Just waiting on the curb waiting for a friend to arrive can be a pretty convenient time to drown in your oasis of thoughts without running parallel thoughts on possible excuses for your wandering mind. But be it a boon (or a bane as my parents would protest), headphones do let you have your own personal bubble even when you are travelling in a packed metro where every bit of your personal and physical space is violated and the only salvation is the space you create mentally. I love these little bubbles though. Even though they don’t exactly do wonders for your thought processes but somehow they seem so appealing to me (not the packed metro part) but the times when you are actually travelling in a pretty empty metro (wonder of wonders!) where you can lean on those glass panes which has the entire DMRC maps on them and look at the world outside as you pass it by and God forbid any sentimental tear-jerker of a number playing on your playlist at that time. Personally I invent myriad not-happening-in-a-thousand-years situations when one of these songs go into play mode. There’s nothing remotely sad about my life. Yes, I do my share of cribbing about the supposed ‘pathetic state ‘ of my life and I won’t deny that there are those fleeting moments when I wished things were different but I guess every undying optimist is also entitled to such moments of weakness although I hardly claim to be one of them. I’m a lesser mortal thank you very much.
Metros. Not the metropolitan cities but those long silver trains snaking through the sky and hailed as the modern remedy to never ending traffic. But I don’t think that’s the first thought conjured up by a person travelling in rush hour. I am not damning the metros here and please don’t ever do that. These silver lifelines are practically the singular reason why single girls like me living alone in the proverbial big bad city are able to wear shorts (yes shorts for those living with the misconception that women in the streets of Delhi can wear anything and not be harassed by the ‘once-over’s right from the auto wale bhaiyyas to the uncles) and still be able to travel from one end of the city to another without a single shred of worry. But this is not about the benefits of travelling by metro. I think we have enough people covering that topic. This is about how much we, as human beings, have allowed ourselves to compromise on our space. Maybe its because of my small town upbringing but I’ve always been ingrained with the idea that ones personal space is the sacrosanct area where even a minor violation is looked down upon. That bubble is where the cognitive behavior starts from. The desire to be easily judgmental, in my opinion, stems from the fact that bubble is burst. No longer are we receiving-storing-retrieving information but we see and we judge. Where exactly has this kind of behavior led us? Yes, everyone has an opinion on everything now and am not exactly criticizing that fact but really how much are those opinions based on analysis of actual figures, real events or interactions with the subject? Can we really claim that living in a lightening paced world gives us the right to sit on our moral(and intellectual) high horses pronouncing judgment just because who really don’t go into intricacies to understand the multitudinous character of a person or an event? Isn’t it one of the reasons of the breakdown of relationships between parents and children, siblings, boyfriend, girlfriend, bestfriend….? Compromising and adjusting aren’t always the best options. Make a little space for yourself.
