Can Indian Railways make some more laws against loud noise during sleep-time?
Is there any other country where a policy has to be changed to ward off public rudeness? The Indian Railways has decided to supervise the snooze time of passengers. No healthy, un-pregnant, non-senior citizen can get horizontal before 10 at night anymore. It used to be 9pm all these years.
That’s because the railway authorities are getting thousands of complaints every day about Indians coming to blows aboard trains over who can lie down or sit up, when and how: upper-berth passengers forced to clamber up to their perch by neighbours in the lower berths; middle-berth passengers snoring away and forcing lower-berth folks to lie low; side upper-berth people installing themselves on RAC seats and RAC passengers getting treated like dirt, and so on.
It was on a trip to Varanasi that I discovered yet another facet of Indian train rudeness: the penchant for making chronic, prolonged and uncontrollable noise. But how loud is loud? Here’s a recent experience aboard the Shiv Ganga Express.
We were eight passengers, and two children, in the compartment. And as soon as the train took off from New Delhi railway station, we befriended each other, exchanging names, pleasantries and destinations.
Before long, we were offering observations on life and living, relationships and society, politics and films. Those who had brought dabbas started passing those around: aloo paratha, pakora, barfi. The going was great, all smiles and congeniality. It was as if we had known each other for a lifetime. There was no fight over anything, no clashes over territory, no one forced to go up or down. Until the lights went off.
As the train picked up speed, the “aunty” and the mother of two began to bond. They were lying face-to-face, both on the two lower berths, and gabbing away. What about? I was astonished to hear the two talking about the who’s who of their respective families — people they have never seen, do not know and will not know ever - mothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, daughters-in-law — asking questions, giving detailed answers and swapping tales. At times, it sounded as if they were calling names, abusing some of those relatives, voices raised in excitement. Sometimes, it seemed they were whispering, making sympathetic noises. It was three o clock when I dozed off.
At exactly four o clock, I woke up with a start. An elderly gentleman was sneezing, the loudest I have ever heard. He had slept through all the chatter and woken up, now that the women had fallen asleep. It was pitch dark outside, but he decided to start his morning rituals. It began with the prolonged scrunching of a plastic bag (was he looking for his tooth brush?), loud and eery in the quiet and dark of the coach, moved on to deafeningly gross noise of bringing up phlegm and ended with tuneless humming: a low, unsteady monotone in god’s name that went on forever.
The gods were merciful to me that day: Shiv Ganga was unusually punctual, reaching Manduadih station in Varanasi exactly at 7:25am.
Can the Indian Railways make some more laws against loud noise during sleep-time? Could there also be a supplementary regulation against people increasing (or decreasing) fan speed or raising (and lowering) AC temperature without consulting anyone?