ON MY WAY...

“Sikanderpur-Station. Doors will open on the left. Please mind the gap.” The voice of the Delhi Metro announces.

I follow the line of people across the length of the platform, some hurrying, some scurrying, some walking at the same measured pace as every day, others mentally skipping to the tune of the songs that are pouring into their ears from their headsets. I am dodging people, scuttling through the mobile crowd. Heading into uncertain territory, I don’t know which pace to choose.

“1 min 39 sec to the next Rapid Metro” the digital sign above my head says. Right under, printed on the floor is: “1 min 45 sec to Rapid Metro”.

Steps begin to quicken around me, strides start stretching. Men and women file into three futuristic boxes and the Rapid train shoots off -- out of the dark hollow where it had paused to suck in uniformed, faceless people -- into the light.

A still silence, like a draft of moist air wetting the eyes, making them wider. Uniformed bodies quietly materialising, filling the surrounding space.

I sometimes imagine that the city is a dollhouse that two children are building in their play room; cutting paper, plastic and aluminium sheets and placing them calculatedly. Twirling the wire attached to a clock onto a rod dangling from their semi-circular tin station roof, blowing at a cycle from behind, igniting little rockets under cars and bikes.

Paper men and women filling spaces. More and more men and women as their city grows larger.

I walk out of the electric serpent that welcomed me with its deep and steady voice, walk into the “cyber city”. I feel like a ladybug lost in an overgrown lawn of glass. I’m a ladybug following ants, avoiding their lines at times, joining in at others. They turn to look and then scamper on, disappearing into the roots of the numerous glass blades: duty beckons. I take out my phone to contact the all knowing metallic piece in the sky needing to ask which burrow I must plunge into. “This thing is greater than God Himself”, a cabbie had told me once when the omniscient piece of metal had shown the way to a wedding hall.

I’m Alice. I was sucked up and spitted out onto the seventh floor the moment I jumped into my hole. This is the Orange Floor, I’m in Wonderland. Bookers, book trees, book rivers, book cottages, book benches, book bunnies fill the place. There are no paper people here, only bookworms gotten fat with book love.

I’m Alice. I’ve fallen in love with a book, a young adult. Two of the kinder and funnier book-keepers sit down with me. They want to see whether I’m worthy of being allowed to take home my book beloved. They take care of the books. They’re Book match makers. I’ve come here to ask to train to become one of them too. But I’m not allowed to join them. I float out on the back of Lost Love.

The coolness recedes into the staleness of Delhi’s summer heat and I soon find myself back in the cavity of one of the larger caterpillars that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation provides for cardboard people, and the people of other material, as transportation facility, relieved at the absence of the sun’s glare inside. I draw out Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Lowland” from my backpack and open it on my lap. But my eyes begin to wander. Socks in summer to protect their delicate white skins from turning dark, a white belle they had once bought painted blue now, Converse, Rebok, flats, lacy ones, ones that match with their bags and earrings, the finest and longest stilettos staggering under 80kgs, and the rest were outside my view.

Two plump college women have placed themselves directly in front of my own two feet. I’m wearing the same grey floaters that I’ve been putting on everyday for five years now. “Wow, I like your sandals,” the one with spectacles says. Here, flats are called sandals. “Oh, thank you,” nods the other one with a suave smile.  

“Where did you get it from?”

“Just a shop in CP. You can go too. It’s in A Block. It’s not very expensive even, just 800.”

T

hat shut the spectacled one up forever. They looked like something that could be bought off a street shop for 200 rupees. “Oh!” she replied politely for closure.

The white-turned-blue belles remind me of a pair of track pants I own. They were my school uniform in fifth grade. Now I’ve graduated. Those pants have grown with me, kept me company all these years, and they’re not a bit ragged for all they’ve had to bear on my account. We’ll grow old together. I wonder who will have “death’s privilege” first. It is hard to lose a constant friend, a friend who has weathered life with us. I remember those old days when we’d go to Yoga classes together, run in the fields, take part in obstacle races, go the 100 metres and pass the baton. The benefits of yoga were reaped by it and it stretched and grew taller. Then came the years when we’d play badminton and throwball and run around with the rest of the players in a basketball court. Many times during the monsoon we’d tried to play football with the boys and gone to choir practice covered in dirt.

