Idiots on a train

I noticed this peculiar phenomenon the last few times when I’ve traveled by train back home. For some completely unexplainable reason, the guy who can’t read his ticket properly always ends up being a total unapologetic obnoxious jackass. And this isn’t gender specific, even women who misinterpret their tickets are also absolute morons. Such people are always very adamant and will even resort to foul language to prove they are right. This happened on 3 separate occasions, one of it to me. Like this time around, I got on the train, dumped my luggage below the berth assingned to me and headed out of the compartment to enjoy the absolutely gorgeous weather of Bangalore.

I had got the upper berth on the train. When I got back on after bidding adieu to the parental unit, I return to my seat to find this weirdo with tons of gold chains around his neck, well oiled hair (excessively well oiled) and a shirt worthy of the best film hero in all of south India, sitting at my seat profusely sweating. I decided not to get bugged by this and occupied the adjacent seat. I plug in the ipod and look up to find that my top berth has 3 huge suitcases on it. Wait…don’t beat me to the end of the story. As you may have guessed, the ‘superstar’ had put all his bags there. Alright, enough of me being Mr.Tolerable. I asked for his ticket.

Well, our hero obviously thought it was unnecessary to share anything with an urchin like myself and he merely grunted, “seat 56”. That was my seat. Alright, I’m slowly turning green, muscles ripping through my clothes….oh wait….sorry ….wrong story. ( I am getting very easily distracted these days….attention span of a 6 year old) I told him it was my seat and even showed him my ticket, to which genius replies, “ I put my luggage there, it is my seat!” And then it became all clear, this is exactly how Edmund felt on the top of Mt.Everest…..planted the flag and yelled, “My Mountain…I put the flag here!”. I am quite irked and told him that it was impossible and perhaps he’s in the wrong coach and that I had a confirmed ticket from 3 weeks ago, and that just because he dumped his luggage there, did not make it ‘his’ seat. Hero replies, in a terrible regional English, “ Aye…. Don’t talking man…. We wait for checker…he confirming that is my seat…okayvaa?” One part of my brain urges me to open a can of whoop-ass on this jackass, but the other part of my brain just finds this joker absolutely amusing.

So we wait for the checker (ticket-checker….just in case you were expecting a board game piece to show up) and check the tickets. Needless to say, yours truly was correct (as always) the seat was mine. Not only was the genius in the wrong coach, his seat was on RAC and was not even a confirmed berth. So much for “my luggage….by seat”. Well, I have learnt the best response in such a situation is to merely smile. Smiling over the spoils of war over the vanquished is perhaps far more effective than being juvenile and pointing and laughing. I was grinning from ear to ear. Superstar here was busy lugging his suitcases to the next coach. And since the train had already rolled out the station, chances are that he isn’t going to find a vacant seat to dump his luggage and yell, ‘ My seat….finders keepers, losers weepers!’