So I'm in another seven hour coach journey through English countryside happy to have bypassed hefty British train fares and gain a few hours of the only sort of time when I'm able to read a novel. I find a window seat too whose real comfort lies in what's below the window: the heating vent. Along comes my neighbour who is hesitantly settling down on his seat. His girlfriend is sitting just behind him. Being polite in a quintessentially British sense, they will never ask me to move, not even in a polite way. So I give up my seat and settle down on the aisle seat behind me, where the girl was. The girl says thanks many times and so does the guy.
Soon after I settle down on my new seat, I realise I haven't actually settled down. I can't. A mass of round flesh is occupying the crucial space required by my right shoulder and arm. The flesh is young and being pumped with louder-than-headphones-can-handle music, cola and Nintendo DS visuals before a mobile phone rings. "At 11". Damn, he'll be there until the end. "Can you bring some cigarettes? ... No, they ran out... Are you listening to what I'm saying? No, you're not! They last a week! A week has seven days! This is the eighth day!... Love you, ma."
I forget about the discomfort I'm feeling and ponder - Amen to Indian family values and practical politeness! Family values - everyone knows of. Practical politeness can be best described using an example. Readers' Digest found Mumbai to be the rudest city on earth because people don't hold doors open for people behind them and don't help someone who's dropped papers on the floor. What RD fail to realise is that its a city where the rat race results in endlessly overflowing trains in which people hunt to find the infinitesimal space, yet the same people offer their hands to help up the guy running alongside the platform, because they know his boss will fire him if he doesn't get on that train. In the words of Suketu Mehta, "That's opening doors."
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