I am writing from the delhi metro yellow line. I have lost my commuter mojo a bit, I can't run down the innumerable steps as I used to nearly twenty yrs ago in Bombay local train stations. I'm wearing better shoes now, but they could become slippery soon with so many steps each way. we are about a 10 mins walk from the metro station, I kept thinking I'd be late and would miss some train, and as is with trains even if it's not the last one u need to take, the sight of a train just gone by always feels like a small failure. But no, I still walk faster than the average guy walking in my direction, and even though I kept looking at every auto passing by, wondering if it made sense to take one for those few hundred feet or meters(?) that remained, i let them go. I had to change at Hauz khas and the fast walking crowd leading me to where I needed to go made me smile. Men women kids young students, all seemed so determined, so focused, so prepared and ready and alert; and yet quiet. Most people commute alone, silently walking on, with a purpose. Delhi metro feels like the one rare thing in this country that works and works well, driven by some logic, some planning, and managing to keep its promise. And because it works well it seems to bring out the better human in us the commuters. I have probably written about this before but am still surprised that Indian men behave themselves while on board this thing. They keep their hands and their legs, and even their eyes to quite an extent, to themselves.

A father and daughter boarded somewhere midway in my commute. The little girl had a bandaged arm and was holding it awkwardly raised and folded. A young sardar next to me gave his seat to the girl, also asked the father what happened. I heard that she had been burned. The sardar suggested cold coconut oil as a balm. The father asked the girl to keep exercising her fingers and palm by making fists and claws. The skin was peeling like tissue, off of her palm. She said "abhi nahi" ("not now"). after a bit the train emptied out a bit, I shifted to my right and the father sat to my left next to his child. The person on the other side of the girl started talking to him, "how did it happen?" ... "Boiling water..." and then started giving tips for a quick healing. In his words he had been burned too, in fact had been run over by an automobile and the heat of its running engine had burned him; yes, coconut oil worked, ...." I grimaced at the image of his accident. A young guy opposite us observed me, the girl, the father, the guy with the story. I saw this shared emotion in his eyes, and in fact in other eyes watching the girl; gentleness i think it was. The girl wasn't crying. In fact she got a spasm of pain on her right chest (which was also burned) and exclaimed to her father and then after some small words between them she smiled and chuckled. 

At some point I had crossed Delhi University station, as far as I had ever been on this line, and entered into that other Delhi part of that other India where I don't live or visit. I had chosen my clothes carefully for this first commute, foreseeing this: a cotton crepe white blouse tucked into police green pants, the blouse has sleeves and a neck that can be problematic only because the blouse is loose on my body but falls short of being 'revealing'. The train was also no longer underground and I could see clusters of unplanned unpretty cement houses. the people remained as courteous though, as disciplined. In the entire metro ride I saw one woman in a knee length skirt though, every other was clad from shoulder to ankles. I am now on the University shuttle which is the second hour of my commute, and I am as yet not tired kudos to the metro for that. although I was reluctant to start commuting and saw no point to stop teaching from home and wouldn't have done it if I hadn't been forced by my employers, I am learning to not fight things beyond where the fighting is pointless. and maybe this getting out of my comfortable well will be good for me. so far the weather is good.