Beauty and the Beast

Kashmir is a photographer’s delight. What began as travel photography by Europeans to aid the Orientalist project has now grown to become an integral part of various fields and professions. The valley reaches mainland India through various mediums and what is received from each source is an altogether different product. It is possible that the human mind does not fully comprehend what it sees. The ‘truth’ which exists out there, in absolute objectivity, is inaccessible to us. What reaches to us has been filtered by our senses and our experiential knowledge. Intaking reality through photographs, no matter how “life-like”, further waters it down. This is my attempt to identify the visual paths, the resultant manipulation and the reception of different ‘ideas’ of Kashmir.

Journalism, advertising, tourism and entertainment- these are the prime sources through which a non-resident familiarises herself with Kashmir. Each fragments Kashmir in different ways by choosing what to photograph in line with what it deems most relevant for the viewers.

When talking of journalism, one can not do so while considering it a unified whole. The mainstream media response to the valley differs according to where it comes from: Pakistan, India or Kashmir. Each play up certain aspects of a story and ignore the rest according to what suits its ideology. The Kashmiri media is the most “faithful” in its representation, sympathetic to the people’s concerns and their demands. Photos of students frustrated with snapped internet connection, curfew-harassed local traders, daily casualties and pellet-ridden bodies of young children inhabit the local dailies. Pakistani mainstream media tends to play up the dissenting voices coming from the valley, highlighting the dissatisfaction with Indian administration since it has its own stake. The picture below was featured in a news article first published in ‘Rising Kashmir’ and then in ‘Dawn’, a leading Pakistani daily. No wonder the general Kashmiri sentiment that Pakistan is more concerned about their problems than India.

Image Credit- Mukhtar Khan, AP

The mainstream Indian media rarely makes visible such graffiti from downtown Kashmir. Representation of such non-violent forms of protest is possible only in the background with stone-throwing protesters in the forefront. Photos of Kashmiris carrying Pakistani and IS flags are often circulated in print as well as broadcast with captions running under calling them anti-Indian or anti-national. Aamir Wani, a civil servant aspirant from Kashmir says that “This is in spite the realisation that they use the symbol without partaking the ideology. Pakistan is a major irritant for India and that is what they tap on to draw Delhi’s attention. And draw it does.” In complete contrast to the beastly nation-hating, army-killing image of the civilians such photographs create, newspapers try to partake in the sanitation of Kashmir too. Newspapers religiously print beautiful photos of snow-blanketed Srinagar to show the advent of winter every year. Lush saffron fields are a common favourite. Kashmir, the photos say, is dear because it is beautiful. The Kashmiris who try to take the land away from India must be stopped by any means.

In the face of such distortion, news websites like scroll.in, thewire.in, newslaundry.com etc. do a laudable job. “Death is our only Aazadi: The story of a Kashmiri Mother” by Nidhi Suresh is a great example. The piece is about a Kashmiri family, told through the voice of a mother, who used to host militants in their house in the 90s. When asked about the problems she faces while reporting from Kashmir Nidhi says that “people are unwilling to talk. They do not want to be quoted or photographed. As much as there is a collective want for azadi, they just want to be done with it. They are afraid of pushback.” Nidhi’s report does not give away the identity of her sources. There are photos of only the hands of the mother, her face cropped out. There are thousands of stories of personal struggle from Kashmir to which there are no names or faces to put to.

Source: Newslaundry

The reportage that comes out of these channels is different. It is heavy on nuance, perhaps because of their business model which relies on subscribers rather than advertisers. It is true that even these channels are not unbiased but they do have greater transparency. The biases are aired before the content. The concern about other news portals is the obvious spin they put to stories without disclosing their allegiances.

A resident of Delhi and a model, Anannya Prakash, 21, when asked about where he gets information about Kashmir from, says “it is usually Times of India or through Facebook pages like Fauji Brat or RVSP. They usually have videos which show how ungrateful Kashmiris are, willing to take help from the Indian army but ready to throw stones at them the next moment. I met a Kashmiri guy last summer when I was modelling and he told me that things were not the way I believed them to be. I have a mixed opinion now.”

Sidharth Khurana, a Canadian resident Indian says “some areas are supposed to be unsafe from what I’ve heard. Seems like an interesting place to visit though what with their culture, music and mountains of course.” When asked about what made him form such an opinion, “news” is all he says.

