Commuting Blues

In the darkest of moods. Time to rave once more, about commuting blues, what else? I don't know what. Some mother-loving guy deprived me of a seat in the train today and it all snowballed from there. So. Pardon the badness of it all. After all, bloggers are humans too. So, don't bump into me around dark corners today. I don't know how my worst moods start from the train and end there. It's all got to do with the metallic nature of trains. It doesn't have a soul. It's nose is too blunt, the eyes are too glazed, expressionless, the cow-catcher looks like a huge grimace (Unlike the radiators of some cars which actually makes it look like it is smiling.) There isn't any wood to give it a touch of naturalness. The trains of my youth were made of wood, now its steel all over, paint peeling, solid, somber and boring. These are virtual cauldrons of hot and bothered flesh where men and women stand dovetailed into each other obscenely, their anger on hold, their patience being put to the test. There is a heave at every station where men start struggling to enter even before men can get down. And ten seconds is all they get to get in or be left out. Imagine this: just 10 seconds. It's a miracle how they manage in such short time and such short space.

Heave-ho, here we go!

So this guy in pointed shoes, and all, sits down before I can launch myself into the seat, and in a trifle it is gone. Some trickery, or, some magic, this? Then I stare at his pointed shoes and feel like stamping it with mine. The problem with pointed shoes is they take so much space. He has one that is at least a few feet in length. So, his feet stretch into mine, making me uncomfortable. And after sitting he goes to sleep, and then his body slides down to a comfortable reach with me between his spread legs (no, no jokes), as I am standing in the narrow space between two seats. How can people compromise so much. But that's modern life. A man – I mean an Indian man – will scrimp and save to own a house and put his children through school and college – hm, am doing this very thing right now – and will find that his life is over, finito. The scrimping and saving involves not going on holidays (reading about it in travel magazines, instead), not having a drink, not going to expensive movies in multiplexes, not being a member of a club, and wearing scuffed footwear. There's a lot more to this, which I won't mention here – no, not even in a blog.