Are you traveling now? Are you in a public transport? If yes, look up and check out the faces around you, I am pretty sure you too are right now seeing what I saw a day or so back, or actually, what I see often, whenever I take a public commute.
It was a busy day and I was tired, and I was on my way home. I reached the station, feeling really brave that day and wanting to take a train back home. This is something that I don’t do a lot, but sometimes, when I want to really feel the pulse of the city, and experience the living, breathing, shouting and smiling life of it, I get on the train.
So that night I felt that I wanted to feel the city yet again, and so I headed to the station. It was packed but I managed to get a seat by the window in a comfortable ladies’ compartment in a Mumbai local train.
Some feat that!
If you know me, you’ll know that I always have at least a couple of books with me all the time, what if I don’t like one book and need something else to read, so there always has to be a backup book with me at all times (and this is something my colleague Kinjal does as well, if you’ve read her stories here, you’ll know she’s as much of a bookworm as I am). But getting back to what I was talking about, that day, even as I dug into my cloth bag of books and got one out, the breeze coming in from the window made me want to stop reading and just look around, just like that.
I looked out for a while then turned back inside the compartment to just see what the other ladies were doing.
And there, you saw it already.
Image Credit: videoblocks.com
Every single female in the compartment, and I mean every single, all the 11 out of 12 women there (excluding me of course) were hooked on to their phones. Most of them were watching something or the other, which is what I could make out from the change of expressions on their face, while some were chatting or looking into their screens.
Honestly, I felt all alone in a space full of 11 more women. There was not a sound to be heard, not a look or a smile to be shared with a fellow stranger who was also a passenger with me. I missed it you know, that feeling of traveling in a space occupied by others, that feeling that there are others near me. I felt left out and all alone there, and it felt quite strange.
Have you ever felt like this?
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