College life followed and confined us to our room and evening walks through the neighbourhood market became our only adventures together. Those days of fun and frolic were gone, past, relics of a carefree age.... But my pants, although stretched horizontally too now, had endured all of this. It isn’t careworn. Today it gives me warmth in winters, a sense of security. Such friendships are the backbones of one’s existence: teddy bears for some, personal huggable bolsters for others; these pants for me.

Through the gullies of Tollygunge and the seaside highways of Rhode Island I reached Hudson Lane, the hub of restaurants alongside the University of Delhi’s North Campus. The sling bag on my shoulder, I push open the door of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Cafe and squeal hugs onto one of my two waiting girlfriends. The other one and I simply greet each other with smiling eyes and dancing eyebrows.

We ponder over Ross Burger and Chandler Noodles for a while, deliberate Monica Salad, make small talk over the absence of Rachel, Joey and Phoebe on the same page, sway to the nostalgia of this friendship -- that will one day have passed -- through one of Phoebe’s songs on the television hanging from the roof, and decide to try our hand at foosball while we wait for the food to arrive.

The place is new and has found popularity. There usually aren’t many places that feel and sound like Central Park but are affordable for students at the same time.

A bunch of four hippies sit in a corner smoking hookah, chatting and playing cards, immersed in the mesmeric effects of the gale that a number of fans surrounding them are blowing. Another corner is doused in greater darkness than the rest of the room and there a couple sits comfortably engrossed in each other under neon lights. They stop to breathe. Chest heaving vigorously, face red with smudged lipstick, hair dishevelled and set with the sweat of her beau’s hands, she locks her eyes with mine, ravenous, for a few seconds, and throws herself to her meal once again, prey and predator alike, hidden behind a large muscular wriggling back. Other areas are occupied by chatty college students, the noise of their voices burying the blaring music that is pouring out of speakers and crowding the room.

We are at the foosball table. A fourth friend has joined us.

“No no no no no.....eeeeeeeee!”

Spin, whack, smash and “Goal! Woohoo! High Five!”

Ball at the centre... and then... spin smash Goal! “Hah! Tit for Tat! High Five!”

We have our food brought to the racks beside the foosball table. The game goes on for three hours until flushed cheeks, red palms, aching backs, stretched lips and the whole roomful of spectators have gathered, cheering many things in victory and disappointedly “oh”-ing in defeat; except the ones snogging, of course, and the hippies.

The Chandler Noodles were good. So were the selfies. It’s quite late at night now. The metro drifts in, carrying an elegant world in its interiors lit golden with lamps, and soon the moving picture of the city lights takes me away from society, out into myself. I can’t go back home -- yet. There is a light breeze outside, moistening my eyes every time the doors open at a station. The breeze is in my mind too, unsettling all the documents that were carefully stacked there, the leaves of memories get mixed up with emotions, the future with the past, the anxieties with the cheer. But there is a new freshness now.

I walk out onto the platform and stroll over to the foot-over-bridge crossing the highway. I’m battling quite a strong breeze by now. The lozenge man is still hawking his cartoon shaped balloons, toys and lozenges at the traffic light. Almost everyone calls for his lozenges. They are a queer concoction of hot, sweet, sour and salty; each a soft, slightly large, dark brown globule. His turban, glowing under the street light is the only part of him that is coloured at this time of day. It is a combination of yellow and green. He chats and laughs and is the signal at this point. Nobody bothers with the traffic lights. “Where does he live?” I wonder. “Is he a gypsy like my heart has been?” I wonder. I want to wait and watch him leave, follow him to his home, watch his people through a small window.

But I’m still here, up above his little world of happiness, leaning on the rail, watching the sedans and the SUVs disappear under me. My back puffed up with the breeze, my curls dancing in it, I continue to stand, drawing my smile from the lozenge man.

Today I have traveled many worlds. Now I must go back home.