Just a little dream...

On Mute or Not- Old Behold the Metro

 Maybe you already have heard about such a tale before, and I am not telling you anything new. But  I genuinely feel a generation behind. I still belong to the generation that has grown with remix music and loved the travelling in the DU Specials and hitch hiking. Life in the metro is rather strange- disconnected I feel. By the end of the trip, you would want to for the nearest washroom.

I came across all sorts of busy looking women (mark the word busy) – women with ear plugs growing out of their ears who had no conversation to make and often avoid eye contact.  That is according to general perception, the best way to look busy.

What is more surprising is that there is literally no attempt to make friends or talk to the others around you. There is a typical ‘me-myself- and my world around me’ syndrome that has gripped the whole Metro generation.

I felt extremely odd and struck conversation with two young girls and it was such a lovely experience talking to them. They were in fact looking eager to start a conversation with just anyone who could talk.

The compartment was thronging with women, who were evidently the working lot. You could make out with the way they were glued into their laptops, oblivious to the surroundings, or tucked into their spots with earplugs fixed in and watching movies on their smart phones) and then there were those who try to look busy. One such lady was all dressed up in expensive imitations- with the phone literally growing from her ear.

She was busy counseling her mother, who  I am sure already had many years of experience in handling a difficult and diffident mother in law and the other bric-a-brac of a joint family. But our lady luck was too busy bashing at it, without much realizing that she was the ‘most interesting traveler for a 45 minute period’. Everyone had literally stopped their conversations and was totally engrossed in her pieces of amateur advice to her mother. Maybe marriage does that to all Indian women- who learn to grow overnight and understand the nitty-gritty of complex relationship dynamisms.  

And as luck would have it, we were passed a station where signal invariably drops- and that was it- the end of the most interesting conversation of the day.

Phew, most of us who didn’t know each other were on the verge of giving away applause but restraint ourselves lest we would have seemingly looked rude.