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Decoding the women in the Delhi Metro’s Ladies Coach.
This piece has been triggered by an observation made by a male
colleague of mine who said that women in the Delhi Metro tend to cling to each
other far more than men. Although at that point of time, I vehemently denied it;
on retrospection I realized it was absolutely true!
Picture this, any bench inside the Delhi metro can seat up
to seven people. But the moment an empty Metro enters the platform; a mob of
womankind darts ahead to wiggle and wag, twist and turn, almost throwing you
into the ‘mind the gap’ territory that they keep warning you about. In the end,
at least nine of them fit into one single bench. This only means that each of
the girls sitting on the bench has one butt-cheek up in the air and is in far worse
shape than the ones standing. It also means that the girls have a much lower
size assessment of their behinds. Come on girls, your asses are not as small as you
think. I mean those demarcations on the benches are there for a reason.
If for some reason, one of them doesn’t get a seat, they
simply stand hovering over you, silently willing you to shrink in size. Or
simply glaring and staring till you get off at your metro station. Some of them
will demand outright “thoda adjust kar
lo”, which basically means you have to adjust her bum, her laptop bag, her
lunch bag as well as some shopping bags. Few minutes into the journey, when one
of your butt has already been mid-air for some time, your shoulder has got used
to stooping over your bag simply because there isn’t enough space to adjust
both the shoulders, your lunch bag been kicked around some and you have
overheard the choicest Honey Singh songs on your neighbour’s phone, begins the
game of bhutta eating. No matter
what, there will be one woman who is eating bhutta
in the Delhi Metro while you are busy trying to breathe and banging you on your face.
Now the question arises, why is there such a huge overwhelming mind-boggling passion to sit down? Most of these women are either going to or coming from their office or home or college. At any of the given places, they were obviously already sitting for few hours at a stretch. Then why this huge urge to sit down again?
It also makes me think, what actually happens when you are
standing. If it is a very crowded metro, you are clearly pushed and pulled
about, and you obviously can’t sit. But what if it is not that crowded? What is
the desperation then to sit down? I mean do you get an instant heart attack or
something like a meteor comes and strikes you down if are standing?
Often these women might be the ones who carry salads in
their tiffin dabbas and hit the gym
regularly. Haven’t you people heard that by simply standing, you can burn so
much of calories?
There is this other problem that women in the metro have.
They very conveniently tend to forget that they have elbows. I, hereby, declare
that we womenfolk do have a necessary bendable part residing in the middle of
our hands, known as, and referred to hereinafter as ‘elbows’.
When there is just a centimeter of space between you and the
girl next to you, you can’t fold your elbows. Not to watsapp, not to fiddle
with your bag, definitely not to stuff chips in your mouth and not even to
remove that errant strand of hair. Your elbows need to be ram rod straight,
under any circumstance in a crowded metro.
On second thoughts, add your ass to that list as well.
Bending down to pick up your bag every now and then, unmindful of where your
ass is, is simply unacceptable.
