Many of us go to different cities all our lives.
But when we wish to see the city, what do we do??
We get someone native to SHOW us the city or (rarely) hire a "City Darshan" cab or bus.
It is ok to go this way. But something is lacking here.
In my opinion a city is not to be seen or shown.
It is to be experienced. By travelling. By communicating with different 'city'zens.
But how to meet these people? How to meet the city's soul? - Well, no doubt, you have to go to the city. But that won't serve the purpose. Just by going to the city you don’t Meet the city.
(And now I will start dishing out Gyaan about how to do it. Well, it might sound utterly obvious to some, but this is my shot at it. Please do comment if you have anything to convey :) )
One way to do it, and that too with minimum expenditure, is to use the PUBLIC TRANSPORT.
And what better than an omnipresent BUS!!
You get all sorts of people in the Bus. And all of them are in their "city specific basics".
They would talk to you in the city accent and expect you to change yours! It’s in the city buses that you get to SEE how the people are. How they talk. How they carry themselves. How they do the transactions. And nonetheless, you get to have a look at the population distribution of the city.
E.g. In Pune, almost all of them speak in Marathi. You are sure to find a quarter of the bus full of students - schoolboys and girls, college going public. And, interestingly, each of them has a repartee ready if he/she is spoken to!
In Mumbai's local trains (the public transport there), the picture is different. You would see almost everyone going to or returning from his JOB. A typical Mumbaikar in the local is a Man- aged between 25 to 45, fluent in Hindi though not much in Marathi as it is splintered with Hinglish. He mostly wears dark colored pants (strikingly, I didn’t find the jeans popular), and a light colored shirt and a ball point pen in the breast pocket. But the most defining thing is this - Every single man in the train is sweating like hell and he just does not recognize this! I mean, when I am in the local I have to carry an extra hanky. But Mumbaikars just don’t give a damn to all the heat and the humidity!
Also, everyone in the train knows everything in politics, cricket and Bollywood! You talk to any of them about anything and he will literally enlighten you!
In Delhi, you have two distinguished public transport - the omnipresent buses and the Metro.
(An interesting fact - In Delhi, the conductor does not wear a uniform. He is just a teenager boy with ruffled hair and humming a Bollywood song. And the bus actually waits till it is sufficiently full and the conductor boy jumps out and shouts aloud the destination to attract the passengers just like autowallahs at Swargate do!)
And the crowd in both are different. (May be resembling Old Delhi and New Delhi ;-) )
In one, you find a not-so-rich public with no high-end mobile phones. And the moment you get into a metro, you cannot help but notice the difference. It is more 'Cool' and Colorful- people, their clothes, even the stations and the trains! Here you have a public which is (a little more) sophisticated.
But in both the transports, you will find that the commuter public is a mix of Delhites, Punjabi, Bihari, South Indians, Maharashtrians, North-East Indians etc etc. And why won’t it be? After all you are in the NCR!!
Though this is only about three metros I have visited, I think the Way can be safely generalized to any city. (Actually,I never really had an opportunity to travel to other wonderful places!)
So the next time you think of hiring an autoriksha, think of PUBLIC TRANSPORT as an alternative. You save money. You help to tackle climate change(?). And the best part - You get to know where you live!
(For Punekars, the next time you get onto a PMT, try to SEE the crowd inside forgetting that you yourself are a Punekar. I bet you will find it amusing!!)
