[Reader-list] Walking the Station with the Girls

[tripta]

Dear Zainab,

As usual thoroughly indulged in the narrative. These days I am exploring 
the public transport, buses, metro's, stations, of an unknown city and 
through these explorations completely new dimensions and perspectives of 
navigating through the city are being revealed; the traffic flow, the 
morning-evening peak traffic times, the time-tables, the red lights, the 
routes to avoid, the dangerous zone beyond a certain time and the 
trajectories intersecting through the city scape. The bus and metro 
stations besides the infrastructural and technical differences have an 
uncanny semblance to the stations i know of, i have waited and wandered 
about. In these stations (spaces), epitomizing eternal wait, blank 
looks, desperate glances, hurried steps, overweight baggages and light 
flights are all accounted for. These stations are `almost' the most 
neutral zone in the cities. Access, technically, cannot be denied to 
anyone as that would defeat the purpose of motion, movements and 
connections. Do you get the sense of this `neutrality' being constantly 
contested through the markings that define (or begin to define) these 
spaces in your research? In the constant movements that mark the space, 
how are the markings consolidated into a recognizable pattern? There are 
dangerous zones in the stations however, have you come across any 
articulation or specific reason for certain zones becoming dangerous? is 
it something to do with the routes/frequency of the trains passing 
through those platforms, etc? Is the platform number 7 a `danger place' 
only on weekends and beyond the peak hours or is that how the space is 
marked? Is there some relation with the density of people increasing the 
chances of invisibility?

For me, personally, the experience of city transport is a completely 
surreal one; it's not the move in the city but the city on the move 
which completely captures my imagination.

Presently, I am reading, * The Railway Journey */The Industrialization 
and Perception of Time and Space 
(http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/2053.html), /and
am convinced that you will find it an invigorating read. If you don't 
find the book and want it just send me your postal address off line and 
I'll have it delivered.

continuing conversations,
t/