Last month, amidst much pomp and grandeur, Namma Metro was thrown open to the public in Bengaluru. The President, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, flew in all the way from New Delhi and in a ceremony at the Vidhana Soudha, pressed a button, or did something just as mundane, with mental drum-rolls perhaps, and declared the metro open to the public. Except, it really wasn’t. Only select media people, politicians and a renegade 77 year-old Malleswaram resident got to take a joy ride in the coach. The first train open to the public was the next day, at 4 pm.
And so the other day, at 6.45 in the evening, when I found myself in the heart of Malleshwaram, my body content after some delicious obbattu, kodbaley and idly at a relative’s place, I decided I would go to JP Nagar and back to visit a friend. What would have been a foolhardy decision weeks before was a simple decision – thanks to the white, air-conditioned, BEML manufactured chariots of Bengaluru. I ran to the nearest bus-stop while holding my pockets down to stop my wallet and phone from bouncing awkwardly with every step and climbed on a bus to Majestic.
Yellige Saar? the conductor asked. Central, I said. And I smirked. I was proud of what I’d said. And I was sure the bus conductor got why I felt that way. After all, he was a crusader of sort who held the spirit of this great city intact and formed a link with what the city of yore was when I grew up. You see, I said Central. Not Mantri Mall. Or Mantri Square. Those were, to me, new-fangled additions to the serene landscape of Bengaluru, bringing traffic snarls, pollution, water-woes and eroding a deep feeling of belonging from within me. That bus-stop would always be Central. I’m not sure what it is Central to, to be honest. Etymology isn’t my strong suit. But bus conductors called it central back then. Only new tri-lingual metro boards called it "Mantri Square". Do we even have squares in India? To my knowledge, we have only sarkals.
And so the Rajiv Gandhi statue approached. There’s a little park around the statue and on either side of this park is where buses stop to form the “Central” stop. I readied myself to get down. The conductor shouted, “Mantri Mall!” I left in a hurry, disappointed.
After expertly navigating the traffic, I walked up the stairs to the swanky metro station. Bengaluru has always been a hub of innovation and technology [citation needed] and the metro isn’t lacking in any way. The first sign is the security check. I remember seeing the scanner-machine thingy that you’ve to walk through just lying at the entrance of CST in Mumbai, like a prop. Or was it some other station? I do remember it was unplugged with a disinterested, khaki-uniformed, pot-bellied mustachioed man looking on as people walked through. Ok, I made that up. I have no memory of what the security man looked like, but you could assume the above.
At the entrance of “Mantri Square”, the machine was up and running, beeping for every soul that passed through. The security guy vaguely waved the beeping detector in my direction and let me through without a frisk.
Firstly, let me say, I didn’t mind not being frisked. In fact, I have some insider information about this. You see, the detectors and expensive x-ray machines are just a ploy. They’re always beeping. People carry knives, keys, loose change, guns, the whole lot. And the machine knows. A top-secret security briefing has been received that if the machine fails to bleep, clearly the person is trying hard to hide something. I mean, this person stepped out of his/her house without their mobile phone! What are they going to do? Be aware of their surroundings? Talk to people? Socialise? God, I need a breather. Such thoughts!
Clearly, these are desperate people ready to take desperate measures and the security mechanism will swoop into action at the first sight of a non-beeping machine. Until then, the security men have to look busy.
I bought my swanky ticket to the nearest station to my destination, more than a (traffic-plagued) hour away by road. The “ticket” is a little coin that has to be scanned by swanky ticket machines lined by hawk-eyed security guards who will not let two people pass with one ticket. Else society will crumble. The more I see what happens at metro stations, the more I believe that somewhere on the contract between the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) and the govt. of Karnataka is a clause that they will employ some minimum number of people to run the metro.
I will be a little political here. I think we in India need a law to protect whistle-blowers. Repeatedly we read in the paper that those who brought corruption and other wrong-doing by people in power to the notice of the junta are not safe. Whistle-blowers also care for your life. At the Bengaluru metro stations, on each platform there are multiple whistle-blowers. Who whistle at everyone who enters and instruct them to walk. After the initiation whistle upon your appearance on the platform, there’s a warning whistle should you venture
That’s clearly hyperbole, but yes, they are instructed to not let anyone stray too close to the platform, a job they complete with the kind of zeal whose fraction I wish I could muster in my daily life for anything, be it professional or otherwise. These concerned citizens will whistle and yell at you “walk forward”, or “come this side” while motioning away from the platform and whistle at you for existing. One day, someone is going to lose his/her cool, irritated by the constant whistling and barking of orders, and that day, that security guard will be glad for the whistle-blowers protection legislature that I strongly advocate.
You see, I don’t think India, of all the places in the world, needs a person at a railway station minding human traffic. Every day, millions and millions throng already crowded railway stations, squeezing and shoving their way around with trains thundering past every second. I’ve done, you’ve done it. Now this guy with the whistle mollycoddles us like we’re buffoons who can't walk straight. Just attach a really really loud horn to the train and we’re done. We’ll manage.
