Veteran Speak: The Delhi Metro

*picture from http://www.thehindu.com

Now that my romance with the Delhi Metro has resumed, it is only noble that I share my learnings over the ages. It was summer last year when I would travel by the Metro throughout the week, arriving home each evening to the aroma of food and starlight. For who knows, there may be someone out there getting cold feet about boarding the train tomorrow morning. I can relate with you completely, my dear. The Delhi Metro can be unnerving at its very best, especially when you are out in the rush hours. Read on for some respite:

1. Never be late in accepting a seat if a generous soul happens to offer you the same. If you don’t, someone else will. If you don’t, you will end up swaying at every stop, falling on the people standing at a nose’s distance from you and come summer, take in all the body odour that the air conditioning can’t suppress.

2. Ensure your Metro Pass is in order. To be specific, ensure there’s enough money and that it is in condition good enough for the card reader to acknowledge. The people in the queue behind will show no mercy in bombarding you with menacing stares, squeals and threats to complain about your holding up the city.

3. Insert your headphones in their designated socket before you board the train. It helps to have a set playlist. If you were planning on customizing your music to the station or bringing your fancy iPads or other devices to use, well, I have warned you. Fret not when your headphones and devices are stamped upon by a multitude of people in the coach.

4. Choose a strategic location to stand. The good ones include: underneath the plugs you can hold on to, beside a row of seats, by a pillar in the coach and by the door (left/right, based on where your destination is going to be). Standing right is far superior a choice to jostling with stout passengers on your way out.

5. Finally, develop your observation skills. Few avenues provide opportunities rich enough as the Delhi Metro to hone the same. There are people from varied backgrounds, with accents natural and put on, with destinations cozy and tense. As the train hurries past the Delhi landscape of tall buildings, harried people and dusty trees, thoughts arrive nineteen to a dozen. While some of these are greased over by the drudgery of the day, several remain in fair condition on your way back.

By now, you must have figured how I am quite the go-to person when it comes to a Delhi Metro hack. That aside, I am more that content with the dreamy hours this Sunday has remaining…the dreamy hours with no trains to catch and no workstations in sight. Mom remarks how no laptops would be a welcome addition to the dream. Until later then.

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