DELHI DIARY I: DELHI METRO
At 11 AM, I and Mohsinur scampered
down the flight of stairs to board the Metro train. I, being nimble-footed,
outpaced him by several seconds and would have dashed into a group of damsels
with a particularly eye-catching beauty in the middle, all of whom were
struggling to stand upright being shoved from all sides by people who were
getting in and out of that bogey, but fortunately I did not have to do that because
I applied the brakes and was thus spared the consequences of such a fateful
clash! Rather I chose to board the next compartment and witnessed the wrath of
titans! There were two prominent uncouth males with a few side-kicks on either
side who were engaging in an epic battle of words. They were howling at the top
of their voices, with neither showing any signs of getting subdued by the
intimidating decibels of the other, using the choicest, and otherwise widely
circulating, slang words and profanities. Scowls like theirs will seldom be
seen in the face of any of the top brass of Hollywood villains, because they
seemed to have perfected that expression by some regularity, which though
cannot be known, can be easily surmised! As I looked at the rest of the crowd,
I noticed that it included some who were least bothered, displaying either
bored faces or nodding their heads in tune with music playing in their head
phones. Another fraction, and mostly a middle-aged and elderly class, all
white-headed, tried desperately to infuse reason into the fighting duo, with
little success. Their own voices had the strength to otherwise subdue tamed
animals and also bore evidence of what terror they were capable of invoking
when they used to be younger by decades! The heat generated in the clash rose
exponentially and competed to match the sweltering heat that existed outside
that air-conditioned train and soon it gave rise to splinters in many others. A
few by-standers among the ones whom I had mentally labeled as the petrified
class, suddenly barked in unison, to douse that fire only to understand that
their voices didn’t match the roaring tenor of the ones in the lead role of
that skirmish. They thus retreated unsuccessfully into their own corners! The two would have been scuffling by now but
the compartment was so jam-packed that there was no room for even that! Besides,
the other reason was that some restraint was being delivered by the arms of a
few bold ones! Thus being denied space for physical conflict, each one of them
bellowed to the other the challenge to de-board at places where they thought their
powers were sufficient for winning the duel. Their eyes were red with raging
murderous intent. Mohsinur and I safely got out of that train in the next
station. We were relieved to notice that the two of them did not!
Similar incidents were witnessed by the two of us two
more times during the day at separate places under various setting.
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