One of the great things about travelling in the metro is the range of people that you encounter. Since I travel largely on the Yellow Line which goes to the university, there are a lot of young people on it. There are some medically related (AIIMS of course), some lawyers, sarkari types of course (Udyog Bhavan and Central Secretariat are on that line) and several tradesmen – masons, carpenters etc. presumably getting off at Chawri Bazar and the like. A rich tapestry of humanity, if you know what I mean. And it gives to some interesting lifestyle changes that I see.
One is dress. Indian males long ago gave up comfortable Indian clothes like the kurta-pyjama (how I miss my NGO days when that was how I went to work) to the boring shirt and trouser which come only in dull colours – grey, black or brown trousers with equally dull coloured shirts – reducing Indian clothes to the ceremonial. Sadly, women seem to be going the same way! Corporate offices abound with women in severe trousers, shirts and jackets, with no dashes of the quintessentially Indian bright colours that look wonderful and lively with the salwar/churidar kameez (why are they called a Punjabi Suit?) or the sari, but would look ridiculous on trousers and jackets! A terrible, terrible race to the bottom in terms of just dullness of attire. The young women in the Yellow Line are, sadly, going the same way and while they haven’t yet moved to the western suit, jeans seem to completely rule the roost! Come on ladies, life is too short for this! Dullness of attire is hardly the war against men worth winning!!
While on dress, the interesting thing is to also look at the T-shirts people wear. Two very common ones completely intrigue me – Superman and Batman! I mean, I can understand little kids wearing them to emulate their superheroes but what motivates grown-ups to wear these beats me! A third common one, especially with students, has Che Guevara who certainly is eye-catching but I wonder how many of the neo liberal generation wearing the T shirt agree with his ideology!
The other thing I have noticed is very few people read. In my days, a book or the newspaper was the constant companion on a bus journey, though looking out of the window was great fun (which, in a metro is dark grey walls and so not an option). But other than the occasional fellow-lefty reading The Hindu and the corporate type browsing through his Economic Times, just about everyone is completely wired – white or black earphones (even those don’t come in interesting colours!) leading to their smartphone which they are gawking at. I occasionally peek to see what they are doing and it seems to be one of two things – playing a game or watching a movie! The interesting thing is that this cuts across classes – students and carpenters alike! I often wonder if their babies will be born with built-in earphones, but perhaps evolution takes a tad longer than that!
Boy and girl singing songs around trees is the most cliched description of the old Bollywood movie. My theory on that is Bollywood was only depicting real life – in the old days, if a boy wanted to meet his girl or vice versa, the only place to do that was under a tree in a park. Of course it was fraught with danger with the moral police always being around to shoo you away and it could get frightfully hot in summer (monsoons provided a respite, and that explains the rain scenes in Bollywood movies) but what choice did you have? There were few coffee shops around anyway and even fewer that you could afford (Machan at Taj Man Singh was a favourite if you could afford it). The metro provides a great alternative. Metro stations, particularly staircases and platform benches, are full of young couples with a lot of cooing around, which of course explains why boy-girl running around trees is now passé in Bollywood. There are cooler places to hang around!
We Indians are essentially not a polite people. In fact, I believe that we are actually quite rude. Opening doors for someone is almost unheard of – in fact, my wife often complains that when she is opening a door of a shop or a hotel to get in, the person on the other side actually things she is opening for them and walks out! Offering a seat to someone who might need it more is equally alien to us. But, I believe, that might be changing and we have the metro to thank for that. My grey hair qualifies me to being addressed as “uncle” by all and sundry (where we picked that up from will remain one of the world’s greatest mysteries – do you think Bollywood has anything to do with it?) and also makes me eligible for the seats reserved for “senior citizens” in the metro. The fact that this exists is commendable in itself. But – surprise, surprise – youngsters actually get up and offer that seat to me! I usually don’t take it (between you and me, it’s because I hate being called “Uncle”) but the fact that it offered to me more often than not bodes well. Good work, Delhi Metro!
So, next time you are in a metro, forget the small screen of your smartphone and look around at the big screen. It’s a Bollywood movie out there. And the good thing is that it finishes in 20 minutes!!