Delhi Metro, which has emerged as one of the best in the world, is now taking the help of Bollywood in order to teach people how to disembark the trains and board them too. Well, the cliche ‘Kumbh ke mele mein bichde hue bhai’ theme ( brothers separated in the great Kumbh mela ) has been used to death in Bollywood movies, but the theme has come in handy for the corporation which has a 99.9 % punctuality record.

And surely you remember Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan, the two on-screen brothers, one of whom goes on to become an honest cop and the other, a gangster, and of course they meet years later. In the 2 minute awareness campaign being shown at one of the largest, busiest as well as most beautiful stations on the Delhi Metro, Rajeev Chowk Metro Station, this particular story has been used where the two brothers Lallan and Khilawan (Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor lookalikes), get separated while trying to board a Metro train when they set out to make their first trip in the technological marvel.

In the second half of the campaign, they re-unite at a Metro station, where Lallan has become a gangster working for who else, but the famous ‘Loin‘ ( unforgettable Ajit ) and Khilawan has become a cop. And then they set out to teach fellow commuters to let the passengers disembark the train first, and then board the train - a message which the unruly Delhi crowd has been unable to follow completely.

But this is not the first time that Delhi’s Metro has had some tinselville connection. Some years back, the Dharmesh Darshan movie Bewafaa starring Kareena Kapoor, Akshay Kumar and Sushmita Sen had some important scenes shot in the first line of the Delhi Metro Network, at the Kashmere Gate as well as the Shahadara stations. The scene had some amazing shots of the system, with the stars Akshay Kumar, Anil Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Shamita Shetty and Manoj Bajpai taking the short ride. The movie wasn’t much of a success though, but the very fact that a Bollywood director dared to feature a sophisticated international commuter service, spoke volumes about the fact that India had arrived. Hopefully, more producers might be able to showcase Indian marvels better, than running off to Western nations when it comes to such needs. Who knows, one day Bollywood might have enough money, to atually shoot an action scene with a runaway Delhi Metro train a la the Hollywood movie Speed!

( Meanwhile, you might not like to miss ‘24 Hours With The Delhi Metro‘, a one hour special show on Discovery Channel, at 9 pm on September 1, 2007, to actually know and praise the world class system better. )