Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Delhi Diary. 03/07/12

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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