” or something like that. I’m sure you can think of something better.”

While we are talking about captions, it is only necessary to talk what Sontag has to offer about the importance of putting captions. According to her, if there’s a distance between the reader and the subject in a photograph, then “what the photograph says can be read in several ways. Eventually, one reads into the photograph what it should be saying.” There’s a considerable distance between the subject and the words Soofi deploys in explaining them. But to me, it appears that the intention behind putting captions like, “Cent Percent King Lear!” for an ordinary aging man; makes the subject more distant, exotic, and extraordinary.

John Berger, in his book, ‘Ways of Seeing’ tells how we see things is affected by what we already know or what we believe. Hence, the admiration I held in Mayank Austen Soofi’s work (both writing and photography) reflected in my photography and captioning skills. What I see, or the way I see it, corresponds to what Austen Soofi has to offer. Nothing can be learnt in isolation. Everything is affected by every other thing – they are relational in nature. So, when I stop on a empty road, to photograph a rickshaw puller sleeping, the role of Soofi’s perspective is at play.

In one of the interviews on his book, Nobody Can Love You More, which is a book about the lives of sex-workers of Kotha no. 300 at G.B. Road, Delhi; Soofi was asked about the significance of the title. To which he replied, “I wanted it to be beautiful.” The usage of the word ‘beautiful’ opens up another set of debate for me both as a writer and a photographer. What comprises beautiful? Whose perspective qualifies for something to be called beautiful? Who/What is beautiful and for whom? A beggar lying bandaged on footpath or a daily-wage laborer sleeping on his cart; they are the actual hardships of life but for some it becomes a beautiful spectacle.

In another interview, he said that he never wanted to simplify complicated things. But the way he captions photographs or calls the title of his book “beautiful”, his words fall back on him. Like Soofi, many more photographers (consciously or unconsciously) have fallen into the trap of making the vision of suffering spectacular. “But the spectacular is very much part of the religious narratives by which suffering, throughout most of Western history, has been understood”, says Sontag. I have fallen into this trap as well and it is not limited to the photos I capture but other kinds of visuals which draw me—postcards are one of them. I love postcards. No matter where I go, I buy postcards, not to be sent to a friend or family but to be glued on my bedroom wall. But it is not as simple as it seems. There’s a pattern to my purchase. I buy postcards only of the tribal women of Rajasthan. Sometimes I look at the collage and ask myself, “why do I buy postcards of tribal communities?” One of the postcards which deeply unsettles me is that of a tribal woman breast feeding her toddler, staring into the camera with one breast exposed. I remember one of my friends asking the intentions behind buying a particular kind of postcards. I simply turned to her and said, “They are beautiful. Aren’t they?”

Postcard on my wall.

But there are things more to them besides being just beautiful. Each postcard, which claims to represent indigenous communities, carries with them a trail of exoticization. And probably this is what draws me to Soofi’s work. There is certain grandeur, epic-ness to his portraits. Sontag talks about the epic or grandeur nature of photographs. In context of the Crimean and the American Civil War, she says, “As for the war photographs published between 1914 and 1918, nearly all anonymous, they were – insofar as they did convey something of the terrors and the devastation—generally in the epic mode…” Hence, there is a romanticization in the idea of wars being fought, just like photographs of Austen Soofi where he makes the beggar or laborers, the European or Mughal kings.

But there is something which Soofi’s photographs do. Something which is a little difficult to explain. Something which is as vague as these sentences. I’ll attempt to explain it through an interview which he gave, and says that he wants to “capture the ordinariness of their (his subject’s) extraordinary lives”. Sticking true to this statement, he captions his photos, which are about ‘ordinary’ people by adding a layer of extraordinariness through linking them to European classic writers like Woolf, Shakespeare or Proust. But what about this fascination to the colonizer’s literature remains a question unanswered. Why do people from Indian diaspora need validation of the Western Literature?

Mayank Austen Soofi, as an author talks about the importance of consent while writing anything which is other than oneself. While writing his book, Nobody Can Love You More he tells that, if any of his subjects showed any discomfiture in sharing any information and asked him not to incorporate the detail, he obliged. But what about his photography? Does he seek permission? He acknowledges the limitations of a writer or photographer and says, “I think when you are writing a book about somebody else’s life, it is a little unfair, because it is my thought process at work and they have little control over it. I cannot be their voice.”

