Some common Metr-O-bservations

Here are some of the most common Metr-O-bservations that I have made over time in my Metro-journeys. Traveling alone in the Metro can certainly make you a keen observer.

1. There is almost always a kid in love with the windows and poles in the metro: revolving at at least 500 rpm, as if to break a Guinness world-record or something. It may also be a little girl, but it's more likely to be a little champ. Boys develop this energy-issue quite early, I suppose, they always seem to have too much of it. I remember seeing my kid brother run about in the house at 50 km/hr. just for the heck of it! He'd end up sweated, exhausted, breathless and all: and enjoying all of it! And to top it all, he'd start running allover again like a madman! It was so crazy! Maybe boys are crazy from quite an early age.
   And these revolving-kids follow various patterns of revolution, I tell you. Some keep rotating around one pole, others switch from one pole to another, ensuring that at no point the chain breaks. The basic rule is to go on increasing the speed of revolution—the rpm—till maybe every part of the body becomes numb. The mother can usually be seen smiling and smirking proudly at her son's strength, while occasionally getting up to bring him from one end of the train (where he must've reached while switching poles) and place him back at the starting point. Then he'd be glad doing all of it again, with everyone around: free and jobless as hell, watching while smiling wide, all awwwwww-ed up. Especially us, the girls. We certainly don't need a thing to be really cute in order to call it cute. But these kids are. They certainly are, I admit.
   
   
2. The first compartment turning into a ladies-only affair certainly has brought man's (yes, man's) desperateness in full public view. There is never a time when the join between the first and the second compartment is men-free. If it's an empty train, you'll see one or two of them there; in a more crowded one, a lot more; but the point is, you'll always see some specimens of the "darker-sex" flocking that part of the train. Others, the more 'polite' kind, would be sitting/standing in their respective compartments—as near to the first one as possible—forever peeping into the compartment that houses all the ladies and aunties. I wonder what's on their mind while giving all that pain to their freaking necks; are they hoping to see some goddamned girl suddenly get up and start doing belly-dancing? Or that a pretty soul will right-away pass them a hint: a wink or a smile or something, and they'd fall in love-at-first-sight the nth time in their lives? Or that the poles will help the ladies turn the very face of the entire place, if you know what I mean? I can understand, on a crowded day they might be cursing the seated ladies merely out of jealousy (though even ladies' compartments are no respite these days), but on other days,  I fail to be able to imagine, what the hell are they so keen on!!
   
   
3. Then there are these readers: mostly girls, as the guys are almost always busy in sight-seeing unless they're already with a girl—that's the only time when they probably are supposed to act decent. There cannot be a ladies compartment:

• Without a lot of chatter.
• Without one or more girls reading a funny novel: "funny", not as in 'humorous', they mostly lack the sense of humor for that—not all of them obviously, but most do, I admit— "funny" as in, stupid. Yeah stupid. A Chetan Bhagat piece, in the highest probability. Or some other silly "love-story" (by the way I don't KNOWW how can they call those sweet little pieces of crap "love" stories!) by a young Indian author: certainly an IITian. I don't have a thing against them, the IITians, but I think they write too many novels, too many actually. With the kind of crazy money the government is spending on them, you'd probably expect them to come up with something more techie, like say, a robot that could write an entire, potentially 'best-seller', novel for you with just the basic story-line: complete with expressions and everything. But no, they choose to write novels themselves instead. And novels that largely project them as love-engineers, may I say. They wouldn't leave this to the English-literature students, but prefer to do that on their own. And all of them, for some strange reason. (IITians, please don't mind. This is the condition of all Engineering students, myself being in the same boat. So, just kidding. :D)
• So yes, these girls can normally be seen with earphones plugged in, tiring their eyes over some book with a colorful and "cartoony" cover: the ones mostly about love, and "love". I once saw a girl madly lost in this book, that I just remember had a title containing the word "virginity" or something. I don't know what was funnier: the way the girl was lost in it, as if preparing for the civil services examination, or the fact that the book was about virginity and had a cartoony cover. I mean, what would you think of a book carrying a title like that and having a colorful toony cover at the same time—like the ones that kids' books carry! I don't know, I think it's plain funny. Very funny infact
• There also cannot be a ladies' compartment without the ladies staring at each other blankly: the aunties to simply scrutinize the girls (and later come up with conclusions like, "aajkal ki ladkiyan bhi na"..), the girls to, firstly, stare back at the aunties for scrutinizing them worse than the guys do and two, to scrutinize other fellow girls, unfortunately again, worse than the guys do. The idea here is to: note down latest trends, criticize the bad-dressers just for the fun of it, envy the better-dressers while at the same time updating their "must follow/ape trends" list. No wonder, you see new hairstyles, dress-items, accessories etc swiftly moving from one girl to another at the speed of light nowadays. But, they're all original and unique, please. Girls always are. Get it or not, they always are? You have to nod a 'yes', come on!

