The Ritual of a Commute By Maheen Haider
I think occasionally of the ritual of a commute. In my first
I realised in that moment that the commute was the face be-
year at CUHK, the journey from my apartment building in
hind the myth of university life. Between the stations and the
TST to the turnstiles at University Station was a meditative
announcer’s voice, I found myself in the body of a CUHK stu-
thing. I see: a still of myself seated always in the same corner
dent, a cell of the CUHK student body. It was submission and
at the end of the train; mine’s was the first stop, and the stead-
transition. Joseph Campbell, an American professor of liter-
fast movement of the train brought with it a steadfast sprin-
ature, said: “A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by par-
kling of people to whom I did the favour of watching but not
ticipating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth.” My
seeing and who, in their eternal graciousness, returned that
commute became a sacrosanct ritual, if not physically then at
favour even though that one morning I spilled coffee all over
least emotionally with the firm companionship of noise-can-
my jeans between Kowloon Tong and Tai Wai.
celling headphones. I wanted, even within that 45-minute journey, to build my own narrative for my “unique” student
I remember, in that moment thinking, “am I really a univer-
experience; to both fight and fit the myth of university life.
sity student?” and shortly thereafter, “would drinking the
After taking an English course, I realised I’d misinterpreted
dredges from this squashed coffee cup be a faux pas?” What
the quote, and during an average commute back home on an
truly struck me then however — while I sat in uncomfortably
average day, recognised I’d in turn misinterpreted the chasm
damp jeans with the scent of distinctly burned coffee beans
between expectations and reality. It had felt wrong, to be pre-
souring the air and the peach-scented tissue packet of my
sented with a reality that didn’t fit expectation, and my in-
kindly neighbour clutched in my hand — was the conscious-
stinct had been to erase the distance in that chasm until the
ness of my reality as a material and tangible thing. I hadn’t
space between expectation and my manufactured reality was
opted to stay in the dorms at campus and that meant my tran-
gone. But it didn’t work! It didn’t work because reality has a
sition into university from high school was marked not by
peremptory nature that draws your eyes to the image of coffee
the tradition of student orientation but rather by a mental
spilling on your jeans, the moment imprinting like a hairline
orientation of how much more time I would need to get to the
fracture upon the artifice where pallid expectation contends
university from my home; the ‘end of the day’ was not marked
with its vivid opposite. When I say ritual, I mean the patterns
by entering the dorms but the train, my roommates were the
we create to comfort ourselves when expectations break and
ephemeral crowd.
reality refuses to serve us.
What had me rooted in that incident was not the embarrass-
Into the latter half of my first year, I grew. I grew both in
ment of spilling coffee but rather that I held in my hands the
height — much to the shock of the doctor who’d claimed I’d
broken symbol of an expectation I’d held of ‘university life’.
stop growing at sixteen — and in experience. I formed more
The stories I’d absorbed of initiation ceremonies, late-night
rituals: with friends, classmates, professors, strangers and
snacks at the dorms and drunken partying came to mind, ever
even for a halcyon of a month, a cat. I carved my own space
distant to me as the media I’d consumed to subsume them.
within the chasm, a crow’s nest from which I could find a
They stay, even now, as vague myths; slippery like coffee
happy medium. The campus became more than just a des-
through one’s fingertips. I see: a still of myself seated always
tination on the commute. It became a gallery of memories
in the same corner at the end of the train. I am presented with
where I could walk from one end to the other (or rather, take
a crystal-cut sliver of my reality: the discomfiting awareness
the bus from one end to the other) and feel like I’d experi-
of coffee steeping in denim, a crowd drifting on stage without
enced ‘university life’. There was contentment in my routine,
lines, and the ceaseless roar of that locomotive.
and I entered my second year expecting smooth sailing.
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