While I was balancing this admiration and discomfort with the genre of on-spot photography, also known as “shutter, non-professional” photography, it struck me that seeking permission to respect the desires of the subject results in loss of candidness or originality of the moment. Further, it made me question what comprises of candidness. It is more often than not intrusive. 

But finding answer to the question of whether my postcard collection is beautiful or exotic remains unanswered. According to Christopher Pinney, the practice of photographing with new technology is also a colonial practice. But the history of Photography as a colonial project goes back to nineteenth century, when Lord Canning, the Governor-General of India, expressed his desire to photograph the native castes and tribes of the country. Project titled, ‘The People of India’ was compiled between 1868 and 1875, and comprised of 468 annotated photographs to classify and categorize the colonized subjects. The origins of the project lay in the desire of Lord Canning to possess photographs of native Indian people. In the essay, ‘The Camera Obscure and its Subjects’, Jonathan Carry talks about the attempts made to theorize vision and visuality … that emphasize a continuous and overarching Western visual tradition.

Bringing consensus to the debate of ethicality in Photography has been a hard-fought battle. It has been widely discussed not just by the professionals but amateur photographers as well. Indeed, it is a battle which provides you with the means of fighting but does not leave you with a settling victory. How I see it, you cannot purely devour into ethicality while photographing your subject. But it is the attempts you make – even if failed, count. When you honestly try to understand the complexities of your subject and not take them for granted. “Margaret Mead obviously did not think it was necessary to deal with the ethical issues of photographing those who had little interest or stake in a project in which their ‘participation’ as subjects was vital.” No matter how much oddly satisfying the photographs of Mayank Austen Soofi are, his mere acknowledgement of the complexity of the subject brings everything into perspective. He says, “I think when you are writing a book about somebody else’s life, it is a little unfair...” Hence, it can’t be ignored that camera is an apparatus of political and social power, resulting in what Carry calls, “monolithic construction”. But it is important to be aware of this monolithism and continue to acknowledge its complexities.

References-

Sontag, Susan. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. Picador.

Crary, Jonathan. 1992. The Camera Obscura and Its Subject. Techniques of the Observer. October Books.

Berger, John. 1972. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Books.

Delhi Walla: An Interview with Mayank Austen Soofi. KnowledgeMust Blog. 

The Author as a Voyeur and Many Other Questions. The Hindu.

There's Nothing Romantic About the Life of a Sex Worker.Rediff dot com.

Ethics of Photography - The delicate balance of power between photographer and subject. The Telegraph India.

Old Idol vs The New: The Shiv Dham Project

Shiv Dham Project hoarding outside the temple.

It was when the two beloved neighbors who exchanged delicacies during festivals and helped each other in making papads and mangodis—fought, every house in the locality knew that Shiv Dham Project is going to cost much more than the monetary value of three point twenty one lakhs. Saraswati Yadav and Laali Bai, residents of the Housing Board Colony moved to this locality around the same time in year 2006. Even though Mrs Yadav was fifteen years older than the latter, they shared a bond which only girls in college share. They ritually met in evening at Mrs Yadav’s house and chatted over a cup of tea about every human, every animal of the colony. The families mixed well. The friendship was converted into a relation when Laali Bai brought a rakhi for Saraswati announcing, “the sister I never had”. It was all good until Shiv Dham Project was announced. The project was a test and unlike any quintessential Bollywood movie on friendship, theirs crumbled under the pressure.

Core committee for the project was formed earlier this year comprising of Rupender Singh, Jitu Sen, Anil Kejriwal, Dharmendra Yadav, and Mahesh Sharma – all residents of the Housing Board Colony. In its first meeting, the committee decided that the temple’s outermost fencing should no longer be an invisibly acknowledged one but be constructed with solid barbed wires. Everyone seemed to have agreed but Laali Bai. Her house was right next to the temple’s outer fencing. For years she had been “wrongfully” using the temple’s land for her own personal needs. So when the committee came up with the decision of fencing the temple to stop pigs and cows from entering the space, Laali Bai did everything to prevent it from happening. She threatened to call the lawyers, her thug brothers from the village but everything went in vain. Saraswati Yadav, the unannounced member of the all-male committee, took her friendship on bullet and fired abuses. Laali Devi shrunk back and so did their companionship.

