The first Delhi Metro – the Red line – was started on 24 Dec, 2002, covering 21 stations from Dilshad Garden to Rithala. Since then 5 other lines have been added. Who would have thought that one day our life would revolve around the metro!
High accessibility, ease of mobility, improved infrastructure for daily commuting are some obvious benefits. But, let’s look microscopically at the more sensitive sociological effects of the metro. These effects are not so apparent and visible yet they may have touched our lives in some minute way or another.
The metro is not just a small good looking train. It is a sense of speed and punctuality. With well defined timelines and designated routes. A certain sense of discipline crept into our daily life. If you knew the route and timelines you invariably “reached on time”. Alternately you quietly waited till the train came.
Everyone appeared suddenly more disciplined with respect to time, speed and cleanliness. Hunger may strike at any time and lights may go off, even then the waiting was well worth it. No one spat anywhere and there was no littering, no bribing for entry or exit! You could not use your passage for a longer route. Everything was controlled & checked. Wow! “aisa bhi hota hai”.
Inside the metro the rich and the poor were classed together. Religion had no place in this closed space. Class, caste were nowhere. There were no special treatments meted out to anyone. Like ‘hamara – bajaj’ some could say ‘hamara-metro’… a sense of belongingness and togetherness. A corporate director found a seat and either opened up his laptop to do some work or read the newspaper quietly as a labourer sat right next to him silently. Each person carried his own luggage-burden as he boards and gets off the metro. “There is no Coolie to do our work”. One was no longer hassled about the car driver who came late or stressed by getting stuck in traffic jams.
You shared & inhaled the same air. Everyone was suddenly “equal”. Discrimination went out the window!People were more helpful especially in allowing the elders and the disabled to sit. Women feel safer in the crowd, somehow.
To pass time you even attempted to make polite conversation with your neighbour. Somehow, breaking–the–ice. You made travel friends on the same route. You shared special smiles with somehow in the same compartments daily, quietly in your mind’s eye!
Yes the metro has affected and effected our life by creating multifaceted scenarios and incidents bringing us in some way, maybe somehow, closer to humanness in this passage of time and space.
Cheers to the metro, you & I!
rupanjali
