I cannot help it. I remember this whenever I discuss anything about people in public spaces in Indian cities – the ‘crowd’ in trains, buses, roads, markets, cineplexes. I recall these lines from a Hindi poem written by Nagarjun in which he asks a well-heeled Bhadralok gentleman travelling in a Calcutta tram:

Ghin to nahi aati?/ Jee to nahi kudhta?/ Kaththai daaton ki moti muskaan/ Kuli mazdoor hai/ Bojha dhote hai/ Kheechte hain thela/ Aakar tram mein baithein hain/ Idhar-udhar tumse suttkar/ Aaapas mein inki batkahi naagawaar to nahi lagti hai/ Ye to bas isi tarah  lagayenge thahake/ Surti phankenge/ Baat karenge apne desh- kosh ki/ Akharti to nahi?/ Ghinn to Nahi Aati?/ Jee to Nahi Kudhta?

Something happened on a Delhi Metro train journey last month, which I always thought was waiting to happen. Although the popular perceptions about a Metro ride never led us to think so.

We saw it as a symbol of efficiency in the public sphere of urban India. Other cities are vying to have their own version of it. Popular culture, as expressed in Hindi movies has flaunted it as a sign of the changing urban landscape of the country. The trend of using it as a metaphor for urban aspirations and ‘liberation’ (surprisingly, not alienation) is also evident in some Hindi movies.

In the movie Delhi-6 (2009) a young Muslim girl played by Sonam Kapoor is trying to redefine her identity through the Delhi Metro.  Entering and exiting metro stations is a constant visual theme in the movie that shows her brief departures from her family and surroundings in Old Delhi- getting out of her salwar-kameez  and putting on belly-button revealing tight tops, painting her lips red, pulling her hair back with a bandanna and posing for a photographer to get her portfolio done.

She discovers new vistas of Delhi via the metro sometimes looking out of the window, lonely but independently or emerging from an escalator in Connaught Place. The Delhi Metro is the witness and facilitator of her yearning for liberation as well as her retreat to the shelter of her family and neighbourhood in the walled city.

In Dev D (2009) director Anurag  Kashyap has used Metro rides to convey the unpredictability and weird adventurism of the central character, played by Abhay Deol. Unsure of his destinations, the Metro itself becomes his co-traveller in his ramblings through the unknown.

But none of these perceptions and depictions prepare you for what happened in a Metro last November, the underlying and mostly unstated tension that exploded as was waiting to, as I mentioned at the top.

Date: November 24. Time: 10.05-10.25 AM (Approx). Route- Jahangirpuri-HUDA City Centre. The coach in which I was travelling to work was the usual mini theatre of Delhi’s social drama. Young girls were hooked up to music players- standing and hoping for remnants of chivalry in the post- industrial age to gift them a seat (the “feminist” coach and the gender biased ladies seats in general coaches were not enough to accommodate them). Aunties and Bhabhis did not hope, they demanded – they got a few seats, mistaking the reluctant generosity as an admiration for their feminine grace.

A significant number of travellers, and particularly young boys, were staring at their mobile screens, trying some keys to discover something new to kill the monotony of agla station announcements. Some people were talking on their mobiles too, business was the common theme in middle aged men’s talks, with conversations sprinkled with ‘bhaiya, aisa hai ki maal ki delivery ki baat …’

The daily commuters were of course identifiable. Most of them have no expressions- they are the gyani babas of Metro who go through the motions, preferably eyes closed. They know that they are as fixed in the metro like steel poles and gates, just filling up for numbers, aware of their insignificance.

And also there were those who have chosen the Metro to become gyani– scanning newspapers and poring over books.

People who had paid their dues in life, the old (senior citizens, to be politically correct)  were looking for their seats, sometimes aggressively, sometimes assertively, but most of the times, gracefully.

At Rajeev Chowk, four people – one man, one woman and two children boarded the Metro. The first two minutes were uneventful, toddlers were happy to see their reflections in window glasses, the man seemed happy to have put his family on the Metro. The third minute was not so quiet. As the train left Patel Chowk all hell broke loose. And it broke loose with a stink. The younger child aged about three or four, had passed solid waste. The stink exposed the underlying tension that I had observed existing in a metro coach.

The aunties with their hands firmly on their noses attacked the poor mother for her failure to give “toilet training” to the child. The two words were as unknown to the mother as the difference between rabi and kharif crops were to the aunties. The father who ironically was once a construction worker for Delhi Metro had heard the words, but separately – toilet and training. I could not restrain my cruel smile when he said: “Are yahan train me toilet hai koi, jo training denge?”  The anti-migrant  labour  venom was also waiting to be spewed. So, a burly uncle lashed out – “UP- Bihar se aa jaate hai motri baandh kar, aur AC me safar karna hai inhe! AC travel ka bhi naash kar diya sarkaar ne!”

Human shit also had a class. The toddlers of these aunties and uncles would have done it in a more sophisticated way, or the “toilet training” would have given them the “metro etiquette”. (Was Naipaul off the mark when after a Metro ride, he said that people were trying to match the Metro with their behaviour?)

It was a revelation. The sad thing was that the mother of the “culprit” accepted it as a revelation, and started slapping the child relentlessly. The father, who had once toiled to be a cog in the wheel of the Delhi Metro machine looked defeated, a part of the shit scam himself. But so what? Were not the workers who built Commonwealth Games stadia and the Games Village given orders to evict the National Capital Territory before India began to showcase its sporting spectacle to the world?

Public spaces of urban India have an underlying tension, a streak of patronage in delivering it to “all”. The hypocrisy of inclusiveness. The Anurag Kashyaps and Rakesh Mehras of the world could not tell you what Nagarjun told us fifty years ago. He wrote the poem in 1961.