“What is wrong, is wrong. Even he (Lord Shiva) knows it”, said Mrs Yadav when I asked her about the tiff. Her daughter-in-law, who wasn’t even a part of the fight had an opinion to offer, “Who has flourished after stealing what is god’s?”

~~~~

Land acquisition has been at the center of Mansha Purna Mahadev (Wish-granting Lord) temple and it goes back to 1980s. Mrs Sarita Runwal, resident house number 10, shifted to this locality in October 1985 on the pious occasion of Dhanteras. One morning, while sitting in her garden, reading Dainik Navjyoti, a Hindi newspaper daily, she agreed to tell me the history of this colony. “It was a jungle with a handful of houses when we shifted”, she began.

Mrs Sarita Runwal

Housing Board Colony is separated by a distance of twenty kilometers from the Old Kishangarh City which was founded by the Rathore price, Kishan Singh ji of Jodhpur in 1609. Kishangarh was the capital of the princely state during the British Raj, which was located in the Rajputana Agency.

“People talked of Housing Board as a far-off place –  a different city when I was married here in 1995”, says Durgesh Yadav, who used to live in the main city until 2006, when she moved here with the family.

Mrs Runwal goes on to say, “Back in eighties, there were neither roads nor street lights. You could hear wild animals howling at night.” She took a brief pause, as if trying to recollect and continued, “This on time, when Deepak’s father, my husband was not home, a leopard entered the locality. I was alone at home with the kids. We all were terrified. No body opened the gates of their houses. There were no telephones in those days to call for help.” I could see the fear afresh, even after all those years. “I sat in front of pooja-ghar and prayed for our lives. The next day, when he (the husband) came, I made sure that our wooden door is replaced with that of an iron.”

Mrs Runwal lives in the same house with her two sons, daughters-in-laws and five grandchildren. She took a sip of her tea and pointed to a news bulletin in the newspaper and said, “Kishangarh is developing so fast. Look, an airport! It was a patch of jungle once.”

Portion of Housing Board Colony now (2018).

On being asked about the temple, she said that there was no place for communal worshipping when they moved here in 1985. A few years later, in the month of March, a clerk along with his attendant, illegally started acquiring the land at the bottom of the hill. “It was then Deepak ke papa felt that there had to be a temple in this locality. He didn’t let the duo reserve the land. He took a big cardboard which read, ‘mandir ka zameen’ (Temple’s property) and placed it at the top of the hill. People then spared it from occupying. In following years, he became the president of the colony’s welfare organization”, she said with a faint admiration for her husband who is now no more. Extending her admiration, she went on to tell how after becoming the president of the colony he got the lights and roads fixed, and managed to put a post-box.

“Finally who constructed this temple?”, I asked her.

She warmly pressed my shoulder and said, “It is never one person who constructs a temple, beta. Every one gave little money and it was after Holi that this temple was inaugurated.”

~~~~

Nobody remembers the first priest who was appointed for the Shiv Temple. But most of them remember one and nobody remembers him by his own name but as ‘Bhawani’s father’. Bhawani Shankar, a Brahamin by caste, was a friend of Mrs Runwal’s elder son, Deepak. “He studied Commerce in college, whereas I was in Sciences”, Deepak Runwal told me. Having the privilege of caste, he came to the temple for the morning and evening aartis to earn an extra pocket money for himself. He was a bhakt of Bhole Shankar—that’s how whole Housing Board Colony remembers him. But his wife, along with her lover murdered him in their own house. Rumor has it that he was strangled, while other ghastly stories run that he was cut into pieces and burnt on the terrace. Children still believe that Nidhi Cottage, which he named after his wife is haunted. Deepak Runwal, who was good friends with Bhawani Shankar remembers him as a bright student.

