Tuesday, November 6, 2007

This is tolerance

I sometimes wonder why we 'citizens' react even at trifles and trivialities. For instance, in traffic when someone honks behind us or someone overtakes from the left we get easily annoyed. Or worse still, in the rainy season when someone else’s wheel splashes dirty water from a puddle on us, we know at what speed the adrenalin shoots up and how impulsively we react. Someone has to remind and calm us “Okay, cool down, cool down”. They say, such impulses are due to stress!

I was traveling in a Passenger train recently. As usual, true to its reputation, the compartment was full… full with passengers and dirt, what with the typically awful condition of the compartment itself - missing planks of seats and the luggage shelves [which are also climbed and occupied]. The Railways perhaps know how tolerant people are!! But that is not the point here.

I had managed to get a seat in one such compartment filled with its own class of people on the whole, mostly daily commuters and from villages traveling from work. This train stops at every little station. This is one train that also satisfies many vendors - tea/coffee, fruits, peanuts, snacks, churmuri and really, whatnot. All will have a fine sale here.

There was one clumsy man comfortably sitting cross-legged on the broken luggage shelf above me. He bought a ‘chota tea’ from a vendor who supplied in an environment-unfriendly plastic cup. Such was the rush that both the tea and the money had to be passed by someone! He was already been opening shells and eating peanuts, just bought. Shells were being dropped on to the passage. So his hand was not free for tea. He kept that cup precariously on the broken part of the shelf. A minute later, his knee tipped the cup accidentally. He was careless to keep there in the first instance. The cup and entire liquid came down on a young man’s trousers sitting next to me. This young man was most likely to be from a village.

Now how did he react to this mess? While I was thanking stars for it was not my trousers, everybody was looking at the mess. He just paused for a second, got up holding the messy part with his thumb and index fingers, went to the tap, passing through the crowd, returned and sat back with a one-side-half-wet pant! No words passed. He did not seem to mind one bit at all. All others continued their gossip as if nothing had happened and that this was an everyday affair! Now this is what tolerance is.

Could his calm behaviour be attributed to the less stressful ‘village atmosphere’ or his own nature, I wonder. Anyhow, that exposes us city-dwelling ‘so-called-educateds’ what we might be lacking!

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