Fellow Travelers
Prashant Murti
January 1, 2000
We've been waiting on this subway platform for twenty minutes. It's Tuesday morning, 8:24 A.M., and the Red Line is running late. The platform in Kendall Square Station is full; the delay has swelled the crowd to thrice its usual size. Waves of palpable annoyance surge around me. I begin to wonder if this constant looking at my watch could cause repetitive stress injury. Finally the train clatters in and the doors open for the restless mob. I jostle my way in and take up station in a small vacancy between man-in-suit and programmer-with-bulging-laptop-bag, note with gratitude that the air-conditioning is working, and start to settle into the vacuous people-watching that usually occupies my short commute. Today the cool air is rife with temper as we come to terms with our cramped quarters. Successions of stepped-on toes occasion angry gasps and glares. Everyone is annoyed at their neighbors' attitude, after-shave, existence. The few who catch a sympathetic eye wag their heads in resignation at the awfulness of it all. My ears catch comments all around bemoaning the conditions of crush and confusion. And I find myself drifting back to another time and place where I had to deal with real crowds. For two years, I was a rush-hour commuter on the Western Railway local system in Bombay, India--a system where an over-crowded train was defined as one you could not physically squeeze into. Where getting on and off at the right stop was a complex game of positioning, timing, and tenacity that you learned and played, twice every day, with deadly seriousness. Where personal space did not exist--you molded yourself into the bodies around you and hoped you were left reasonably upright and with a couple of mobile limbs, and felt blessed if ...
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