I am in Mumbai with my little bro, who was a bit unwell and needed to be pampered. So GG was packed off on a "get well soon" mission to mumbai. Anyhow, he is much better and has been showing me around.. in the Mumbai trains. The experience while travelling in the suburban trains has been extremely interesting to say the very least. I have witnessed innumerable fights and altercations. No, I don’t mean to say the Bombayya is a violent creature, just that the volatile mixture of zero air, crushed feet, stinking neighbours and stalled train can make for a potent cauldron where emotions are liable to flare up and explode at seemingly trivial stimuli. It usually starts with an unexpected push/shove/jolt/jar.
Once one gentleman accused a co-passenger of calling him an animal. Co-passenger stoutly denied that he had called him any such thing. Gentleman said he did too. Co-passenger denied, as stoutly. People around intervened to ask details of altercation. It seems the gentleman had flown into the train in the usual fashion at the last station, at the head of the incoming horde, and crash-landed into co-passenger. Co-passenger had twisted back in pain and exhorted gentleman to behave like a human being. By extension, co-passenger didn’t consider gentleman to be a human. Ergo, co-passenger had called him an animal. Co-passenger must apologise.
I assure you, the above is completely true.
What is even truer, is the voice from inside the compartment about 2 minutes after things had calmed down. “SO, WHO WON??”
This other time, the man sitting in the window seat burst out at a chap standing beside him, “What business is it of yours where I’m going to get up??? I have a ticket, I have paid in full for it, I will go wherever I want, who are you to ask????”
The standee looked a little chagrined, told others around him (including those who had been rudely awakened by the windowseater) that he had simply asked the man if he was travelling far, so he could figure out whether there was any use of standing there waiting for a seat. He had not meant any offence. It was an innocent query.
Innocent, my foot, fumed the windowseater, what business is it of his, I ask you, these young people today, they have no manners whatsoever, gallivanting around all day and then they want a seat as soon as they enter the train, I tell you, this country’s going to the dogs if this is how our next generation is going to behave. Look at him, literally salivating at the prospect of getting a seat.
The standee was a little taken aback by this vehemence and gave vent to his feelings. He talked at length about older people who think they can do anything because they have a few grey hair, heck, look at the woman with him, she is too young to be his wife and too old to be his daughter, god knows what they have got going between them and he just wants to impress the woman by picking on innocent passengers even when they have done no harm, a simple question was asked and if he wanted he could have refused to answer, why did he have to consign the nation to the dogs, and if the nation was in such a state it was because of dirty old men like him.
The scene suddenly changed from a simple, albeit stupid, argument to one where feminine honour was involved. Needless to say, whenever women are involved, this argument also developed into fisticuffs. The two guys traded blows, people around them either rushed in to separate the two or shrank back to avoid ill-aimed shots. A general melee followed with commensurate uproar.
A station was fast approaching and the people desirous of alighting were collecting their bags from the overhead racks and pushing their way towards the doors. One such man had his umbrella stowed away in the rack where the fighting was going on. He stretched above the melee, retrieved his umbrella, thwacked the fighting duo four times on the heads with it and pushed his way out of the train.
Cheers to ake mumbai trains!
