my commute to work.

twenty kilometres away

I travel to work four days a week most weeks. Sometimes five, occasionally six, when I’m needed more than usual. I live about twenty kilometres away from the office. I’m not a fan, but I also don’t feel like complaining. I live with my parents, so I stay where I stay. Whenever I meet someone new or run into an old friend, we exchange the same words, catching up, when the words “yeahh I live far” fall out of my mouth like water, casual and unremarkable to me, but I am met with my fate of receiving a look of pity in their eyes.

“You must hate it”
Do I?

“You’re really hardworking”
Perhaps I am, but can we not let my endurance for standing an hour and a half take all the credit?

The truth is, I don’t hate commuting, never have. You could put me in an auto, a bus, a train, anything with enough air and movement, and as long as I have something to look at or read or listen to, I’ll be fine. More than fine, actually. I like looking out. I like watching things pass. I believe I could do that for days on end.

There is, however, one important condition to note. I don’t like being disturbed. If I’m talking, I’m talking. But anything that involves constant back and forth, small talk, or someone needing me to agree with them every three minutes, let’s spare each other the effort. I’d rather stare out of a window and be misunderstood than nod politely and lose my place in my own head.

My mother once humorously expressed how she doesn’t like travelling with me because I don’t speak. I just sit there, apparently looking out aimlessly. My dad, on the other hand, reminds me from time to time of something I said when I was about ten. One day, when he asked me to sit at the back of the scooty when I usually stood in the front, I refused. I told him I wanted to stand in the front and see the world.

Where did the girl who wanted to see the world go? I ask myself this internally, usually while trying to resurrect her one new hobby at a time.

My commute to work now, since last August, has become convenient and boring. Before they opened the yellow line, it went something like this: my dad dropped me at the metro station, about a kilometre away. I could walk, but I hate walking in the morning, especially when I’m freshly dressed and pretending I have my life together. I took the metro halfway, two trains. I get down, walk three minutes to the bus stop through a road so busy with people selling flowers and other things for pooja because there was a temple nearby, carefully avoiding all the nazar lemons thrown on the street. I don’t know if I believe in that superstition, but my mom told me not to step on them, and I don’t fight things I see no harm in obeying.

I’d board the bus. It always had one seat empty. How lucky. After thirty minutes, I’d get down, and then there was another walk, twenty-two minutes. But like I mentioned earlier, I hate walking in the morning, so I took an auto. I reached the office.

What my commute is like now: dad drops me, or I take an auto to the metro station. Three trains this time, all busy. I move through the changing platforms at my pace while I watch people run, sometimes sprinting, to catch the train they are inevitably going to miss. I never get them. Maybe I am not in the same urgency. I let them get through first. It’s not an act of kindness. I really just do not care for it.

I get down. I walk across a footbridge that seems to be about a kilometre long by itself. I get down and then, because I hate walking in the morning, I usually take an auto. My justification is that I’m late, which means I can take an auto. Sometimes I’m actually late. Sometimes I just like having a reason.

Now while this route is easier, it’s also boring. I don’t really step into the world anymore. I am out and my office is right there. I enter and exit too cleanly. To fix this, I vowed to not listen to music for the entirety of my commute because music makes me feel insane in the morning, like somebody is throwing around furniture inside my head in a rage. So I have resorted to reading books, which kills two birds with one stone, so to speak. I no longer have a rage room in my mind, and I am forced to let people think I’m pretending to read so I look cool and like the exception. What they don’t know is how much I hate that thought and how much I am fighting it. Exposure therapy, I suppose.

The same commute on my way back feels a little better in comparison.

I think I wanted to write about this because I read someone else’s piece about her commute here about a month ago and wanted to write mine ever since, but I didn’t. She saw cows, dogs, people on the street walking around at a socially acceptable pace, and how I envied that.

- Harshita Daga

Note: if any of my employers see this, which they might because I have one added here, I do not enjoy the commute and this is all fiction. Thank you very much haha