      4. Guys, you probably have had enough of giggling at the girls, time for a  
           little switch. Can there ever be a metro not having this kewl-dEWd wearing 
           dark—stark black, to be more precise, goggles up on display on his moron-ish 
           face, a black tee with a really bold print: a danger sign or something inspired from the 
           'heaviest' genre(s) of music—the one(s) he might not even have ever heard! Hair 
           gelled to be either combed back for the DON-look or made to stand like Punjab's sarso 
           ke khet, and also these really awry shoes in yellow or white or anything else strictly  
           not in league with the rest of the attire. And if this chap ever opens up his mouth, your 
           ears are bound to be treated to a really sick accent.
        I don't have a problem with them acting like studs. I also don't have a 
        problem with their sick accents. I only have a problem with them acting 
        like studs inspite of having sick accents. Well, kind, as I am.


      5. Couples! How could I forget them! Those literally "fearless", "progressive", "bold" 
          twosomes not in the wildest of one's dreams bothered about who are looking at them, 
          what they are thinking of them etc. Funnily, mean as I might sound, inspite of such a 
          "modern" outlook, they aren't really the most sophisticated people around. 
          The guy is usually this desperate, weird looking moron who is sort of unable to hide his 
           happiness and pride over having some girl—no less weird than him—to stand/sit next 
           to. You shouldn't be surprised if he is trying to literally corner the girl in this public-
           train, even if just for talking. Intimacy thus transforms into cheapness. Not always so 
           much, but still pretty much. All this while, the girl will be simply giggling, enjoying all 
           the attention and yet, having the guts to act shy. Sigh. Those are the stupid couples. I 
           don't know if they're even couples or not: I mean they could be just friends, yet acting 
           that insane, 'coz they are, well, stupid; but the girl might look better because she is 
           well, the more stupid one of the two. Looking at them you'd get a view of the perfect 
           kind of people on Earth who don't have anything else to do in and with their lives, 
           except horse around.
           Today itself I happen to see this boy and girl somewhere in the corner of an open 
           place meant for passers-by. The two of them were, well, studying. (YOU DARE 
           THINK SO!?)
           Then there are these suave couples: the girl is bound to turn heads around and the
            guy might be good too. Everyone is interested in observing them, everyone. Girls 
            would compare the two and come to a fair conclusion as to who is better and then, find 
            faults in the girl: character, too much make-up, skimpy clothes ...anything. Boys would 
            inevitably end up saying ..."bandi mast hai. Banda langoor hai."
            I don't blame them. Earth perhaps has fewer good-looking men than women.


Some other common objects-of-observation are:

• Crying babies. Miserably crying babies.
• College students completing their files. 
• Bored souls sitting on the corner seats: heads resting on the wall, earphones plugged, eyes probably close: basically sleeping.
• When the train stops at a particular station, can there ever be a day when the waiting crowd doesn't come BANG onto you from the front? The answer is a plain NO. NO.
• Photography is not officially permitted inside the metro, but India does a lot unofficially. So why not this. Click each other, click others, click anything you find funny and thus, come up with something new to post on your FB profile. Please don't kill me for this. Truth hurts :P :)
  
• Aggressive debates. Aunties, on the previous day's episode of "Bade Achche Lagte Hain" or "Balika Vadhu" etc—hero's dhokha (betrayal), heroine's sarees and/or make-up, the evil saas and her tantrums and finally they might move on to bitching about their own moms-in-law and daughters-in-law.
  The old uncles would OBVIOUSLY be talking about political matters: Anna's movement, bekaar-sarkar (useless government), badhti mehengai (inflation) and so on so forth. I sometimes wonder why does Indian Politics consist of oldies only, these uncles give me my answer: gents are possibly a lot more interested in the country and its affairs at this age than their youth. The youth is, of course, preserved for more useful stuff. Just kidding.
  The youngsters might be debating too. It could be an intellectual debate, or one related to their academics—that is, how some XYZ lecturer sucks at teaching(what else did you expect of a so-called "academic debate"? We are college-students, for god sake!). More realistically, the guys could be discussing a girl/girls. YES, that is more possible. And the girls might just be busy teasing each other/comparing how many friend-requests and messages they all received the previous day/yelling their longest "oye-hoyeeeeeee" possible at useless little nothings such as—an innocent nerdy guy who happened to strike his bad luck and come to one of them for notes OR one of the butterflies was seen talking to a boy in campus, OPENLY(:O) OR blah blah/concluding that this guy is after this girl as she received an SMS-forward from him that said, "friends are precious." Oye hoyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Heck yeah.

What more? I dunno. Isn't that enough? Guess it is. I don't even know if I have really observed all this, or maybe I did, unknowingly. But then, I couldn't be making-up all the whole story: hell no, I'd be worse than all the characters I described above, if I did. So tell me if you agree. Share any more observations and we'll all have a good laugh at ourselves.
Hee :D