Commuting Etiquettes for Bombayites - II

The Fight for the Wind-facing Seats

If you are lucky enough to get a seat, select the one facing the wind. Meaning facing the direction in which the train is moving. Or, else, suffer the stuffy humidity and heat. The one near the window commands a premium such as the one given to Infosys and Wipro on the stock market. When you get in you will find that these seats are probably already occupied by athletic looking guys in pointed shoes and gelled hair. Since all these guys have pointed shoes manoeuvring between their toes is a difficult business. So "step on their blue suede shoes" and apologise profusely for doing so, because, gelled-hair and all, whoever has some commonsense left would not to wear such shoes in a crowded compartment. Certainly these guys are not among those.

So you try for the next best seats. The one opposed to the wind. Only fools like you would ever opt for these seats so plaster a smug expression on your face and open your paper, or, novel, or even your monthly sales report and start reading.

If You Are Unlucky Enough Not to Get any Seat

If you are the unlucky sort and don't get any seat, stand near the window. You will be passed all the heavy bags to put on the overhead rack. Don't throw them out of the window because these guys are really nasty, the outsourcing-call-centre-types. They could send a virus down your cell phone that could infect you with HB2, which is a fever they all suffer from. News is that this fever is related to the absence of a certain sort of visa, which they all crave for.

The advantage of putting all their bags on the overhead rack is that when these guys get down at the nearest outsourcing software park, you get their seats. Isn't that a nice arrangement? But wait, not before you hand them back the bags with the laptops they have entrusted to you. Nice outsourcing here, eh? Didn't I tell you they are smart?

The Snorer and the Leg-shaker

If you are sitting near one of these – snorers and leg-shakers – then only providence can help you. The snorers snore so loudly in your ear that you can't read your paper or novel. And they slowly and insidiously creep on to your soft tummy thinking it to be their pillow. Ah, such bliss! When they start drooling on your just-ironed-by-wifey shirt, which you have preserved for the crucial meeting with the boss, give their body a toss in the opposite direction. Then they begin drooling on the man sitting in the other direction. This goes on till you are playing with the man like two tennis players while tossing the ball in centre court. Then you get up from your seat and let him drop ever so softly on to the seat and then topple to the ground, that's when he really wakes up with a grunt like a pig's.

The leg-shaker is another animal of the type mentioned above. He shakes his leg so violently that your entire body shakes with him. Actually there's nothing you can do with him except warn him that if he doesn't stop you would connect his legs to a piston which will then be attached to the wheels of the train to make it go faster.

(More of this to come. Ronnie really needs the computer badly.)