When considering representation through the visual medium, it is impossible not to talk of films, music videos, documentaries etc. though they are not strictly photographs. The representation of Kashmir as a third character in Bollywood songs of the 80s and the 90s has concretized the image of the region as an epitome of romance and beauty. Blockbusters like ‘Lakshya’, ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’ and ‘Aiyaary’ glorify the Indian soldier protecting the state while off-beat low-budget movies like ‘Harud’ offer a sensitive portrayal. Which kind of portrayal of Kashmir finds public acceptance is obvious in the risk-value and popularity of the movies. On the other hand, while well-intentioned documentaries try to explain the ‘Kashmir conflict’, most dehumanise the Kashmiris by making them just cogs in the state machine. True, Kashmir is a land at undeclared civil war but is that all there is to the lives of Kashmiris?

Social media updates from Kashmir report the everyday lives of the people. Youngsters huddled together for a selfie in front of a beloved bike or posing before a beautiful lake, “red-cheeked” toddlers giggling into adoring camera lenses, photographs of traditional makhmal suits, cricket bats or sunglasses (since Facebook and Instagram can take business where word of mouth can’t) all paint a picture of normalcy. These photos are meant to be shared with family and friends. However, these very channels are bloated with photographs and videos of police brutality and civilian torture, most of them recorded by civilians but some released by the army too to intimidate protestors into inaction. Photographs in times of turmoil become evidence. In the Kerala floods of 2018 people from Odisha, who suffered their own share of floods earlier that year, advised Keralites to photograph their drowned vehicles with the licence plates visible to get assured insurance. Photographs became as powerful as stamped affidavits. The rise of photo-journalism as a legitimate field of reporting is a testimony to that. The almost simultaneous rise of tools of photo manipulation, though, raises new concerns. A lot of fact checking websites like altnews.in, boomlive.in and factly.in have come up in the last two years, each trying to verify sources and stories circulated on social media. They have debunked a lot of lies supplanted by photographs and videos, about terrorists infiltrating Kashmir, decreasing expenditure on arms as claimed by a government officer etc. Photographs too, like all evidence, is subject to tampering.

“To photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.” This is exactly what advertisements set against the Kashmiri backdrop do.

Considering the above advertisement produced as an example, the obvious question which arises is who the advertisement is aimed at. Cashing on the “traditional” to sell western clothes stitched by “artists” can not be a campaign intended to work on the Kashmiris. The photo-advertisement excludes the local artist and replaces him/her with the professionals at Wills Lifestyle. It exoticises Kashmiri hand crafts to project it’s beauty and labour-value to the product being sold. The company using such methods is not even a foreign brand but an Indian one. A lot can be gleaned of the relationship India shares with Kashmir from its treatment in hands of Indian businesses and advertising campaigns.

Another industry at work in Kashmir is tourism. Government-issue or private travel books and travel blogs hypnotise readers with Kashmiri beauty offered on platter. Immaculate tulip gardens, Kashmiri women dressed in colourful traditional wear, pasture lollying in open grounds, mist-kissed mountains and more, all become anchors for tourists. Family vacation photos of shikara rides while wearing Kashmiri costumes, day stay in houseboats on the Dal Lake, picnic in the open grounds of Sonmarg and the snow of Gulmarg, camping in Pahalgam and paragliding in Aru Valley tell of a land of absolute beauty and peace.

Package tours stick to a certain route where disturbance is invisible and land almost photoshopped. They tell nothing of a boy sitting at home on his laptop typing out his frustration as gunshots ring outside in the street. Or a grieving family having lost a member to imprisonment, mental torture, rape or as collateral damage. Even the postcards a tourist takes back home freeze this sanitized image of Kashmir. This Kashmir is not of the Kashmiris. It is a museum, a source of revenue collection for the Indian administration. It helps that the locals have to participate in this image-creation since their economy depends on tourists.

Photographs, with the advent of mass printing and social media, are no longer intended for personal record but for circulation. Representation of the object being photographed changes with the intended audience. All photographs received through mass media channels are distorted by the ideology of the frame. Journalism, tourism, entertainment and advertising have different interests to serve. Reportage, whether for news or through documentaries, depends on the reporters or researchers, their allegiance and the consumers. Tourism, advertising and entertainment are businesses which must air brush to make the photographed object more appealing. What then becomes of the “truth value” of photographs?

