groundhog

Subways are for wimps, I say. The brave cross the road, and the braver cross the road where there is no zebra crossing.
Something there is that doesn’t love a subway (Not the sandwich place. Anyway, that Subway gives waaay too many choices. Give me a place that has says ‘Dosa, pav bhaji and meals only’ anyday).
After a year of using subways, I’m still unsure. So many directions to follow, and if you go wrong, then so much to undo. So many mixed smells, dark corners, rumbling noises.
Ah, to walk right across a busy main road, raising a ‘halt’ palm at a speeding motorist who wasn’t sneaky enough to zip past before your Moses palm rose… Little kids holding on to mummy’s index finger, shuffling their feet that uncontrollably trip each other, and trying to get in as much hop-skip-jump as possible before they reach the other end of the road. Of course, all this is cute only if you’re a pedestrian, and not the fuming I’m-getting-late-for-work person on a vehicle.
Plus, the more, the fierier. On a weekday, say at 6:00 p.m., there will be a big bunch of to-cross-or-not-to-cross people on either side of the road. We’ll all huddle together, some heads looking left, some right, and others gaping straight ahead at the monstrous billboard with the half-nude woman promoting liquor as soda. As vehicles whiz past in an unending flow, we’ll lose our collective patience and simply troop across the road. There’s always comfort in a criminal crowd.
Here in Chennai, I am asked to always take the subway. To go underground and find myself in a maze of yellow tiled corridors manned by one beggar each. To lose all sense of direction and surface, somehow, on the same side of the road. Quickly, I mask my stupidity with sense of purpose and pretend that I suddenly thirst for tea in that potti kadai there. Payasam-sweet masala tea downed, I head for the subway again. By now, the limbless beggar recognises me and grotesquely wiggles his right-hand stump. I scurry away, and miraculously get on the right side of the road.
Surveying the yawning space behind me, I’m sure I could’ve just crossed the damn road with fewer episodes. But I wouldn’t be able to see that lady who scrubs the tiles in the subway yell in the most filthy tamil ever, at an old marwadi spitting pan juice on the just-cleaned wall.
Nor would I see old posters of Noam Chomsky’s visit to Chennai in 2001, still peeling off the walls — some people might have been in awe of him for his work; some others just thought he’d look a lot better with a moustache and promptly drew one with a sketch pen on the poster.
I quite like knowing that there are people and cars and scooters rushing about above me, and that the ceiling will not cave in even if a BUS stood on it. It’s fun to wonder whether I’m walking below a flower seller or a guy selling posters of Kajol and MGR.
The best part, though, is the surfacing — from a completely bizarre, closed, brick-cement-tiles-and-paint surrounding, to the chaotic buzz of colour and people.