From the train

I am writing this note in the train. I have nothing better to do to kill time. I have been up from 6 am. It's 7.05 am now. I have to kill time until 5 in the evening, when we are scheduled to reach Mumbai. I am lying down in my side upper berth. There is a middle aged lady and a gentleman below my berth discussing the rentals in Mumbai. Both businesspersons, i presume. You meet all kinds of ppl in the train. It is fun at times. This lady who I referred to earlier, had started chatting with me yesterday evening. Extremely chatty, and blower-of-her-own-trumpet types. I got so bored of her telling me abt the greatness of her daughter and herself, that I immersed myself in my book to avoid talking to her. But too much, I say. She is again starting off on that 'I love where I stay, it's right besides the mountains'. I know where she stays, it's hardly that cool over there. But no, our lady has to tell the entire world abt how hot it is inside the AC compartment as compared to the 'fresh' air she gets in her apartment. Also she mentioned yesterday how she helped a needy guy. Does it help to be helpful when you take credit for it later? Or do we belong to a generation where we need to sell everything we do? More abt that later. Now they are discussing their kids, and this is the part i hate most abt our Indian culture. There is really nothing called 'personal' in our world. I hate it when my relatives and other elders are intrusive abt my personal stuff. But I guess, it's comes with the territory. So the gentleman has a 13 yr old daughter, and he says she is already 5'6” in height. So he is scared if she grows on to be taller say 5'8” or even more, then where will he get a suitably tall alliance for her. Isn't it ridiculous? You are wishing that your daughter doesn't grow anymore taller! Are weddings, child-births and funerals the only thing that matter in this part of the world? I have to find out the reason for this. Why is our culture so fixated on weddings? Why is it an omnipresent topic in every conversation? Maybe it is from a culture where getting married means the only legal way to fuck, and the entire population in the village realizes that the sooner we give two people that right, the better. Maybe also because marriage then leads to child birth, and having kids around them is a good pastime for the village elders. It gives them something to be busy, rather than sitting around doing nothing in their post retirement days. Also the fixation on weddings might be coming from ages ago when weddings were the only means of entertainment in a village. Weddings and festivals would be the only times when an entire village or tribe or clan would come together to celebrate and have fun. And hence an entire community of elders would conspire to get two of them wedded, just so that there can be further celebrations.

So now I got down with the intention of sitting on my assigned seat and continuing with my reading. But what do I find? The same elderly gentleman who is sitting on my seat, is not even offering to get up now that the person who owns the seat is there. I stuck around for a while near him to make him realize that it was my seat, and he ought to get up, and go back to his allotted seat, no matter how inconvenient it were to him. But being Indians, we aren't obliged to follow basic norms of civility. So we spit, urinate, wash, throw garbage everything out in the open, and rules of decency are not really meant for us. Anyways, I think I will have to tell this man to get up from my seat.