Metro gets a dreamy ambassador

Mumbai: That the long-awaited metro network will change Mumbai is an open secret, but that it would turn some of Bollywood’s snootiest stars into fans of public transport became evident when Hema Malini decided to take the metro from Dahisar to Andheri on Tuesday evening.

The danseuse and Member of Parliament from Mathura was shooting at Dahisar for a commercial, and found the 2-hour-long car commute to be exhausting. So at her make up man’s behest she decided to try out the metro and was amazed that she reached in 30 minutes. The actress, who once told journalists that she could not live in an apartment block as she would have to share the elevator with regular folk, was so entranced by the experience that she then decided to take an autorickshaw like the rest of Andheri hoi polloi to her bungalow at Juhu where her “dazed security staff could not believe their eyes,” she later tweeted.

Speaking to HT, Hema Malini said that she has travelled in the London tube and the underground in New York but not in public transport in India. “This was my first metro ride in India and I loved the rakes. I boarded the ladies coach and many women took selfies with me. When we got off at DN Nagar there was too much traffic and though my driver was coming to pick me up, my make up man and I decided to take an auto and come home.”

What struck her was the cleanliness and the number of working women, most of whom turned out to be her fans. The auto ride, on the other hand, she described as “very scary and interesting.” She is now a firm convert to the metro cause. “The only problem is that when one gets down from the station, one does not know how to go from there. As a celebrity, if I walk on the road, it will be too much. I need a vehicle to reach my final destination. Probably, I can tell my driver to wait under the station or I can keep two cars under each of the stations going to and fro.”

She said she understood how Mumbaikars are fed up on account of metro construction. “The jams, the pollution is indeed a nuisance, but it will be worth the struggle when it’s all completed because then one can reach fast, and it would be much better than travelling by road,” she said, echoing what another BJP leader and the state’s deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis said recently.

She reminisced how several of her shoots in the past, especially those that required a rural setting, would be shot at Chena Creek near Ghodbunder area in Thane and in those days the journey would take her 45 minutes from Juhu via Western Express Highway, “but now it takes much longer. Buildings have become taller, all bungalows have vanished and the skyscrapers are adding to the congestion. I don’t know how the next generation will cope.” They will, in all probability, take the metro.