In 2001, I was an intern at St. Stephen’s Hospital in Delhi, travelling in by train from Ghaziabad every day. Near Tis Hazari, a short walk from ISBT, Delhi was building its first metro station, and I watched it go up slowly, day after day.
People talked about it constantly. A metro, running underground, in our own city. As an Indian, I felt a quiet pride. Other countries had undergrounds, and now it was our turn. I kept hoping they would finish before my internship did, so I could ride it. They didn’t. Big projects take time, and that was fine.
Then on 25 December 2002, Christmas Day, the Delhi Metro opened to the public. Six stations, from Shahdara to Tis Hazari. I remember the date because I came to the UK in September 2003, so it was my last winter in Delhi. My friend Vinod and I agreed we had to take the maiden ride. We boarded at Welcome, bought return tickets to Tis Hazari, and the train was absolutely packed.
On the way back, the doors jammed and wouldn’t open at a station. Even though it was winter, it got properly hot inside, people tried to force the doors by hand, and eventually they gave way. It’s funny what stays with you. We were thrilled anyway. We had just been part of history, even if we didn’t think of it that way.
I left India soon after, so I never got to use the metro much. When I went back before my marriage and rode it again, I was seriously impressed. In about twenty years it has grown to roughly 375 km of track and around 270 stations on ten lines. I can’t even remember the names of all the lines now.
What I love most is how ordinary it has become. A 16-year-old or a 25-year-old in Delhi has no idea what the city felt like without it. It turns up in films, often just in the background, a train gliding past the giant Hanuman statue. People post that they were at a metro station or that something happened on the metro, and nobody gives it a second thought, the same way you’d say it happened in your car. For infrastructure, that may be the highest compliment. You stop noticing it.
It also changed how I think about civic sense. People say Indians throw rubbish and don’t care about cleanliness. Then they step into the Delhi Metro, and it’s spotless. The same people, a different environment. I believe that if you keep the small environment around people clean, they respect it. Nobody wants to be the first person to drop rubbish in a clean place, and it takes real nerve to do it. A dirty street does the opposite. People throw rubbish where there is already rubbish, because someone else has done it first.
A good public transport system should also be easy to use. You shouldn’t need a formula or rocket science to get from A to B. I’ve travelled across Europe, and the undergrounds there are simple to navigate. A clear map, a start and an end, and you know what to do. The Delhi Metro got exactly that right. Before it, working out which bus went where, and where to get off, could give you a headache and a mild panic attack. Nothing was clearly marked or explained.
And I still can’t believe they ran a metro through places like Chandni Chowk and Chawri Bazar. When you think of those crowded markets, you wonder how on earth it was possible. But where there is a will, there is a way. Whichever government was in power, it got done, and it got done well.
The Delhi Metro has quietly improved the quality of life of millions of people, many of whom don’t even realise it. It made a huge city feel smaller and closer. I’d love to see more infrastructure like this across India.
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