Croisé dans le métro

 

I can’t quite remember where I first came across it — perhaps while aimlessly browsing one quiet evening — but it struck me as something unconventionally romantic. It was a website, now sadly inactive, called Croisé dans le métro — “crossed in the metro.” The idea was simple, yet deeply human. Strangers who met eyes, smiled briefly, exchanged glances, or shared a few silent moments on the Paris Metro could later leave a message online — a note of recognition, curiosity, or affection, perhaps even an invitation to connect — for the person they couldn’t gather the courage to speak to.

It took me back to my own youth, to my days in Delhi, commuting as a student and later to work. Back then, the city didn’t have a metro, but the public transport — the chartered buses — carried a world within them: students, clerks, dreamers, and strangers from every corner of India. Some faces became familiar over time — the girl who always sat near the window, the lady who read a novel, the man lost in his magazine, the group of friends laughing too loud. Occasionally, glances lingered longer than usual, and a small story began — not in words, but in imagination.

These people were real, flesh-and-blood fellow travellers, but their connections remained suspended somewhere between reality and reverie — imagined, fragile, and transient. Perhaps it was shyness, upbringing, or the quiet reserve of the city itself that kept those stories unspoken. They existed only in the mind, as possibilities that never took shape.

Paris, the city of romance, had found a way to preserve such moments — to give them wings, a second life through words on a billboard. Delhi, and perhaps most other cities, let them dissolve quietly into memory.

In today’s world of smartphones, endless chats, and swipes, I wonder how much has really changed for those shy, introverted souls. Do they ever look up from their screens to notice who’s around them? Do the eyes still meet, until they no longer remain strangers?

Maybe the tools have changed, but not the heart. There will always be that spark — a stranger’s smile, a passing glance, a story that might have been. Whether on a Paris Metro or a Delhi bus, something in us still pauses, still imagines.

Somewhere, in some form, Croisé dans le métro continues — not as a website, but as a quiet, persistent longing that technology can’t quite erase.

Croisé dans le métro

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