BEST

i travelled in buses for three years in Pune while I was trying, rather unsucessfully, to complete Engineering. If anyone is from Pune, they would understand what it's like to travel in Pune buses which apart from being crowded beyond their capacity, are only held together by dirt and grime, and not nuts and bolts. Once I moved to Mumbai, buses were bye bye, and local trains were, well, hai hai.. I suffered from many a traumatic incident in local trains, ones that any mumbaikar would be used to by now, but two years of life in Mumbai had still not prepared me for some rather disturbing experiences. Anyway, I am back to Mumbai for studies and this time, its Mumbai buses. Although the buses are definitely better in that this time there are actual nuts and bolts holding it together and miraculously, people aren't standing like sardines packed together. There's something common to buses everywhere though, atleast from whatever little i have noticed. Although there are two seats reserved in the front for senior citizens, the "non-senior" citizens show no signs of giving up their seat and hold on to their place with as much feeling as they would hold on to their offspring. And ironically enough, OTHER "non-senior" citizens occupying the rest of those seats would be throwing poisonous glances at him/her so as to convey "God! How shameless he is, can't even give up his seat for the old man!". Today, I happened to occupy one of these seats unknowingly (since i am new to mumbai buses) so this old gentleman came up to me and said to me "vayaskaran sathi seat ahe" (seat for senior citizen) and not rudely. I immediately obliged and told him i didn't know so,and a friendly conversation followed thereafter.
What I never understand is the way people are so nonchalant about simple things such as these. If your elderly mom got on the bus, would you sit and wait for her to find her seat? Or would yu first seat her and stand, if need be? Then why can't people be sensitive enough to other elderly citizens? How can they pretend not to notice that there's an eight year old man holding on helplessly to the bar trying not to fall? If you are upto forty years of age, surely you can manage to suffer a little discomfort? It's disheartening to see how people choose to ignore basic courtesies to fellow passengers. And worse, we find innumerable ways to justify our actions "Not today, i'll offer him a seat some other day, today i worked really hard and i am really tired!" or "My stop is really far off, if it were close enough, I'd have definitely given him my seat". We crib and we criticize about how unfriendly a place the world has turned into and how nothing can help this country, but do we ever stop and think for a moment whether we did such a small thing as give our seat to an elderly? Do we?