Friendless metros – All knowns are unknowns who travel daily

An everyday metro scene, rows of people plugged into their headphones, some lost in music, others in reels, some just pretending to avoid interaction. In a space where we sit shoulder to shoulder, sharing similar routes and timings, yet we remain strangers. The silence itself feels too intimate.

Is “seeing” someone every day the same as “knowing” them?

Probably not, but what makes daily travellers known is not just the metro repetition of faces and same routes and timings, it is more than that. The shared experience- the shared struggle of all those working professionals heading for their work, the shared joy of college students excited for their new day. Yet we choose to stay unknown to each other.

Recognition without relationship is a modern form of intimacy

Why is it that even when faces become familiar, we insist on remaining strangers? Perhaps at times we are simply too absorbed in our own daily struggles, professional pressures, personal worries and the endless weight of routine. Some may hold back out of a quiet fear of rejection. Yet more often than not, it is sheer indifference that defines our behaviour. The unknown human being beside us is reduced to a background presence only. Recognition without acknowledgment becomes the unwritten rule of metro travel. we feel comfort in recognizing strangers but discomfort in speaking to them. We look away quickly, we avoid smiles, we pretend to be busy on screens. Even rudeness feels easier than the risk of intimacy. And, we remain unknowns, by choice as much as by symptom of fear and indifference.

But deep down do we secretly crave connection with these “unknown-knowns”?

Once I noticed a young man with an iPhone. Beside him, an older man leaned over curiously, asking him about the phone. At first, I thought it was the usual small talk between strangers. But soon I realized, the older man wasn’t asking for himself, he was learning the features to explain them to his wife, who sat a seat away. It struck me. In that crowded train of nameless faces, a tiny fleeting moment of care and connection surfaced over a phone screen. It was one small rebellion against the ‘friendless metro’.

We may never know the names of those who sit beside us every day, and maybe that’s just how metros are meant to be. Still, I can’t help but wonder, what if we looked up from our screens, shared a smile, or said a word? Maybe the ‘friendless metro’ wouldn’t feel so friendless after all. Maybe it would surprise us with the kind of connections we never thought we needed.