#MetroDiary 46: When Mandi House Cried Tears!

It was exactly 6.37 PM in the clock when Mandi House dropped a few tears on my cheek! At first I was a little taken aback thinking if it was I, myself finally doing what I wanted to do for long. That is, crying out loud after getting out of an overcrowded compartment in the peak summer and half-breathing, half-choking in the tobacco-chewing, cigarette-smoking, dousing in deodorant smells from lifted arms all around, and still surviving somehow! It was a particularly difficult day given my cold. I was almost thankful someone cried along! I could understand the pain of Mandi House. The handloom wearing, Nazakat and Jashn e Audh smelling Mandi House, turns into a sweaty, smelly, fat one oozing people from everywhere in this hour! Who would not cry at that predicament. I am glad it found me to share its pain! 

Cold, by the way, is the worst thing you can have in summer anyway! A cold! Nazla.. my Urdu Teacher gave me the word for it a few months ago. I so wish I could have a nozzle instead of nazla! I could have sneezed hard pointing towards the woman who almost killed me with her over obsession with her long smelly hair. It was not inly unwashed for days (if not weeks) but she constantly parted and re-parted it to get some air and made the air of the morning train foul in the process. I sneezed non-stop in response (read, in protest)! 

Disclaimer: she was not the one who caused nazla!

Many women with long open hair are really troublesome in the metros. If it's a relatively empty compartment in the morning hours, and they get a seat, they promptly take out comb and start combing and throwing the hair-strands on the floor of the metro compartment. To be fair, I have seen women doing that in other people's cars too. They are very fair that way. No discrimination. The need of going (to wherever they are going) with perfectly combed hair is utmost! My friend, on the other hand, comes to meet me with completely dishevelled hair even when he proclaims undying love for me. I literally want to take him to these ever-combing women and say, "Dekho! Kuchh sikho!" But what's the point! He hardly has any hair left anyway. The end of the pain is near. I mean hair-wise 😉

Coming back to the mistress of the tresses, they are really dangerous in over crowded metros. Their hair literally get into your nostrils and at a time when your hands are stuck in a way that you can not even bring them to scratch your nose and in the process dig your nostril. All the while keeping an irritated face, while having a lot of fun! However, you can not do that. Your hand is holding on to a pole giving a tough competition to the proverbial hands of Law which is said to be very long (though often fall short of reaching the rich, but that's another topic)! Bringing it back from there would mean you would pull hair strands of a few other women, rub the back of a few men, and get a few bad looks if not a few cuss words, which you will read using your lip-reading skills. In Delhi reading lips to figure out cuss words is really easy. You know the most used ones anyway. However, the matter of hair became really hair-raising the other day when I was really late in the metro and in the empty compartment sat a woman with her hair covering her face. I did not call her when the last station arrived. No no! I am not scared! It is not nice to disturb other people like that, you see! 

Anyway, this must be recorded for posterity, completely exhausted with smells and heat, Mandi House had cried on my cheek one day at 6.37 PM, while a man read Emotional Intelligence standing on platform number 1 (which almost made me tear up!). Mandi House decided to use the woman till the man could finish reading that book and raise his EQ. Jealous ones will say the A/C was leaking, but I do not listen to these jealous, mean souls who never held someone's tears on their own cheeks.