On probing Mr Deepak to tell more about the construction of the temple amidst the land acquisitions, I asked him if the government will declare this idol-installation as illegal? To this he said, “Aastha ke naam mai government kuch nahi kehti.” (Government does not interfere in the matters of faith). But the priest, who is currently employed at the temple, Pt. Yugal Kishore Sharma does not see this project just concerning faith. Mr Kishore has been in service of the temple since 2005, when another temple, dedicated to Lord Sai was constructed right beside Shiv’s. I went to the temple one morning to talk to him, disturbing his morning rituals of bathing and dressing the idols. He seemed interested to talk at first but the moment he saw a pen and a paper, he shrank back. He incessantly asked if this information will have a legal enquiry or not? After assuring him that there won’t be any, he stretched his legs and began to talk about the Shiv Dham Project.

Mr Kishore had opinions which were quite contrary to Mr Runwal’s. Unlike him, the priest believed that this project will become a good tourist spot for the city. “Darshanik Sthal”, as he calls. He briefed me about the developments taking place on the hill – the lights, beautiful flowers being planted and a waterfall (yes!). On being asked about the faith bit, he was not sure – and nodded his head and again began to tell how beautiful the idol of Shiva will look and attract the entire city. I prepared to ask another question when he announced that he has nothing more to answer and offered prasad of a banana in my hand. I touched the banana to my forehead, rang the temple bell and left.

The waterfall under construction.

Saraswati Yadav, resident of house number 12 showed the same level of excitement that the priest did. She pompously talked about it as Kishangarh’s first. Afterall, there’s a strange seduction about the firsts. Though Mrs Yadav is afraid that this spot which gives a stunning view of the entire Kishangarh city might attract rowdiness and eve-teasing. But the greatest fear that she has is that of it turning into a lover’s point. Mrs Yadav is infamously known for catching lovers meeting secretly in the temple. She has a strong suspicion for young boys and girls visiting temple at odd hours. She left my interview half-way thinking of the possible solutions to prevent this obscene culture from developing.

~~~~

The Shiv Dham Project promises a huge eleven foot Shiv idol, adorned with a beautiful waterfall by its side and a breathtaking pathway to the hill decked with flowers of all kinds. It seemed to have pleased everyone – except the children. While climbing the hill, I noticed a few children aged perhaps ten or eight, playing cricket on a newly constructed cemented floor behind the temple. The boy with the bat took the aim and the ball softly hit me. The group was petrified in a fear that I might not return the ball. They came together, hiding behind each other and waited for me to respond. I picked the ball and threw it in their direction with a smile.

I gestured the boy in white shirt who looked like the leader of the pack. His name was Sunil. I asked him whether they like playing on this with cemented floor. He faintly said, “yes”. But one of them, who was fielding in a corner said, “we miss crossing the hill to play in the expansive grounds of Raja Reddy.”

Raja Reddy is a kacchi basti or the colony of the nomads located right behind the hill. One can easily reach the basti by climbing the hill – which serves as a wall between permanent and the temporary.

“Then why don’t you go there anymore?”, I asked them.

They laughed at my cluelessness and said, “You don’t know? They’ve put barbed wires at the top of the hill to prevent pigs and dogs from entering the temple premises. Now we cannot jump the fencing.”

“Isn’t there any other way to go to those grounds?”

“Yes, there is but it takes a lot of time to reach and our mothers don’t allow us to take that route alone”, answered one of the kids.

“With the hill, it was safer”, concluded another.

~~~~

I nodded and started walking towards the top—the most talked about idol-installation project. The slope was steep yet I managed to climb the hill in seven minutes. At the eighth minute, I was standing right under the idol of Shiva. I was panting by the time I reached the top and wondered how the older generation is going to climb up here. To this, my grandfather, Mukut Yadav had an answer. He told that a motor has been installed beside the shivling in the temple which will transfer the offered water up to the waterfall. “In this way, old men like me could offer water to the idol of Shiva even while standing below”, he explained.

“It will restore both water and the faith of the devotees”, he finished with a satisfactory smile.

I looked around. It was so different. I remembered climbing up here as a teenager, wearing my blue sport shoes. But now I could climb even in my chappals. With a little change, so much has changed. I could no more sit on the rocks because they have been fenced with a hard metal wire. Everything was in control up there, yet so much had been lost. The overhead tanks on the hill were now no more overhead.

