Handling sudden encounters with old friends during the daily commute

It has been a year since I started using the Metro to travel to work. Each day’s 30-minute-long journey is more or less similar to the one that preceded it. Rubbed smooth by routine, it passes by without my ever being even conscious of it.

I don’t pay attention to the world around me when I’m frisked at the entrance by a bored security guard, pass my backpack through the scanner, swipe my card to get past the turnstile, wait on the platform, occasionally get screamed at by another guard for unknown reasons, get into a coach, and then spend the next few minutes jostling for comfort in the air-conditioned but crowded interior while ignoring the announcements as I have my earphones plugged in. I daresay this is the experience of my fellow commuters and, indeed, commuters in public transport all over the world.

But every once in a while, the unexpected happens and this routine unravels: I run into a person I haven’t been in touch with for a while. Pure happenstance that is reflected in my reaction and in the reaction of the person in front of me. It begins with disbelief, which is only a façade for our brains to hide behind as they dust off old memories and try to remember something of this person they are suddenly faced with. There is momentary panic if I can’t remember a name, followed by a flood of relief as I begin talking and realise that the other person is equally clueless about my name. But sometimes, I don’t just remember names but also specific conversations we’ve had in the past.

I drag these out into the open, blind to the possibility that the past few years might have changed the way this person might feel about the subject. If I can’t recall shared conversations from the past, I bank on the memories of shared acquaintances and friends to not let the conversation peter away.

And for some reason that is hard to discern, I am at pains to keep the conversation going. Perhaps it’s the spectre of the crowd around us. They become more present, more solid, and I cannot help but think of them as gleeful eavesdroppers. It doesn’t help that I’m also nagged by a feeling that the conversation is being timed. An invisible hour glass hovers beside me, urging me to keep talking before one of us has to disembark and break this tenuous connection that we have re-established in the past few minutes.

Despite the hurried nature of these meetings, most of them are welcome. Like a batchmate from school that I had not seen in almost a decade. In short order, we caught up on the lost years, from the number of people we were still in touch with (not many) to the number of fellow batchmates who had ended up abroad for further studies (too many). Then there was the junior from college when we skipped all the pleasantries and delved right into the relative merits and demerits about the latest Star Wars movie.

Some of the meetings go the other way. Like the time I met a distant cousin. Used to seeing each other in family homes, weddings and during festivals, we were shorn of a template within which to modulate our interaction. It was probably the only time I found myself wishing I had more relatives, only so I could ask after their health.

Then there are the absolute worst, the times when I see a person I have no intention of setting my eyes on again for as long as I live. Fortunately, the list of such people is short, which makes me wonder what the odds are for running into them in the metro.

And this raises the broader question at the heart of all these meetings: what, really, are the odds of such happenstance? Low enough that I never feel the need to brace myself for them. The metro encourages this unpreparedness by giving me a sterile environment in which to travel every day, cocooned in the middle of a crowd.

So, when I do end up meeting someone I know, it is a sensory overload, driving home just how vast, strange, and deep human connections can be. The Metro, in such cases, doesn’t just connect places. For better or worse, it connects people.

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