The camera lens subverts the beauty-beast dichotomy. It can just as easily make the photographed object beautiful as it can beastify it. The coverage of Kashmir through different lenses forces us to rethink the truth value assigned to photographs. The beautiful Kashmir, the conflicted Kashmir, the tyrant Kashmir, the backward Kashmir, the suffering Kashmir, the homeland Kashmir- there are as many epithets for the region as there are cameras. The wielders of the cameras hold sway over public discourse in how far they can circulate what’s captured by their lens while limiting it within the set context. Should one expect the camera to record an “absolute truth” or accept each version as truth in its own right? Each capture is a fragment of the truth which may or may not produce a coherent whole when put together in a unifying project. This however is not a failure of photography but its strength. In knowing that every frame is an ideology, it ensures that the photographs are seen as evidence of that ideology and not necessarily of reality. Photographs need to be ‘read’ to understand and acknowledge the binaries of presence/absence, truth/untruth and beauty/beast which hierarchizes realities.

Memes and the Laughing Stock

Internet meme is a form of communication in the new media world which has changed the way people talk. It has redefined our channels of knowledge and patterns of learning. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene(1976) coined the term 'meme'. He equated cultural ideas with genes and explained how thoughts transmit from one brain to the other, mostly by imitation but also constant transformation. The image-macro meme sequences show how thoughts and ideas imitate, mutate and evolve. The fact that memetic studies has come up as an academic subject and various institutions like Brown University have begun offering courses such as “The rhetoric of memes” or “Memes 101” shows that it is becoming an increasingly important part of our culture. A product of a hyper-connected like-minded group, memes work on exclusion. Something which the older generation just doesn’t get, it is projected as a tool for the millennials. In fact, memes ridicule the older generation trying to participate in the meme-culture within its very format.

The desperation of a middle-aged man, wearing a baseball cap backwards and a shirt with "music band" printed on it, to pass off as a teenager equated with 'oldies' trying to understand something 'hip' like memes in the Fellow Kids meme. 

But are memes really a new medium?

Old wine in new bottle

This recently-surfaced 1921 cartoon in a magazine called The Judge caused excited speculations about it being the first meme (a format dependent joke) as it follows the same template as the popular Expectation vs Reality meme sequence.

An image in itself can not be a meme unless it is reproduced with slight variation. BBC discovered that 1921 wasn't the first time such a joke was published. The Wisconsin Octopus magazine had printed the following version of the joke in 1919 or 1920, thereby making the sequence possibly the first pre-internet meme. 

Looking closer home, the Amul girl too was a meme much before her time. The impish blue-haired girl in a polka-dotted frock has commented about contemporary events since the advertisement campaign started in 1966. The much loved figure of "India's Golden Girl" has come to symbolise fearless tongue-in-cheek humour, often wording concerns of citizens, even in isolation from text.

The first Amul advertisement released during horse racing season shows the chubby-cheeked mascot as a jockey.

While it is clear that the format of combining visuals with text was available even before internet, it is its easy digital reproducibility and the lack of authorship which has made it a new language. Memes are becoming increasingly esoteric and are sometimes just a stock image unaccompanied by text. They do not need words to convey a message anymore. One knows what "Salt Bae" represents even if it received without any text. Cat and dog memes, or any other memes viral for the cuteness of its content, allow social media users a breather from the continuous outpouring of information online. The replicating forms are not only entertaining but show how the world is or should be. The ability of memes to explain complex issues and aid memorization in a fun and engaging manner can revolutionise pedagogy. Mad Mughal Memes is a Facebook page which is changing the way millennials engage with Mughal art and history, one contextualised and memified painting at a time. A Facebook event last September organised by a Dank meme page ShitIndiansSay had about 2000 people turn up to shout “Bol na Aunty” in CP to celebrate the viral meme. The extent of identification shows how effective memes are as a mass-mobilisation technique. The culture can create solidarity for a cause and bring people together to work towards it. Relatable and sensitive memes make closeted gays, those depressed or transgender people feel less alienated. Memes can be circulated without the pressure of ownership or self-endorsement, shared just for its humour value. The presence of online content sympathetic to harrowing personal experiences makes one feel part of a shared existence. The attractive visual-text or gif format allows introverts to communicate through an engaging medium. Memes are means of coping for many depressed, antisocial or socially awkward teenagers. They have normalized taboo subjects like homosexuality, menstruation, body issues, social anxiety and pornography.

