[Reader-list] Re: Re: Delhi Metro: The change is showing, and how

[Shivam]

Dear Ritika,

As for people displaced by the Metro and other evils, including
environmental, the Metro Corp has been much more compassionate than we
have known the state to be in recent times.

Your observations as a regular metro traveller are interesting. My joy
rides on the metro and the regular rides in crowded buses make me
compare the two, and I think that in the long run there'll be a lot
less conversation, a lot more bored looks in the Metro. The metro
encourages that, both because it's so perfect, like McDonald's food
items, and also because a super fast metro train doesn't give
passengers much time to chit-chat about the world. There's no
conductor, no fighting, no 'eve-teasing', no ten rupee goods being
sold by neo-literate 'marketing' guys. In otherwords, the metro is
metropolitan, with its unmistakable metropolitan detachedness, and the
buses 'provincial' and 'mofussil'.

Also, as I have said earlier on this list, the class strata of people
travelling in buses is extremely narrow, whereas the HT article I
posted shows how people of different classes are using the metro. A
friend remarked that delhi is not one city but many cities put
together. the metro is erasing those differences. But near Shahadra if
you look through the window you realise that you are indeed in India.
The metro is an illusion that will soon open its doors and ask you to
get out: "Thank you for using Delhi Metro."

Shivam