Have you ever thought of it like this? Does something happen to you when you take the metro every day? You turn up at the station, a fully formed person, but only half of you gets past those sliding doors.

Do you see what I mean?

Every morning I rush to the station, with a lot of thoughts and worries about the day trailing. But I cannot take all of it inside. There is not enough space inside the train.

Inside the train, I become the woman sitting beside me, and she becomes the woman standing in front of us. Me, her, us, we get strung together on some invisible string.

The woman beside me, with short-cropped hair, loose salwar kameez and a large office bag, is speaking on the phone: “Your lunch is in the refrigerator. Heat it before you eat it.” A muffled voice, quite possibly of her husband, says something from the other side that prompts her to launch into a step-by-step directive on how to use a microwave.

He asks something again. She replies, “We are going underground, I can’t hear you anymore.” She snaps her phone shut. Perhaps, when one is secluded in a metro rail under the ground, priorities change. Perhaps she no longer feels responsible for her husband or his lunch. We sit side by side in silence.

A burqa-clad woman is opposite me with a small boy on her lap. After every two stations, she is calling someone to tell exactly where the train has stopped and ends with, “Dum Dum nahi aya,” (We are not at Dum Dum yet). Then she whispers, “I love you,” and hangs up. She says it almost like a secret that not even the person on the other end of the phone is supposed to hear.

At the next station, a teenager in an oversized school uniform walks in through the doors. She pulls out a textbook and starts revising. She does this for the next two stations before giving up and plugging in her earphones. Giving up is quite easy when one is inside a train underground.

A middle-aged man, leaning against the warning sign on the door, the one that prohibits leaning on the said door, keeps looking at his watch. He shifts his weight from one foot to another and fidgets with the strap of his attache case. As soon as we enter the next station, he leaps out of the door and breaks into a run. He seems to be late for work.

It feels unbearable to know intimate details about these strangers without even knowing their names. I know the woman with short cropped hair did not lose signal on her phone. She has been scrolling ever since. Maybe she was too tired of explaining how to use the microwave oven to a grown man and decided to disconnect. I know the burqa-clad woman with the little boy is quite intensely in love with someone, who is probably waiting for her at Dum Dum station. I also know the teenager in loose uniform has a chemistry test today.

And then, suddenly, laughter pierces this airtight silence of not-knowing. A young couple, laughing and inching ever so close to each other, has built a world of their own around the handrail right in the centre of the coach. The girl leans on the rail while the boy balances himself on the grab handles above, oblivious to the empty seats around them. Maybe because they entered in a pair, they had nothing to leave behind?

They both get down at the next station and the coach gets crowded with regular officer-goers. People standing in neat rows, hands rising above bobbing heads to reach for the grab handles. As the train starts moving, we all move in a single rhythm; first right and then left.

Everyone looks through each other, not really seeing anyone anymore. It becomes unbearable to feel present in this moment. In my head, it is already evening and I am back home — no longer torn between knowing and not knowing the people who are pushed against me. I want to be a full person again.

Then the train stops again and Istep out.