The visual-text and gif text formats of memes have made it easy to engage with complex politics. Controversial issues which can't be picked up by mainstream newspapers owing to their advertisers-pay model are critiqued by internet memes. The humour inherent in the format increases the scope of freedom of expression. Memes create more politically engaged and aware citizens.

Memes in a democracy

Though memes seem like the perfect pop-art for a democracy in that they are easily reproducible, extremely shareable and non-profit, are they really so? They have increasingly become a propaganda tool as IT Cells are being set up and Image Creators employed. Furthering the interests of an aggressively imagined nation, they malign all who question with an onslaught of cheap humour. Right-wing memes are growing in popularity across nations. Populist anger, hyper-nationalism and open suspicion towards the 'other' fuel this movement. Memes divorce the content from the producer and therefore lack perspective. Since there is no authorship, the stance of the creator is unknown. There is no history of authorship which can be referred to. Can internet memes, then, be the voice of a democracy when they are being manipulated by a few and can't be trusted to be responsible anyway? The currency of online content is its virality. And it is the ruling power's interest which decides the lifetime of a meme.

Ravish Kumar, a prominent Hindi journalist, at a seminar in Miranda House on March 12, 2018, explained why he thinks political memes and jokes forwarded on social media are detrimental to a democracy. Laughing at a problem, he said, doesn't make the problem go away. If the aam aadmi laugh at jibes made on politicians doing wrong, the joke is on them since them are the ones wronged. Since politics is a serious affair with an actual impact our lives, missteps by politicians shouldn't be excused with a chuckle. I would have to differ. What needs to be questioned here is the intent of the content circulated. What purpose do political memes serve? Do memes trivialise an issue with humour? 

The PM remarked in a public address that there was nothing like mal-nutrition, only "figure-conscious girls" unwilling to eat. The statement inspired several memes ridiculing his speech.

Gibe at Rahul Gandhi's less-than-stellar oratory skills 

Laughter is not an end in itself. Satire uses laughter as a corrective measure and is a political weapon. The video an old be-spectacled Pakistani woman draped in a sari cussing at the government is an excellent example.

Yeh Bik Gai Hai Gormint (January 11, 2017)

While the source of hilarity is the explicative-filled rant in Hindi, it caught on for the relatable frustration of the 'middle class' trapped in the government-corporate nexus. Satire is an art which points out flaws with the aim of correcting society. Funny with a potent sting, the meme does just that.

In addition to identifying the intent, it would also be helpful to see who the object of a meme is and who the subject. The politics of who laughs at memes and who is laughed at is worthy of investigation. For ease of study, I have classified memes according to their reception. Self-reflective laughter on relatable memes, crass laughter on a meme ridiculing the subject the viewer deems beneath him/herself or no laughter at all at the former as well as memes which shock or soothe. Two professionals which invariably inspire meme creation are cringe-pop artists and politicians. The virality of both depends on the crude laughter at someone one thinks is beneath them. 

Cringe-pop and memes

It has been widely speculated to no end why certain memes go viral and the rest don't. One sure-shot way of making content viral is through enhancing it’s ‘shock value’. At one end of the spectrum are the 'topper memes'. Every year, as soon as class 12 board results are released, trolling of the toppers is religiously undertaken. The relatable outrage at a shocking 99.9% score is reflected in the popularity of the memes which follow. At the other end of the spectrum are memes which rely on something shockingly bad. The genre of 'cringe-pop' developed after evolution of memes as a medium of conversation. It is only after videos began being shared with captions that the possibility of such a genre arose. Rebecca Black has been credited as the first cringe-pop artist for her music video Friday(2012). In India though, the phenomenon wasn't new. Baba Sehgal, “the king of nonsense rap”, released his 'Thanda Thanda Paani' more than 21 years before the term cringe-pop came into being, before the time of modern internet. Some of the most famous memes in India have been given by cringe artists like Dhinchak Pooja, Omprakash Mishra, Wilbur Sargunaraj and Tahar Shah to name a few. Cringe-pop might be celebrated as a product of post-modernism where-in traditional ideologies have broken down and there are no rules to abide. There is no centre by which to align one self and all voices exist in independence and have equal importance. There is no authority which decides what "good" music is and so music which was hither-to unheard can now be heard in the mainstream. While the increasing acceptance of the fringe must be encouraged in a modern society, is the destabilisation of 'elite' music the reason for the popularity of cringe music? The memes suggest otherwise.

