The journey that began once I got off the train

There is an AFC (Automated Fare Collection) gate that one needs to find; there is a card or token that one needs to fumble for; there is wide space that looks inviting for a bit of skating; there is a recharge machine that sits vacant on most days; there is a chipped wall displaying a Delhi Metro poster girl that one acknowledges; there is an escalator that one takes; there is a five-step staircase that one waits on; there is a short walk — it is then that one really exits a Metro Station.

On my first visit to any Metro station, I make a beeline for the exits. It is only then that I know I have visited a new Metro station. All Metro exits are designed to be similar but once you reach a wrong exit gate (not the one you usually take), you kind of know the difference, like a mother who can tell her identical twins apart. You start seeing telltale differences as soon as you exit the AFC gate. At Central Secretariat, this different terrain begins to show itself by the absence of a recharge machine near Gate 4, or how the surveillance staff is more sparse here, or how the women’s checking point is in a much farther corner, or how the clock on the wall seems much closer to you as soon as you show your card at the gate, or how the arc that one takes for the escalator is actually darker and less spacious than the one at Gate 1, or how much sooner than expected you reached the exit, or how the domed tunnel that one usually takes has turned into a flat ceiling at this exit.

One reaches an exit and sighs, “I have made it.” But that is a lie. This delusion, often experienced by the untrained Metro-user, is supposed to make us comfortable with what we are about to experience as we enter the strange place after the Metro lets us go.

The first time I exited from a wrong gate at the Central Secretariat Metro Station, I paid little attention. Whether those were a staircase that I was descending or an escalator; whether what lay in front of me was a road or a roundabout; whether it was a traffic jam or a rally in progression; whether the traffic was two-way or one-way; whether that was a yellow Volkswagen car or a lemon-yellow Alto; whether that smell belonged to the most amazing tea or just somebody boiling water for maggi.

And all I could do was wonder how I was where I was not to be. When one has a habit of getting down and following coloured footsteps to find one’s way, one is left high and dry and can only look up at the sky. In times like these, one can look to the sky for telltale signs. Or solace. I looked up and found a blank envelope of reflected city lights that seemed to be telling me to laugh at the cluelessness of it all.

I was searching for familiar objects. I was seeking recognition in sights I knew to belong to an unknown location — traffic, jam, zebra crossing, wide roads, government buildings, green garbage bins. When someone with as shellshocked an expression as I had then is sighted wandering the roads, a lot of solicitous faces emerge — auto-drivers have a special knack for detecting lost cases when they see one. They named all the places I did not want to go to. I could not even remember the gate number I used daily — who retains mundane details like that? There has to be a reason why we are not able to remember details about things we take for granted everyday. I remained quiet and let a variety of names and directions be flung in my face. When my destination was not named once in all that litany, I backed away, shaking my head. The shaking of the head is a key skill you develop when you encounter insistent auto-rickshaw drivers that you have to ward off day in, day out. It saves you a lot of energy. But today, as I scanned all directions for a friendly face, someone I could approach for help, I wanted an auto-rickshaw driver to recognise me and give me a nod that says “Oh it’s you! You are a regular here, aren’t you? So what if you are at a distance right now, I will just turn this transport around right now and tell you where that Gate is!”

I got pushed in the crowd, walked into a steel pole with a poster of ‘keep your city clean’, and vehicles honked bloody murder, even as people behind me kept on walking unperturbedly. A new stream of passengers had just filtered into the outside of Metro Station and autos were chirping excitedly. But I was undergoing an inability to say where I wanted to go. I could not say, “Please direct me to the other exit” when there were 6 exits. I could have said that I wanted to go to Janpath Road. But that is a road that has too many inlets. I did not help that my powers of articulation desert me during times of urgency.

I was hungry and the sun was failing to rest between the clouds. Things were yet to take shape; buildings were yet to stand in front of me but something was materialising. Pavement was starting to spill over onto road and that’s when the jog really started. It would be much later, when I finally found a familiar area, that I would tie the laces of my shoes.

How can I make the right exit and still be at the wrong gate?

There is a way one looks at confusion itself with confusion. When all sounds sound like the ones you know, how can one be lost? My mental map, in times like these, is no map. My surroundings morphed and shifted — '“I saw that metro sign just now”, “Oh, it's not there”, “I am moving”, '“Oh, it’s here”, “I must be just circling one place”, “I’ve lost my way”, “Again”. On accepting that I was lost I asked someone, thereby making evident my inarticulateness. After a lot of my hemming and hawing, it became clear to him that I could not help him understand where I wanted to go.

Just as I began to lose hope, he moved his hand in the air and drew for me a map of how the exit gates are arrayed at the Central Secretariat station. They covered a circle and so I just needed to cross a few roads. Somebody else very promptly piped up about where the gate I was looking for was — “Cross the road, see that building? It’s at the back side of that building.”

I swallowed my anxiety and embarked on the route as outlined, determined not to give in to any adventurous ideas of turning here or there, just remembering the hand that pointed at a building, remembering the building, and ignoring the gorgeous group of monkeys that were munching on food that employees from the nearby building dropped on their way to Metro station. It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged that a government building in possession of a few trees will soon be occupied by tea stalls and monkeys.

I crossed the road looking neither left nor right (the traffic was, thankfully, still). I was so focussed that I did not notice how one of the monkeys had grabbed a cup of tea and was sipping from it. Another was rummaging through a bin. One of them sat on the boundary wall of my destination — the building — and gazed at the passing crowds. It looked like a monkey on a mission, taking mental notes of who and what was left behind or scrutinising this other species that visited their neighbourhood everyday. Another one was helping a young monkey climb its slippery back. There was a group which was walking ahead of me. I slowed down, telling myself that life should be enjoyed at leisure. Not that I really look forward to seeing monkeys on my way, but it does feel good to have company when you are trying to find your way. I followed the monkeys. These monkeys are also what I used to see all those times when I made the right exits and came out of the right gates. So, I was kind of hoping that the monkeys would lead me there. Soon, I had crossed the two roads and circled the building.

I had to bear in mind that I was supposed to be following directions. If one follows directions, the path remains clear. My map started blinking as if I had already reached home. According to my mental map I had already covered the distance. To my side was the building that I had passed daily but had never cared to put a name to.

On taking note of the road I usually travel by, its familiar smell of tea, the monkeys that usually travel along the boundary wall of the building, I paid much closer attention to the names of the building that were coming along my way. I had been walking all over the same route that I usually take. I reached my destination 40 mins late.