deconstructing delhi metro

There is a new vigour to Delhi’s urban culture and it’s literally subaltern. It is fuelled by the speed, efficiency and a quite wondrous pride in the metro train line that is transforming the commuting culture of this ancient city.
The pride part is imperative. For too long the capital and its inhabitants have had much too blasé an attitude about the city they call home. This was captured memorably by Naipaul in India: An Area Of Darkness — the shocking apathy of spiting without looking, peeing at every available lamppost, and driving down the wrong side of the road without a care. Now, this has been replaced by a collective restraint and admirable dignity and a strange sense of ownership.
It is this sense of ownership, which the Metro has uniquely succeeded in inculcating in Delhi’s citizens. They see in it a symbol of an emerging India and they want to preserve its purity.
On the Metro it appears that there is citizen schizophrenia. On the road the old rage still dominates, with every kind of vehicle jostling for space in the most chaotic manner possible. In the Metro, the same citizen turns respectful of public convenience and decency.
What explains this dichotomy? I think it is because Delhi has never before seen the like of the Metro —efficient, cool and modern — and likes what it now sees.
The subway offers a forty-kilometer ride in 25 minutes flat, with none of the jerks associated with surface travel. What is more, thanks to the air-conditioning, the whole ride is easy — literally no sweat. And with the punctuality on which you can set your clock, the Metro is now the ultimate arbiter of time and space in a city that expands in all directions, way beyond the 80-kilometre ring road. Page 2 of 2 (Jump to page 1)A facility so perfect can be almost frightening for a citizenry used to terrible rickety buses and quarrelling drivers. It seems Delhi’s denizens believe they don’t deserve such superb service; that if they spoil it, the metro train will somehow disappear just as magically as it made its miraculous appearance.
It took me just one commute from the poor district of Seelampur in the east of Delhi to Pragati Maidan, to become a fully paid-up fan. That day 265,000 people reportedly travelled on the commuter line between 9 am and 9 pm. And yet the platforms were clean, there was no half-finished burger lying about, nor were there any paan stains. Also, unlike Mumbai’s suburban local train, the pushing and shoving were absent.
Here’s another unexplained miracle: the Delhiwallah, ever callous towards the fairer sex, has seemingly reformed on the Metro. Ever since it started there has not been one single reported incident of offensive behaviour against women on the Metro. While the close circuit cameras may have played their part, the body language is decidedly different, too.
My high point of the discovery of the Metro Republic came when I came across a rich dude with a gold chain on his broad chest and the keys to his Ford Ikon dangling casually on his belt, board the train at Chandni Chowk and calmly hanging around with co-passengers who had never owned a car but had now a billion-rupee publicly owned train to cart them around.
Mumbai locals are said to be great levellers because they crush them all in the morning Churchgate fast. But thats not funny. When Mumbai gets its own Metro — it will be another republic.