Through the vocabulary of memes which thrives on hive minds, more and more viewers are invited to watch the videos and join the supremacist club to diss the content. Why do people keep listening to such music? Is it really because it is “so bad that it is good”? Is it all just a good laugh? Internet users who continually listen to cringe-pop to go on to produce and share memes, snickering at the buffoonery of the artist, have firmly established notions of which kind of music is acceptable. The viewing and circulation of such memes and videos reek of privilege. Every share is accompanied by a condescending laugh by persons who deem themselves to be above such absurdity. "Just her name, alone, is enough for us to put her on top of our #YouCantSitWithUs list." writes Cosmopolitan in an article crowning Pooja as Rebecca Black's successor. However, the economy of virtual virality has disabled this hierarchy. While the artists are still laughed at, they can now make money out of it. Dhinchak Pooja has disabled comments on her 'selfie maine leli aaj’ video. While she sees how popular her video on YouTube is, she doesn’t see the hate. Though she is still mocked, she gets to monetise the laughter aimed at her. The exploitative gaze now has a counter. Though viewers ridicule Omprakash Mishra of 'Aunty ki Ghanti' fame, some 2000 still did assemble in the streets to shout the lyrics. It is true that the gathering was a proof of the mobilisation capacity of internet memes but it does nothing but parody the real capabilities of the phenomenon. People for whom such music is presented as cringe-pop belong to a certain class. So obviously different are they from the scorned creator of the song that they can collect for the sole purpose of celebrating the cringe without the fear of being classed in the same category as him. Calling Mishra "cool" or a "dude" in memes is an inside joke, shared by people belonging to a certain class, from which the creator himself is excluded. A Quint journalist called out the song for its misogynistic lyrics and received heavy backlash. Raftaar, one of the most famous rappers in India, came out with a video in support of Mishra saying that an artist who wants to be recognised has to use desperate measures. Vulgar lyrics or at least double-meaning lines are necessary to sell music online without external support, he says. While such a statement is debatable, what is clear through this episode is how selective liberals are with their criticism. A number of online content websites which on fairer occasions had claimed to champion feminism, embedded the video or shared memes about it. Once they gained satisfactory virality milage, they went on to support the backlash against the inappropriate lyrics.

Dank Memes

The laughter to ridicule isn't reserved only for cringe artists. Dank memes in India are mutating from inappropriate to increasingly malicious. Admins of closed Facebook groups like House of Illrepute (which describes its engagement as "Spiciest humour for a tasteless world") and Smoke memes not weed screen those who want to join, making sure no "prude" or "normie" gets in, lest offence be taken on rape jokes, caste-ist and homophobic memes. ‘Nashebaaz- The Dying People Of Delhi’ is a documentary by Dheeraj Sharma of which the story of Kamlesh, a drug addict at 13 years who can’t live without inhaling 'solution' daily, is a part. Snippets of Kamlesh admitting his love for "solution" have become hugely viral Dank memes. “Being a director and being a social worker, it is very disheartening to see such memes" spoke the director in a video. "It was also very shocking that our society has become so insensitive that it is making fun of a 13-year-old boy who...has become prey to drug abuse and is homeless and leads a pitiful life."

Kamlesh

Memes are new neither in form, nor in content. It is only the circulation of the template which has changed the way we converse. Though we engage in new communicating system, we are not free of the prejudices of the old. In our laughter we carry the prejudices handed down to us by birth. The hierarchies are always visible in the subject-object relationship. The instantaneously transferable replicators have changed our psychological thought as well as political and social engagement forever but are still weighed down by myths and superstitions. As we zoom towards an all-encompassing media world, we leave behind trails of collateral damage of caste-ist slur, misogynistic threats, exclusivist carols and wanton slander.

Madness to the Metro Method

Source

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.