This post is on my continuing, eternally and personally fascinating scenes I see and the smells I smell on Delhi metro.
And, it is not exclusively about Public Display of Affection (PDA) one sees on this public facility. Indeed not much affection is seen. Rather, it is PDL, Public Display of Lusting, tongue hanging out, neither sex innocent. The real public display. But, I am getting ahead of myself.
It is only because I truly admire the service Delhi metro is providing to the commuters I feel free to criticize it. I have timed (in seconds) my commuting, door to door in both in the morning and evening, and I find that the uncertainty that I can attribute to DMRC (excluding the waiting time for the elevator at the office) does not go beyond 2 minutes in 100 minutes. This individual monitoring was done over two months.
Nearly a year ago, I wrote elsewhere that DMRC offered an upside-down justification for reserving one coach out of four for ladies. There was undue pressure on it to reserve coaches for women and the ostensible reason was the menace of eve teasing. The empowered ladies of Delhi latched on to this cause célèbre and no amount of reasoned arguments against the justification could cut ice with them.
DMRC merely claimed that 25% percent of DMRC footfalls were high heeled. A reader of my post commented that DMRC was instituting this as a test program then, tuned specifically to protect the foreign female crowd that was going to throng the public transport facility in the light of the then looming (the word used advisedly; Delhi denizens were afraid) Commonwealth Games 2010. I responded that a facility once given is a facility never withdrawn.
But, that is all water under the river. Now, many trains on the Yellow and Blue lines are six-car consists. I am wondering why DMRC is not reserving 2 coaches in each of these trains for these ladies and claim that ladies comprise 33% of the commuting public? Or, they can do higher level math, giving due weightage to the proportion of four-car consists in its running fleet (1 coach reserved), and come up with an easily, indeed trivially justifiable composite percentage of female footfalls. I promise I will not question them.
But, if DMRC wants to be a little more rational, they can segment the coaches further. The first coach for ladies travelling singly or in a group devoid of males (boys up to the age of 12 excepted as is the case now). The second coach is for mixed groups (of two or more people) married, to-be or out-of-wed lock non-platonic couples, colleagues, high school or college groups (not including chaperons; this tribe is to travel in the coaches reserved for the sex appropriate to each member). The other two or four coaches reserved for the unattached (at least for the duration of the commute) males, the folks to be pitied on all conuts. DMRC can easily work out the footfall percentages.
The advantages? The loner males among the commuting public (me excluded) will be free from feeling jealous about the coupled, and the prurient may not cast contemptuous glances at the romancing couples. Of course, as the self-appointed president of the Indian chapter of Eve Teasers International, I will be disappointed at the reduced opportunities. But, I will live with that. There must be opportunities opening up elsewhere.
The PA system on running trains constantly beseeches the commuting public not to sit on the floor of the coaches. I can understand if a leg weary manual laborer gives the go by to this advice. But, what I witness is typically a gang of college students asserting its group strength. And this, after a hard day of sitting in the class room, or more plausibly in the college canteen! Only when the crowd gets dense enough that sitting becomes difficult for the sitters, do they stand up. Anna Hazare or not, there is no redemption for us.
You see enough post-it type warnings inside the coaches prohibiting eating or drinking. And, it is difficult not to notice people, mainly fat, middle-aged ladies, tear open a packet of crunchies the moment they sit down and set their purse aside on the empty seat beside. Anna Hazare or not, there is no redemption for this crowd.
As the train approaches most of the stations, the PA system comes alive crackling, “Doors will open on the right/left”. But, not at stations that are through stations yet serve as the terminus for some services; like Central Secretariat (which used to be a terminal station some time ago; not now), Dwaraka and perhaps Qutab Minar. I wonder whether DMRC is so announcement-challenged that they cannot have a custom made sequence of stations for each service.
Now, I come to hand holding. DMRC commuters do not seem to have realized that it is DMRC they are travelling by. In a time-warped (time machine set on the negative arrow of time) perspective they still think they are travelling by the Delhi Transport Corporation buses, or worse still, the infamous private Blue Line buses. The moment they get on, and till they get off – literally even with the doors open for them to alight – they cling to a hand-hold up above or the posts near the entrance. The problem is they reach across for their targets right across people’s heads, faces. It is a rare day I don’t get elbowed in the face or forced to smell many an armpit.
