TOS - A place I remember till date by Sandeep Ahuja

A place I remember till date – Russian metro station at Piliguna

It was my first day to school in Moscow when I realized that we did not have a school bus coming to pick us up. My brother and I instead had to go by the metro.  Until my second class, I hadn’t heard of anything like metro, and now, on the first day to class third I get to travel in one! ‘an electric railway operating below the surface of the ground’ my brother read the definition from the web.

The metro station was not hard to spot; even from a distance we could see a big, shiny red sign saying ‘M’. There was a staircase going down right next to the ‘M’. We were intimidated, not only by the size of the people, who seemed three times our size, but also by the scale of everything. It seemed like everything was built for some big giant world.

I clearly remember thinking for ones that maybe this wasn’t the metro station; it seemed so much more like a museum with all the sculpturing and painting.

We moved further, towards the ticketing counter, and remembered our uncle telling us ‘no metro ticket for kids less than 5, and Russian kids are big, you both will easily be classified as 5 year olds’; and he was right, it did work! On the other side of the ticketing was the biggest escalator I had ever seen. It was like 20m wide, and some 14 escalators on it, half going up and half going down. Despite that there were so many of them, every single one was very crowded. It seemed about a ten minute journey in the escalator. Ones we reached down, the up seemed way too high. The sizes of the spaces were mind boggling. I could do nothing about the fear that had by now settled permanently in me. With every step I took, I became more conscious of everything around me.

I noticed everything, from the shiny maroon flooring to the circular ornate chandelier. As we approached the metro platform, I was stunned by the never ending corridor-like space. The platform seemed like a long stretch that goes till infinity; on the side of this never ending corridor space were arches. They seemed more like entrances, only I was unsure about where they lead. I realized later, that they all lead to another never ending corridor. This was where the metro arrived. I was too scared to want to stay a minute longer in this space. The metro came as a relief, since it was the first thing in this place that seemed of the right size. I still don’t know how many wagons each one had, since I never managed to count.

Once I was on the metro, the doors closed.   I could see outside through the glass in the doors. Within a few seconds, we were out of the intimidating station and into a seemingly endless tunnel. By now, I knew that the new country was not going to be an easy shift; I prayed in all my fear and silently took a seat.