A Metro reporter recounts how her head got stuck between two doors of a Metro train

Once upon a time I trusted the Metro doors so much that I put my head on the line. Literally.

I won’t do it again. Even if I miss a train.

That was circa 2003. I was in a rush to get back to office after an assignment and it was the first time I was taking a train from Belgachhia.

I had heard a train chugging in while I was at the ticket counter. So I rushed down taking two steps at a time only to realise that not one but two trains had come to a halt on opposite sides of the platform.

Unfamiliar station, unknown flanks. I rushed into the last compartment of one but panicked on realising I might be headed in the wrong direction.

The doors behind me were closing. There was no time to get my doubt cleared from other passengers. Both my hands were full.

I tilted my head backwards between the doors. The shutters closed and slammed on my head, my golden- rimmed pair of spectacles went flying on the compartment floor. A gasp went up among those inside.

But most importantly, the door, faced with an obstacle, immediately started reopening. As passengers asked whether I was all right — one picked up my specs, of which a leg had bent a bit from the impact — I asked the all-important question: Train-ta Tollygunge-er dikey jabe toh? (Is the train headed for Tollygunge). Yes, it would, they chorused, some of them incredulous that I would ask something so banal after a bang on the head. But that was all I needed to know, even as comments of rebuke and concern poured in equal measure.

The door, freed of the cranial obstruction, shut again gracefully and the train started moving.

I was off in the right direction, with my specs sitting unsteady on the bridge of my nose and my head a bit sore from the impact.

I was horrified on reading this newspaper on Sunday morning. The deceased (Sajal Kumar Kanjilal) must have had as much faith in the doors as I had when he put his hand through them when they were closing. Only this time things panned out differently.

Machines usually are more trustworthy than men. Only if men could be trusted to maintain them in fitness and health.