A moving frame

Metronama is the culmination of years of research by Rashmi Sadana, an associate professor of anthropology at Virginia’s George Mason University. Comprising interviews, research and personal observations, it lays bare the relationship the Delhi Metro shares with the city and its people.

What Sadana has mapped rather presciently is how the Metro dwarfs, draws attention to, unites etc, depending on where an individual falls on the socio- economic index. For some, the imposing pillars and elevated tracks are a daily reminder of what the public will is capable of achieving and those it fails to include. It is a painful memory of a shiny part of the city that lies beyond their grasp; a project dedicated to making the already mobile and comfortable even more so.

Mapping the ever-changing relationship between the Metro and the city of Delhi, Sadana’s work is analogous with the idea of simulations and simulacra. Jean Baudrillard proposed these terms as ways of charting relationships between reality and its representations. The Delhi Metro is, in parts, a simulation or an accurate representation of the city and, in parts, a simulacrum, a copy with no original; it has become its own truth, bearing no relation to the real Delhi whatsoever.

Sadana measures how well the Metro is integrated into the city through its ability to function as a public space; as an extension of the streets itself via its function as a site for political gatherings.

She chronicles her run-ins in the Metro with Anna Hazare supporters in 2011, during the widespread anti-corruption protests. She writes of the Metro stations within Old Delhi where local shops have become “inquiry counters”; of the Chandni Chowk exit that opens into a temple.

While the exteriors meld into their environments, the interiors