I looked at the grand idol of Shiva which was still under construction and spotted two moons—one in his bun and another in the blue sky. The sun was setting and so was the shift of the two sculptors who had been working on the idol for a month now. I chatted with the chief sculptor, Rama Krishan Kumawat for a while, who has been making idols since 1976. He briefed me about the dimensions of the idol which no more tickled my interest. His helper, who was a woman named Vishrami Rawat came and sat beside me. She closely observed me penning the conversation. She was impressed – her face did not lie.

She asked me in the local dialect, “Where do you study?”

“Dilli”, I replied.

She smiled. “Will you take my daughter with you? She is brilliant in studies.”

I could not find words to answer her request. Mr Kumawat intervened and began telling me about the raw materials used in making of the idol.

But I was distracted, disgusted by the artificiality of the place to an extent that I stopped listening to what he had to say. My pen stopped scribbling. I took a deep breath and asked him what I had been meaning to ask every interviewee but withheld.

“Do you think it is right to install an idol just like that? Wasn’t one idol enough? What pleasure will these people get from ruining this beautiful range of hills? Have you ever seen these hills turning into green during monsoon? You should see the peacocks dancing and the rainbow forming behind these hills. It is so beautiful when left on its own, then why destroy it by putting an idol?”

I finished my rant with moist eyes. I closed my notepad and prepared to leave. The old man smiled which annoyed me even more. He adjusted his glasses and said, “This idol will prevent the industrialists from digging the hills for stone and sand. Have you ever thought of this, beta?”

A destruction to escape another?

