In the second week of December, Rakish Sir was transferred to Ahmedabad. His transfer letter arrived in the branch in the last week of November only but our branch manager was not relieving him. He instructed Rakish Sir to teach me everything first and then talk about the transfer. It made Rakish Sir anxious. In that anxiety, he started fighting with everyone in the branch. By the second week of December, he fought with the branch manager thrice. As a result, branch manager relieved him and allowed him to join Ahmedabad’s regional office. Rakish Sir gave me the idea of the system. He taught me all the formal and informal tactics he knew.
In December, I had no other option than bidding good-bye to Rakish Sir. At work, his absence was felt in the beginning as I was completely relying on him for everything. Not only at work in train as well, his absence was felt. Till December, He reserved mine and Dharmendra Sir’s seats with the authority. He never allowed anyone to sit on those seats. It was time to take his responsibilities at work as well as in train. After Rakish Sir’s transfer, it was my responsibility to reserve the seat for Dharmendra Sir till Maninagar. It was not an easy job. People argued with me, they shouted at me for reserving the seat and I faced difficulty in countering them. As a result, sometimes I allowed people to sit on that reserved seat while sometimes people allowed me to keep that seat reserved.
Till Rakish Sir was commuting with me, I mostly minded my own business but after his transfer, I started observing the behavior of the people in the train. Rakish Sir was a talkative man. Thus he kept me busy in his talks and activities. After his transfer, I got the opportunity to witness how people behave in the train. While observing them, I realized that there is a particular set of etiquettes which people possess related to travelling or commuting via local train. They are as follows:
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- Sleeping with mouth open
- Spreading the filth
- Owning the train
- Deeply engaged in phone
- Spitting out of the window
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1. Sleeping with mouth open
There two types of sleeping. One, normal sleeping and two, sleeping with mouth open. Normal sleeping is something which all the people do in their day-to-day life. While sleeping with open mouth requires a certain skill and talent. And that skill comes in with the help of constant sleeping while commuting via local train. There is a whole community of such soporific people who just sleep after boarding the train.
2. Spreading the filth
People love to make the local train filthy. People love to eat in the local train. And after eating, people throw the wrappers, remaining, dirt etc under the seat or on the floor of their seating coach. I taunted few people when they were doing that but they are incorrigible. After doing all the research and surveys, I was unable to find out that why people spread filth in the local train? Why can’t they keep it clean?
3. Owning the train
Some people own the local train. People feel that they have got the local train in the will of their forefathers and ancestors. They will enter the train like a king. After entering the train, they will shake hands and will give unnecessary smiles to everyone in their seating coach. After the greetings, they will choose their seat and will set their bag on the rack above that seat. Then finally they will sit like a king spreading their legs on the seat parallel to them. That’s their tashan.
4. Deeply engaged in phone
There are certain kind of people in the local train who are deeply engaged in their phone. They will watch movies, read articles and news, chat, check their social media etc. They don’t disturb anyone else. They pass the time of their journey by doing different kind of activities on their phone. People of this community are calm, composed and well-behaved in the train. They simply detach themselves from the crowd and do their own business.
5. Spitting out of the window
People who chew tobacco have a habit of spitting in every five minutes. And in local train, they spit out of the window. When they spit out of the window only 40% of their spit touch the train, remaining 60% pass on to the next windows. When that water touches the hand or face of the people sitting at the next windows, they feel good until they discover that it is a spit of a person sitting ahead of them. People of this community should be made to spit in their pocket to make them realize how does it feel.
I fall under fourth category of people who are deeply engaged in their phone.
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