Meeting life......

Large spaces, bustling with people...people, scurrying to get to the right place at the right time....that's what our Metro station is usually like. Its a regular, mundane exercise for most of us...infact, its become so much a part of our schedule that it has almost been reduced to being banal! The thrill that the inauguration of the metro came with, is gone...the ten minutes to CP that seemed like a super sonic ride initially, now seem excrutiatingly long...that's what the human mind is like..it outgrows itself, and in the process wears itself off..wears itself off of all the small pleasures of life...

The metro ride, however, can be quite bereft of such dormancy and tedium...the bustling of people, that I just spoke about, is also a converging point of energies....the apparently vacant stares cease to be vacant anymore...there is so much to people, and so much more to life that simmers underneath! It is only when one travels on a public transport that one realises what the real, uninhibitted world is really like. When you're on the metro, you rub shoulders with men and women of all hues...from busy corporates..to brimming students.. to people who have never got the chance to escape the scorching sun....the airconditioned environs for whom are alien territory, and you can almost feel the apprehension in their eyes...and it is these people who have always caught my fancy. It is impossible to not notice that bewilderment in their eyes, that excitement , spilling away with small shrieks and chuckles...women, veiled inside their sarees, but buzzing with spirit inside, clamouring to be children again, clamouring to partake their new found fount of fun! Their men, I have noticed, are usually looking for places to hide their faces, red with embaressment as they are!! Sometimes, a small thing like the Metro becomes an epitome, as also an excuse, of feeling liberated, even if for a short while, for women such as these!

The best part, however, comes when they get to the escalator...the thrill that was once a part of their countenance now turns into fear...its takes all of us a while to get used to these "moving stairs", as I once heard one of these women cry out in disbelief!! It took me some time to get used to these myself when I had my first brush with them....but I'm sure it was'nt half as much fun for me, as it is for them.
Our gospels of etiquette and propriety, all shadows of our 'good breeding', take from us, sometimes, that charm of being inane and wild...that fervour of letting your hair down! But, not for them....nothing holds them back, with frenzy written all over their face...it is infact, contagious! Some people though, often scorn at them, laugh at them, at how naive they look, at how demonstrative they dare to be, but to me, they are what we should all strive to be like..unrestrained and real. That is one lesson that they give to us, inadvertantly though it might be....if you feel happy, show that you're happy, don't colour it with pretensions, pretensions that we all adorn, pretensions that the world cloaks us with...pretensions that smother and choke our spirit and zeal alive.