He was right.

~~~~

The Art of Lying in Delhi Metro

If each person’s nose got bigger every time they lied in Delhi Metro, people would be holding on to each other’s noses instead of the poles. Almost every third person travelling in metro is a liar. And no, there’s no moral baggage to it. Lying is an art and every commuter of Delhi metro is an artist – successful, unsuccessful, but artist nonetheless.

Yesterday was a fine cloudy afternoon. The ‘after’ part of the noon which lulls you into a soft sleep; followed by a craving for your choice of beverage and pakoras. So, on one such dreamy pakora-afternoon, in one of the 196 metro cars of DMRC’s Violet line, unfolded a dreamy performance of lies by a couple. Dreamy for every commuter who’s bored of reading his/her co-passengers’ faces whilst on an underground metro journey. Others who are bored of shuffling their playlists and many other who’ve just lost their internet connection to use Snapchat filters anymore.

Among these passengers I was one such. So when the extravagant play of lies began, I too, like several others stopped my music and alerted one of my five senses to pay attention. Others unabashedly stopped munching chips to listen more precisely, while a few started munching louder – enjoying, while anticipating the end. The coach hoppers even, who walk wild hunting down every empty seats; stopped their expedition and leaned on the pole instead to listen. People put down their newspapers, books, and gossips to be a part of this lie. I slowed down my breath to hear every syllable clearly. The entire coach became a lie-house – wonderful. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

But this was not the first lie I was listening to in Delhi metro. You are expected to lie while taking public transportation. Or that’s what my grandmother told when I turned sixteen and travelled to an adjoining city all by myself for the first time.

“Don’t tell your full name to any one in the bus”, said my dear grandmother with her wide eyes falling apart.

My chachu who stood beside her at the bus-stop added, “and if any one offers you something to eat, politely refuse saying you are not hungry.” But I was almost always hungry. And was almost always asked to lie about it.

So when I shifted to Delhi, the big city, I found to my surprise that the rule was same here too. No matter where you go, small town or a big metropolis like Delhi; you lie while travelling in public transport.

I had not gotten used to lying in Delhi metro and I remember meeting this woman, who was exceedingly interested in my skirt and the place I bought it from. Upon knowing that it was purchased from my hometown, she got even more interested in knowing about me and my family. My parents had taught me everything but they didn’t teach me how to say no to people. So when she interrogated me, holding the metal pole in one hand and a bag full of groceries in another, I didn’t say no to her. I couldn’t. But my grandmother did teach me the art of lying. So, I lied about my name, my hometown and even my height too! On top of it, when she asked me where I was heading to, I lied, “Hauz Khas”. I was on the blue line, travelling to an entirely opposite direction.

Lying is like a rainbow pastry. Layers and layers of prompt and sometimes well-researched thoughts piled onto each other; iced with a factitious smile. Another very common lie you’ll witness in Delhi metro is that of lack of space to accommodate people.

“Nahi hai jagah” is the second most common sentence you’ll hear in metro; first being the recorded announcements. But this lie had a character to it—it’s a shared lie. Shared by the entire row of passengers who unannouncingly refuse make space to adjust one more pair of buttock.

There are lies you speak to yourself. A lie that you will chance a seat at next interchange station. And if you call this optimism; then, gotcha you are lying again. These thoughts are disillusioning. Your favorite music does not fill you with as much enthusiasm as each passing station does. You surveil the coach, looking for the slightest hint of body movements indicating that the passenger will get down at the next station. You slyly move towards that person, like a snake, to hop onto his/her seat when the time is right. You nonchalantly wait, pretending to be occupied with your playlist but you are listening to even the slightest variations in the passenger’s breathing. The next station approaches and your prey begins to assemble its belongings—packs bag, folds the UPSC reference book, and fiddles with your patience for a while. The gates open at the next station and he closes his eyes and resorts to sleep. And it then you spot another liar in Delhi metro.

And then. You pass by your lost lover’s metro station. And the world stops. You anticipate the arrival of this station beat by beat. In those moments of contemplation, you remind; rather lie to yourself that you don’t miss him. It’s easier to lie than to submit to longing. You lie more passionately than you loved him. That you don’t reminisce about holding hands at the same metro station, snuggling on that same old bench. The door shuts and you again drown in the abyss of darkness.

But sometimes these lies hold the power of binding an entire coach. Like I was saying, yesterday, a couple performed a wonderful show of lies which even made me pause the tunes of Prateek Kuhad. The woman, aged somewhere around thirty, curling her hands into her husband’s arm, was looking outside the metro. The duo looked fairly in love with each other. They were standing right next to the gate, which is the unsaid lover’s corner in metro, where you get to enjoy the cityscape which journey leaves behind. Everything was rosy and nobody seemed to care. But a phone call changed everything.

The woman received a call. It was a mundane Samsung ringtone but seemed to have shook her. It was her boss.

“I will not pick the phone”, she announced.

Her husband who seemed to have maintained a reasonable calm said, “No, pick up and say that you’ve reached Badkal Mor.”

We were at Sarita Vihar, seven stations from the claimed. The stakes were high.

“But this metro aunty will start announcing”, she pulled a flaw in their plan.

I had now put my earphones aside and intently waited for the action to unfold. The coach hoppers held on to the pole more firmly. The munching had stopped and the chatter faded.

“Don’t worry. Disconnect the phone before she even starts blabbering”, suggested the husband.

Now we were moving towards the next station, Mohan Estates. She exactly had two minutes to finish the conversation. She finally picked the phone.

There was a deadly silence in the coach. I noticed people looking at their watches.

“Hello”, said the woman nervously.

“Yes, I am fine”, she lied.

“Yes sir, I am at Badkal More”, she lied again.

The conversation should’ve ended then and there, but the boss took longer than expected. He kept talking and the woman—totally helpless, faked a laughter. We could see the anxiety seeping on the couple’s face. The husband held her hands reassuringly.

The audiences had turned anxious too. Some fidgeted nervously with their bag straps whereas I bit my lips. In that short moment, I feared the worst for the woman. What would the boss do if he gets to know their exact location? Fire her from the job? My imaginations were running wild when the metro speaker turned alive.

The announcer geared herself for the announcement. And it started…

“Agla station…”

Each pair of eye was on the couple. It felt as if Sachin Tendulkar had got out at 99 runs. We had lost hope when the woman finally said, “Okay, bye.” She put the handset into her bag and brushed her cheeks on husband’s shoulders.

The entire coach heaved a sigh of relief. I could hear the unheard applause and cheering. The munching, gossiping resumed and so did the tunes of Kuhad.