The Delhi Chapter : Page 13

So I studiously took down directions to the metro and then my office from my (exceptionally smart) younger cousin.

And with a flip-flopping tummy, a somersaulting heart, a smorgasbord of emotions, and an adrenalin rush.. I started ambling towards the metro. 

[ The only MG Road in the country which doesn't expand to a Mahatma Gandhi Road but a Mehrauli Gurgaon Road. Something I found a little strange. ]

Anyhow.

I bought myself a metro card and swiped into the plush platform.

And within seconds I saw a train, from a distance snaking along.

And as though it could actually hear my mind, it stopped obediently right in front of me.

Seemed more to me like a well-tamed python someone made out of glass and steel.

Everything around me seemed far too perfect for my liking.

Tidy perhaps, is the word.

[ Something I was naturally unused to, having lived in a Calcutta and Bombay.]

The chaos, the filth, the buzz, the life.

I missed it in spurts, almost.

Anyway, after wading through many a fossilized compartments, I finally found myself a seat on the one designated for 'ladies' (same name strangely, but as different as could be from the good ol' Mumbai locals).

I sat and looked out of my frosty window..

Felt like I was watching a strange new city, and my life from a very different vantage point.

The skyscrapers, towers, sentinels of power, were pen-poking the clouds.

The people sitting inside the metro, were huddled into themselves.

The city, for the most part, was striking. And noticeably vertical; with its high-rises and towers, malls and flyovers.

But with the opening up of the economy and the multiplicity of choices brokered by Globalisation, we’d become a 'mechanised, air-conditioned' generation, I thought.

Nothing seemed exceptional anymore.
And all of this bling was passe.  

But Gurgaon, I saw, as a city had grown rather fast.

The architect was money. The designer was money. The builder was money. And the plan was money.

So if you ever wondered what money would look like if it were ever left to its own devices:
It's Gurgaon...