EXCUSE ME, I AM A DIVA BUT DESPERATE

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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.

THE GOOFINESS OF LIVING ALONE

This has to be documented. Delhi summers have made me partially demented. Take a look at the events of the past few days.

Night One.

I am unable to sleep even after showering three times in the evening. My flat being a corner flat kept locked up throughout the sweltering hot day is like a furnace at night. Unfortunately, I can’t afford an AC either. It doesn’t matter that I spend all my money on shopping and eating, this is the only thing I am going to be miser about and suffer in pain.

Somehow late at night, I fall asleep with my Symphony Cooler so close to me that had I been wearing a wig it would have flown away. Sometime in the middle of the night, I wake up feeling extremely hot. The room is humid and heavy with the cooler’s constant thud thud.

In my sleep induced state, I imagine that the water in my cooler has finished. It lasts precisely for 3hrs in Delhi heat. Perhaps that’s the reason why the copywriter christened it Junior Jumbo, ‘Jumbo’ being the addition made by the client. I sleep walk to the bathroom and fix the pipe to the cooler. Opening the tap, I go outside to the balcony for some fresh air.

Not finding any respite there either, I turn back only to be greeted by a sound heard when water pouring from the tap hits the floor. I frantically search for the source of the sound and discover that my cooler has been designed with a hole to drain out the excess water automatically in case of an overflow. By the time I figure this out, my bedroom floor is a pool of water and my slippers and laptop cord is floating in that pool of water. Quickly, I throw the laptop cord on my bed and start disaster management.

After staring at the hole for quite some time, I decide to stick my finger into it. Luckily it works, and the water stops pouring out. I vaguely remember the Dutch story of Hans Brinker that I had read as a child and find great similarity in our situations. The only difference being that while he was rescued, nobody was coming to my rescue.

Few minutes pass. While still standing in a pool of water, and not too sure whether I was dreaming or not; I look around myself for divine inspiration. I see my bucket lying near the door. For once I am happy that I keep my buckets in the living room not inside the bathroom. But here too things cannot be simple, the bucket has to be out of my reach. Now I am calculating whether it would be wise to pull my finger out of the hole and let my room submerge in some more water or come up with some other plan.

Operation ‘other plan’ begins. I twist and turn my body, till I am almost lying on the floor, while my finger is still stuck in the hole. I try to widen my legs and push the bucket towards me. I can hear my mom saying in my subconscious mind ‘Keep your feet together. Sit properly’. Instead of the pulling the bucket towards me, I push it further away from me and fall almost flat on my face. Wide awake now, I resume once again. This time, I am able to stick my toe under the bucket’s handle.

With a sigh of relief I pass the bucket from my toe to my other hand and finally place it under the ‘overflow’ hole. Like a weirdo, I watch the excess water empty into the bucket, not daring to move an inch away, lest some new adventure begins in my absence. By 3 am it’s all done. There is still a lot of water on the floor. I tell myself it will all dry up by itself and proceed to crash once again thinking something about the concept of evaporation.

... to be contd.