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Anytime a debate kicks off about public transport in Indian cities, I think of a scene I saw on a late summer evening in 2006 (when I still used buses). I think it was route 422, going past Nizamuddin down to Badarpur Border. (1/n)
It was crammed from steel floor to steel roof with bodies. I was tired from just waiting for the bus, but everyone else on it was a day labourer, they must have been in the final stages of exhaustion. (2/n)
I had boarded from the front, and as we roared down Mathura Road, suddenly the conductor was raising her voice. There's a commotion – centred on a tiny woman, sitting with her family, who looked like they might have been riding that bus for days. (3/n)
I was craning my neck to see / praying I wouldn't have to get involved. All these men were packed in the woman and her family, and the conductor was pushing them, making them turn, and form a circle with their backs to the woman. (4/n)
And once they did that, she dropped her head, lifted the hem of her blouse, and began to nurse her baby. (5/n)
The bus reached Ashram through the haze and noise, I jumped off and went back to my nice air-conditioned flat, blinking back tears – I was young. I felt some things I never could put in words, without sounding naive (6/n)
About the unseen ways small people look out for each other in a huge Indian city, that never come into sight for planners and elite commentators. But also, the unplanned effect of that conductor being a woman – being able to see another woman (7/n)
The picture keeps coming back to me as we talk about #FreeRidesForHer #FreeRideForWomen #FreeMetroForWomen.
That tiny space created for two vulnerable people – and how easily we could create more space, if we were like those men, just listening to that conductor. (n/n)
That tiny space created for two vulnerable people – and how easily we could create more space, if we were like those men, just listening to that conductor. (n/n)
