Travelling on a Token
It is interesting how some episodes throughout the journey
of life become permanent milestones in our memories. No matter how far the
roads take us, we still remember those points where we stumbled upon either
with opportunities or with challenges. One such episode in my journey was the
first metro ride. Given the first metro ride being paradoxically both an
opportunity as well a challenge for me, there is absolutely no way I can get
over the memory of it soon. It was an opportunity, for I was to come face-to-face
with the realm of the New and the never-experienced-before; while at same time
it was the challenge to be accepted and embraced by the New and the unknown.
From the first hesitant step and the backward jerk on the
electric escalator to deliberately escaping suffocating metro rides, life has
seen much by now. From tapping on the token receiver at the exit where it was
actually to be dipped, to the Paytm recharge of the Smart Card, it was fast. So
fast that I failed to keep track.
Back in the summer of 2007, the Delhi Metro Rail
Corporation was at its nascent stage when I for the first time happened to come
across it. For all commuters between Samaypur Badli and HUDA City Centre it
would be quite interesting today to hear of times when the yellow line operated
merely between Vishwavidyalaya and Central Secretariat. The journey beyond CS
to all those fancy places like Select City Walk, Saket, Hauz Khas Village,
Sarojini Nagar etc was at the absolute mercy of the life threatening Blue Line
bus operators or may be an auto-rickshaw, if at all permitted by the wallet. I,
among many, stood witnessing the gradual spread of wings of the DMRC over the
last decade to a stage where it is today.
The first few rides, I remember were on tokens of
denomination somewhere between INR 8-20. I was hesitant to get a Smart Card,
for I myself was not much smart by then and thought INR 12 each day would be a
better deal than parting off with INR 150 or more on one single day. Anything
between INR 8-20 was much under bearable comfort then, and I travelled each day
to my college by metro. Budget was shoe-string and I would work out each penny
before leaving my room. Things were perfectly calculated – ten rupees on a
rickshaw from Samrat Bakery to Vishwavidyalaya, something around rupees twelve
(forgetting the exact) on metro till CS and rupees five on 781 from there on to
college, rupees 15 for lunch at the canteen. For contingencies force-majeure there
was to be a crispy 100 rupees bill, tucked fourfold somewhere in the inner
reaches of the wallet, unseen and safe from the peer group. The trajectory was
smooth with no new ruptures until I walked up to the customer care one fine day
to own a Smart Card.
Many things changed since that point in time never ever to
be undone again. Of all things, travelling on a token was no more to be smart
since then. Convenience of operation was to be the fruit of all the change. The
magnetic field of the Smart Card was smart enough to ensure passage without
even pulling it out of the wallet each time. I too was metamorphosing fast
towards smartness and I begun putting into the Smart Card the estimated amount
for the entire month at once. Life kept on becoming convenient and I smart. At
the end of almost a year of travel I was smart enough to be able to tap the
wallet with the smart card in it on the entry and exit gates while typing SMSs
or changing music on the smart phone on the other hand. Smart I was by now,
with Smart Card and Smart Phone.
Something that was building up gradually throughout all
these was my unconsciousness. My unconsciousness, for instance, about rising
metro fare was taking its gradual roots. I never bothered as the fare kept
rising for I was smart now, and had stopped buying tokens. Because I kept
putting in the same amount (500) each time the balance went out I never
realized that I was actually recharging it more frequently.
Times kept changing, as it already does, and one fine day
it so happened that I moved up on the ladder of smartness by few more steps.
Smart Card recharge since that fine day was to be done online on Paytm. With
this appraisal in smartness, my unconsciousness attained an associated high. I
was now unconscious even of the existence of a customer care counter. I stopped
bothering about holding or not holding currency change as Paytm was smart
enough to accept any denomination of money at any point in time. All I needed
to do now was to put in money online and travel, and then repeat. By now I was
not sure of how much exactly was I charged for a ride between Hauz Khas to
Chandni Chowk (which I am sure many of the readers are not) and all I knew was
that money of some denomination was going out of my Smart Card each time.
Life is wonderful and convenient. Things around me are
smarter like never before and so am I.
There was no looking back until yesterday when out of
haste, I left my Smart Card behind at home. I had taken it out of the wallet
the other day for absolutely no reason and had forgotten to put it back. It was
then that I came to my consciousness about the change that time has brought to
the DMRC. It was yesterday that I found myself to be actually smart in the
absence of the Smart Card. As I walked up to buy a token at the Hauz Khas metro
station for Adarsh Nagar, I realized, it is no more a shoe-string affair. Fares
have soared to saturation with the worst part being my ignorance about the same
while it kept occurring just under my nose all the way. I rued over my
unconsciousness and indifference for so long while pushing each step towards
the entrance. It was at that moment that I unveiled the conspiracy of the Smart
Card and the myth of convenience in particular and the fake promises of the
myriad benchmarks of Smartness around me.
"Had I been smart enough not to forget my Smart Card today, would I have been smart enough to realize that I could never be smart enough throughout?” I thought to myself.
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