Namita Narula Gandhi lives by the clock. Every workday, she wakes up at 6.30am, gets ready, packs the breakfast and lunch she has prepped the night before, feeds her one-year-old child, and is in her car at 7am. Within 30 minutes, she is on the Delhi Metro's Yellow Line, travelling from the Haiderpur station to Huda City Centre in Gurugram.
An hour and 50 minutes later, she is hailing an auto for the 10-minute ride to her office, a private hospital, where she works as the head of corporate communications. That's two-and-a-half hours of travel every morning. It's the same on the way back. Gandhi doesn't mind those five hours on the move, for the Metro allows her to be independent.
"I moved to Sonipat in 2017 after getting married," explains the 35-year-old, who was born and brought up in Delhi. "The Metro is the reason I can still hold my job. Imagine how much it would cost me in petrol to drive all the way." She estimates that it would be over 10,000 a month; using the Metro cuts it down to 1,500. Travelling in a bus feels unsafe to her. Shifting to Delhi is not an option since her husband works in Sonipat. Plus, there's family to take care of her baby at home when she's at work.
The Metro means different things to different people, whether you are in New Delhi, New York, London or Paris. It can just be another mode of public transport that takes you from point A to B. It can be a place where you indulge in some innocent people-watching. You can enjoy the air-conditioning while the sun blazes outside, try not to overhear an argument, discuss existential questions with friends, meet your sweetheart, read that book that has long been sitting in your bag, talk yourself into writing that complicated article. Or just watch the city through the glass windows. You can do pretty much anything and everything while on the move.
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