A Mumbaikar will find it riotously funny if she is told she is soiling the seat. If you can trek over mounds of garbage, sidetrack human faeces, glide into tattered taxis with mouldy upholstery and inhale SPM-dense fumes in a chattering autorickshaw.
The one definite way to tell a Mumbaikar from a non-Mumbaikar is by watching her travel on a local train. The footboard of a Mumbai local is amorphous. It comfortably takes about 10-15 people but can morph into a gigantic holding space for over 100 assorted toes (there isn’t enough space for a foothold).
Inside, a war beckons. You have the choice of elbowing out two inches from your nearest competitor to make space for your feet, resting at 180º on a few others, or getting elbowed out yourself.
In the rare event the space around you is unoccupied it will soon be filled by feet, or worse, shoes. Critically starved of space, any empty space excites Mumbai’s commuting public. So, they sprawl out, bags on the next seat and feet with or without shoes on the opposite one.
A Mumbaikar will find it riotously funny if she is told she is soiling the seat. If you can trek over mounds of garbage, sidetrack human faeces, glide into tattered taxis with mouldy upholstery and inhale SPM-dense fumes in a chattering autorickshaw, the unoffending shoe shouldn’t really bother you.
If you persist in arguing with her, there are three ways your sermon will be received: she ignores you; she snaps violently; she digs her heels further into the seat.
There is a uniform civil code, unwritten but inviolable, on Mumbai trains. Learn this and you’ll have earned the domicile tag. On a local, it is regular to be poked (not tapped) by someone and subjected to an offensive finger pointing in your direction. This is not actually an accusatory gesture but an over-simplified way of asking you where you will get down. If you are getting off much later, you are in danger of being publicly snubbed.
For people boarding at stations other than the starting point, there is no hope of bagging a seat. So, they conduct this poking and grimacing exercise to determine if any seated commuter would be getting up soon enough for her to claim that seat. The booking of the said seat is achieved by the means of another swift gesture. The seeker seals the deal by pointing the same finger in the direction of the subject of her last poke and then swipes in her own direction. Those with an aisle seat covet the window seat and those with a window seat facing the opposite direction of the train movement covet the seat across them.
Non-Mumbaikars must not to suggest improvisations by asking ridiculous questions such as: Can’t you tap gently and ask pleasantly, ‘Where are you getting off?’ and then resolve not to make a face if the destination doesn’t help your cause?
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