I, in the meekest tone I can muster under conditions of extreme irritation, remind them every day that the ride is smooth and the coach crowded enough they do not have the opportunity (if that be the word) or the room to fall down. But, my pleas do not find favor, though many, those not reaching out for a hold, nod their heads in sympathy. But, sympathy is not fungible.
I accept hand-holding in DMRC as a fact of life. But holding the hand-hold across the face of others?
Raghuram Ekambaram
P.S About hand-hold holding - nearly thirty years ago, when I was learning to drive a car, I was told to hold the steering wheel firmly yet lightly; not tightly. I did not understand what that meant.
My Iranian classmate took me through a lesson in physics, friction. There used to be a model problem of how much force is required to hold a ship from sailing away through a rope/chain turned a number of times around the capstan. Because action is equal and opposite to reaction, unless one understood how friction is mobilized only at the onset of movement (same is true in the case of slope stability problems in soil mechanics), it is not easy to interpret the result. After giving me this, my instructor asked me whether I understood the meaning of "firmly yet lightly; not tightly". I yelled "YES!
Now, I am ready to offer the same lesson to all DMRC commuters, free of charge, who hold the hand-holds so tightly that they are are in danger of bursting their blood vessels. Hold'em light and firm. Same goes for PDA. It is more effective than PDL.
And, it is not exclusively about Public Display of Affection (PDA) one sees on this public facility. Indeed not much affection is seen. Rather, it is PDL, Public Display of Lusting, tongue hanging out, neither sex innocent. The real public display. But, I am getting ahead of myself.
It is only because I truly admire the service Delhi metro is providing to the commuters I feel free to criticize it. I have timed (in seconds) my commuting, door to door in both in the morning and evening, and I find that the uncertainty that I can attribute to DMRC (excluding the waiting time for the elevator at the office) does not go beyond 2 minutes in 100 minutes. This individual monitoring was done over two months.
Nearly a year ago, I wrote elsewhere that DMRC offered an upside-down justification for reserving one coach out of four for ladies. There was undue pressure on it to reserve coaches for women and the ostensible reason was the menace of eve teasing. The empowered ladies of Delhi latched on to this cause célèbre and no amount of reasoned arguments against the justification could cut ice with them.
DMRC merely claimed that 25% percent of DMRC footfalls were high heeled. A reader of my post commented that DMRC was instituting this as a test program then, tuned specifically to protect the foreign female crowd that was going to throng the public transport facility in the light of the then looming (the word used advisedly; Delhi denizens were afraid) Commonwealth Games 2010. I responded that a facility once given is a facility never withdrawn.
But, that is all water under the river. Now, many trains on the Yellow and Blue lines are six-car consists. I am wondering why DMRC is not reserving 2 coaches in each of these trains for these ladies and claim that ladies comprise 33% of the commuting public? Or, they can do higher level math, giving due weightage to the proportion of four-car consists in its running fleet (1 coach reserved), and come up with an easily, indeed trivially justifiable composite percentage of female footfalls. I promise I will not question them.
But, if DMRC wants to be a little more rational, they can segment the coaches further. The first coach for ladies travelling singly or in a group devoid of males (boys up to the age of 12 excepted as is the case now). The second coach is for mixed groups (of two or more people) married, to-be or out-of-wed lock non-platonic couples, colleagues, high school or college groups (not including chaperons; this tribe is to travel in the coaches reserved for the sex appropriate to each member). The other two or four coaches reserved for the unattached (at least for the duration of the commute) males, the folks to be pitied on all conuts. DMRC can easily work out the footfall percentages.
The advantages? The loner males among the commuting public (me excluded) will be free from feeling jealous about the coupled, and the prurient may not cast contemptuous glances at the romancing couples. Of course, as the self-appointed president of the Indian chapter of Eve Teasers International, I will be disappointed at the reduced opportunities. But, I will live with that. There must be opportunities opening up elsewhere.
