invasive behaviour
Thursday, August 2, 201210:12 AM
These days, I take train more frequently than I could remember. I’m a bus person. I have bus anywhere and everywhere and the possibility of getting a seat on the bus is much higher compared to train. By taking train, you’ll be squash and squeezed like you’re trying to dump something into a full closet where there isn’t any space left.
Once I manage to walk around the rush hour, the next challenge was finding a seat on the train. Play it right and you are in for a relatively comfy ride. Play it wrong and you will spend twenty minutes with your face rammed against the toughened glass window and a walking stick wedged into your coccyx.
The train arrived one minute after I got onto the platform, and I made it. But as I sit across from a picture of love that is making me feel acutely depressed about my situation at home, I realize that today, I am not in the best of moods.
As the gentleman pulls a strand of the lady’s hair away from her right ear and kisses it gently I have to look away before I go insane. So I glance to my left in a bid to escape this doe-eyed display. But in doing so, my eyes meet directly with those of a man sitting next to me, who just happens to be staring at that moment. He smiles awkwardly as he realizes he has been caught staring. Because I like to think I’m a relatively nice person, I smile back as if to say, “you know what? It’s ok. Let’s just forget about this and move on”.
I turn away and gaze towards the ceiling; it is obviously a safer option today. But I feel a presence again, my peripheral vision is telling me this. So I turn my head back and the man is staring again, almost boring his eyes into my cheek. This is no accidental gaze. He jumps as if he has been caught pilfering grapes from the supermarket.
‘Oh err, ever so sorry about that, it’s just you’re beau…”
“Just stop will you. Please?”, I asked, turning red.
“Yes, Of course. Sorry”, he says in his well-spoken accent, somewhat crestfallen.
Welcome to train life. It is a circus and a zoo all at the same time
I wonder why invasive behavior of this nature irritates me so much.
The squash of the rush hour can do such strange things to normal people. Individuals who are usually quite calm find themselves gritting their teeth, muttering under their breath and trying desperately hard not to decapitate someone with an umbrella.
Labels: rush hour
