A memoir of the S8 airport line
If you commute for some weeks in a specific metro line in a city like Munich, eventually you will find a pattern of the people. You would see the same talkative (more human-like) service industry people in the early mornings; if you travel around 8 am, then you see perfume smelling but silent-slanting neck office goers; around 10 or 11 am you will see the moms/ old women with their small kid(s) going to park or shops and returning back in the afternoon; in the evening you see again the same silent — slanting neck office goers but without perfume smell; and on the late evenings same lonely fitness obsessed youngsters who usually found wearing white earphones; on the late weekend nights, you will see the same drunken loud laughing couples. If you have commuted for some more months in the same metro line, you could even guess their relationship status, their hobbies, what kind of food they eat, the music they hear or whether they have a gym membership. If you have commuted for some years in the same metro line, these faces will become part of your daily life, and you already had some occasions to know some of them in person.
I take the S8 metro to reach my home (so-called one). The S8 metro line runs from the city towards the airport and it runs round the clock — one of a kind. Unlike other lines, airport line has no pattern of commuters; every day you see new faces usually carrying oversized luggage and conversing in different languages. What is important is that these are the people who you mostly see once in your lifetime.
The metro line that takes you to the home is somehow your ‘own’. Whenever you see it, you somehow connect with your home. But when I enter the S8 line, I always had this strange feeling of being an outsider; never felt this train is my ‘own’. I see the fellow passengers are different to me. I see them as people who will continue their travel to a different part of the world or come from somewhere far from Munich, and here I am the one who will step down in one stop. Somehow, I always remembered the quote that most of us read in their teenage autograph book ‘life is like a journey, there are many people come and go, some stays forever”. I felt I am the one come and go in their life. I see S8 line belong to them and myself as a guest.
The reason why I am convinced that S8 airport line is different from others and worth writing a memoir is because of a lady. Last night I saw a lady in mid-thirties with black hair and a black suit sitting in the back seat crying with her head resting on her suitcase. I could imagine something unfortunate happened to someone close to her. I felt chilled on the thought that she has to deal with the thick grief on her own during this long travel, starting from Munich in this metro line to a remote village somewhere in the world. If this lady is travelling in any other metro line, I would have thought her grief as a temporary one, and I would be sure that someone is waiting to comfort her once she reaches home, which won’t be that long after the train reaches its end station.
But with airport line, this is not the case, she won’t find comfort on her grief at the end station (Munich airport), instead she has to continue her travel for long distance for the comforting hugs (may be she need to cross Atlantic or Himalayas). The trip in the airport metro line is just a transit; a small part of a bigger journey.
But I was thinking in the end, what if the cry that I have seen some distance is not for the loss of a beloved one but for other reasons. What if the lady in the black hair was the Kylian M’bappe’s older sister who is working as some external consultant for BMW, (like majority of the city’s population). And what if she was in tears because of being proud of her younger brother’s achievement in the world cup. What if, she was going to Paris to join the victory celebrations tonight. What if…
