Yes Anna, we know hindi

Most of my regular readers know by now that, I am a north Indian, trying to squeeze in and make a little space for myself in India's fastest-growing city.

Both places my hometown and Hyderabad have their own charms. While Home is a little extreme of everything heat, rains, subzero temperatures, lush greens, and plenty of known faces. Hyderabad is less hot, lesser lush green, least known faces, and … the metro!

I have quite a thing for the Metro. I find it clean, punctual, and most importantly, it gets us from point A to point B without the mad rush of vehicles all honking in your ear to get out of their way and to stay out, or else …!. Especially when you have to go from a spacious Hi-tech city to a cultural old city. 

While commuting by road, if one looks around, one usually sees only harassed and harried drivers with only one ambition in life – to get their vehicle ahead of the others by hook or by crook and if someone loses his limb or life in the process, they’re like, no offense Anna, but it's every man to himself on the road!

And in a metro? The only big challenge in metro, as I see it, is getting a vacant seat and Hyderabad metro passengers have not yet reached the do-or-die situation to get one. In fact, it’s quite like that game we all have played at one time or another in our lives – the musical chairs, remember? You run round and round eyeing the chairs longingly as you pass by them, and when the music stops, you rush forward and plonk down on the first vacant seat in your path. If you were good at getting a seat at the game before, then getting a seat in a metro is like a child’s play!

The trick is to position yourself in the Centre of the aisle where you can see both sides and look casual while getting ready to move in for the kill. Sometimes it’s a false start. Somebody gets up and … the world stands still, time stops, everyone stops breathing, you do too while you charge forward, but then, that somebody sits down again. The idiot was merely standing to get his mobile out of his pant pocket. Everyone looks at you, some shake their heads and click their tongues in sympathy as you fall back in disappointment, pretending you weren’t really looking for that seat, after all!

I have mastered that ‘Who, me? No! I’m happy to stand on my own two feet, thank you look pretty well now, after having gone through a couple of these false alarms.

The Metro is a whole world by itself with people of different shapes, sizes, and colors drifting in and out through its doors.

And the languages! Ah!

Very often, listening to the myriad languages floating around me, I get confused sometimes if people would ever get a chance to open a mouth here. I often tend to forget where and what language to use with any given person. To play safe, I end up starting the conversation with "Anna ...!!". And on rare occasions when I do hear my own language – Hindi or English, my ears prick up at the familiar words.

“He’s speaking in Hindi,” I hissed to myself, as the passenger next to me spoke into his mobile.

“Yes, he must be from North India.” Excitedly hissed back my mind.

I nodded to myself and looked around the compartment with its mostly bi-lingual fascinating mixture of passengers.

And Sometimes when I would try to uncomfortably communicate with a fellow passenger starting with "Anna..!!", some would respond with a sentence that would make me want to call this city my own, 

"Yes Anna, we know hindi ...."