As the train arrives, the whistling becomes more desperate. There are markings on the floor to show precisely where the door of the bogey will be and we’re whistle-guided into adopting these positions while the train arrives silently. They should have made the trains loud and rattle-y if they really cared about our safety.
On the Indian Railway station platforms, the little boards with bogey numbers like S1 and B2 are only rough outlines of the master-plan. If we’re lucky and it all goes to plan, about 25 minutes later than scheduled, a bogey with approximately the same number as what it says on the board will most likely stop somewhere near here. Out of habit, when the train slows down to a certain level, most people, including me, trot next to a door that has been identified for attack, ready to pounce as soon as the door opens. And this causes great angst among the whistle-blowers at Namma Metro who blow their whistles even louder, reiterating their wish for you to stand near the markings.
Much against my intuition and going against all accrued experience, I reasoned that a guy blowing his whistle that loudly must have a measure of confidence in his knowledge and while coming back, actually stuck to the floor markings. The train door appeared precisely in front of me. It was good.
Once on the train, the excitement is palpable. On every occasion that I’ve been on the metro since its inception, I have overheard at least one loud conversation about where the tracks run and how they will help ease Bengaluru traffic. It’s a feeling of hope that only something new, even if delayed by 6 years, can bring.
At
While the queues are aesthetically pleasing, as are the floor markings, I simply do not see how they aid commuters. The train will stop for the prescribed time, people will get off and people will get in. Somehow. The door won't be more than 20 feet away from any point on the platform. I believe it is a standard that we needlessly hold ourselves too. The Indian model has been working and apart from aesthetics, I don't see what's wrong with it. If a guy misses his/her train, they have to wait a maximum of 15 minutes for the next train to take them to a spot inside the city. Long distance trains which can't afford to be missed have no one manning the platforms. The chai shop owners are the only "officials" around. We manage.
Convenience is not something we should stress on. Enabling is what we must stress on. Does the metro enable quick transit? Yes. Is it convenient? Yes, very. Do Chennai and Mumbai’s local train system enable quick transit? From what little I’ve seen, yes. Are they convenient? Most of the time. They’re sometimes really crowded and can often be cripplingly so, but hey, a crowd is a sign that people are using it. It is helping people travel. Does the AC really make a difference? The fancy coaches? The whistle-blowers? The queues at the station? And the metro could get equally crowded as well. Or maybe it’s still pricing out a lot of people who could do with the transport. Which isn’t good news either.
I’m sure the denizens of Bengaluru would have loved any railway transit system completed in 2011, as initially promised. Perhaps 1970 was the right time to build it and dissuade millions from buying cars and choking the roads in the first place. But expecting a mortal with that level of foresight is a tad much.
Thus musing, I get down at my destination station, drop my ticket-coin into a machine that beeps agreeably with green lights flashing and I’m free to climb down into the city, to take an auto to my eventual destination. A trip to a far corner of the city I call home, a trip unimaginable just a few weeks ago.
I’ve travelled in the metro thrice since its inception. Once for the sake of travelling in it. Once, to get back home from somewhere, and once to meet my friend in JP Nagar, a trip I couldn’t and wouldn’t have made without the metro. And each time, what strikes me is just how many things are done to keep it manicured and aesthetic. And whether that’s really worth the effort.
The Swach Bharath program has an idea that I really like – if each of us took a bit of responsibility and worked towards something simple, like cleanliness, then together we can truly effect a massive change. However, when we think of cleanliness, we usually think of aesthetics and beauty. In fact, cleanliness is desirable in much more basal forms in our country. Sanitation, garbage disposal, pollution of water bodies. These problems cause diseases far worse than the eye-sores caused by old, worn out walls.
But aesthetics has two great benefits to my mind. First, it makes you feel good. Secondly, if something is aesthetic, it is far less likely to be vandalised or despoilt. And perhaps that's why Namma metro has zero littering, an aesthetic ideal of cleanliness. In fact, even the railway stations in Bengaluru are clean with very little littering and the cleanliness at the Pune station has improved remarkably over the last 4 years from what I've seen.
So while I bemoan the lack of necessity of aesthetics, maybe that is how it will and should start. Top-bottom rather than bottom-up. But that bottom-up should be the priority shouldn't be lost in the aesthetic cleanliness drive. We shouldn't forget to build toilets while painting dirty walls in bright colours, literally and figuratively.
So here I am, having successfully made the trip back home before too late. Deciding to pen my thoughts about Namma Metro, starting the piece somewhere and ending the piece somewhere else with a rapidity I didn't believe possible in my mind. Just as the train took me from one place to another with a rapidity I didn't believe possible in Bengaluru.
What can I say? I really like the Namma Metro.
-->