The PA system on running trains constantly beseeches the commuting public not to sit on the floor of the coaches. I can understand if a leg weary manual laborer gives the go by to this advice. But, what I witness is typically a gang of college students asserting its group strength. And this, after a hard day of sitting in the class room, or more plausibly in the college canteen! Only when the crowd gets dense enough that sitting becomes difficult for the sitters, do they stand up. Anna Hazare or not, there is no redemption for us.
You see enough post-it type warnings inside the coaches prohibiting eating or drinking. And, it is difficult not to notice people, mainly fat, middle-aged ladies, tear open a packet of crunchies the moment they sit down and set their purse aside on the empty seat beside. Anna Hazare or not, there is no redemption for this crowd.
As the train approaches most of the stations, the PA system comes alive crackling, “Doors will open on the right/left”. But, not at stations that are through stations yet serve as the terminus for some services; like Central Secretariat (which used to be a terminal station some time ago; not now), Dwaraka and perhaps Qutab Minar. I wonder whether DMRC is so announcement-challenged that they cannot have a custom made sequence of stations for each service.
Now, I come to hand holding. DMRC commuters do not seem to have realized that it is DMRC they are travelling by. In a time-warped (time machine set on the negative arrow of time) perspective they still think they are travelling by the Delhi Transport Corporation buses, or worse still, the infamous private Blue Line buses. The moment they get on, and till they get off – literally even with the doors open for them to alight – they cling to a hand-hold up above or the posts near the entrance. The problem is they reach across for their targets right across people’s heads, faces. It is a rare day I don’t get elbowed in the face or forced to smell many an armpit.
I, in the meekest tone I can muster under conditions of extreme irritation, remind them every day that the ride is smooth and the coach crowded enough they do not have the opportunity (if that be the word) or the room to fall down. But, my pleas do not find favor, though many, those not reaching out for a hold, nod their heads in sympathy. But, sympathy is not fungible.
I accept hand-holding in DMRC as a fact of life. But holding the hand-hold across the face of others?
Raghuram Ekambaram
P.S About hand-hold holding - nearly thirty years ago, when I was learning to drive a car, I was told to hold the steering wheel firmly yet lightly; not tightly. I did not understand what that meant.
My Iranian classmate took me through a lesson in physics, friction. There used to be a model problem of how much force is required to hold a ship from sailing away through a rope/chain turned a number of times around the capstan. Because action is equal and opposite to reaction, unless one understood how friction is mobilized only at the onset of movement (same is true in the case of slope stability problems in soil mechanics), it is not easy to interpret the result. After giving me this, my instructor asked me whether I understood the meaning of "firmly yet lightly; not tightly". I yelled "YES!
Now, I am ready to offer the same lesson to all DMRC commuters, free of charge, who hold the hand-holds so tightly that they are are in danger of bursting their blood vessels. Hold'em light and firm. Same goes for PDA. It is more effective than PDL.
4 comments:
we are about to start the metro here.What happens there is likely to happen here also.Waiting eagerly to compare notes.I wonder whether(learning from Delhi experience) the metro would insist on using perfumes especially in the arm pit area.I also wonder whether they will have one coach reserved out of six in the first train and two in the second so that on an average 25 percent is reserved. After all Bangalore Software crowd is innovative.
In fact, DS sir, I had also mooted that one train in four be "Ladies Only". But, with the caveat, ladies cannot board the other three. There were no takers and my own position as ETI India chapter President was threatened!
DS sir, I don't belong to the Bengaluru tech crowd but am innovative nonetheless :)))
Thanks a lot for your humorous yet deep thoughts, particularly the armpit stuff.
I am adding a few lines to the post as PS.
Raghuram Ekambaram
Raghu, if you write blogs like this I ME AND MYSELF will go out of job and they have to do a PDA against you I mean Public Display of Anger. Actually, the stage of PDA is gone nowadays it is PDS Public Display of Sexual Appetite, each partner tries to communicate the other what they want at end of the evening. I would like to say to dsampath, never mind in Bangalore, you may find a boy and guy hugging each other and holding somebody's hand across a hapless person like Raghu or me :d
Thanks Balu; but, you can take my posts as the starting point of I, ME, MYSELF confabulations!
Raghuram Ekambaram
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