No matter wherever you are in India, there is always a mad rush to get into public transport. One reason for this rush is that public transport is cheap as it wants to be and the other is there is a lot of people to use this transportation as is evident from the population of this country. With passing days, this crowd is growing insanely and it goes so berserk that the people are pushed aside, pushed, pulled, shoved and crammed into a vehicle 10 years past its decommissioning date. So, we Indian as usual have a jugaad for this not-getting-seat problem too. Our ingenuity truly is visible only in such times of desperation.
Here are a few ways that people adopt to get a seat on public transport:
The Handkerchief people
People going to work tend to carry 'Hankies' but people here sometimes carry handkerchief just to throw them through the windows into empty seats. These people then take their own time climbing into the bus since they’ve assured their seats on it. They will then ascend as the vehicle starts to move, push past the other bewildered and mumbling passengers to pick up their handkerchiefs and enjoy the seat they reserved not by being first in the queue but first to an empty window seat.
This seat is for reserve for my fellow traveler!
These are people who ask others to reserve their seats for them if they manage to climb up before them. The regular travelers develop a kind of bonding that happens when you spend a lot of time smelling each other’s armpits and borrowing newspapers to read on the commute. This, in turn, helps them save places for each other so they can discuss which character did what horrible thing to another character on some television show.
'Legitimates'
Well, these people don’t bother with the rush and the long lines and the pushing and shoving; they already have a ticket. For those who don’t know, people in public transport can buy tickets before or after climbing into buses. The ‘Legitimates’ are the only group of
people who seem to have mastered the art of being wholly cool and buying their tickets at the counter. They stand around, saunter in and take their place reserved with an ‘X’. If there is an unreserved passenger sitting there, they will be reprimanded for their transgression with the show of a ticket. Fights often erupt because of their cocky nature.
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