Thursday, February 24, 2005

old people and the MRT

So myself and a friend were at the MRT the other day. That in itself is a big thing: we're snobs even though always running out of money (cabs, hello?). Well yeah, it was really crowded. Not normal crowded like during rush hour but like really really packed. We had to miss 3 trains before we finally got into one, crowded, sweaty, carriage, just to go one further stop to where life, we believe really originates, i.e. Orchard.

Yep, so after enduring roughly 5 minutes of breathing quite uncomfortably through the mouth, we got off (I'm sure some one got off at the rate bodies were pushing against each other) and we were quite surprised to see that the station at Orchard was quite deserted. Chingay (the parade of dreams) was going on, gay is right btw, and everyone, I mean everyone, boys, girls, sexually confused, de-sexed, un-sexed and trannies were out there, with goggled eyes, staring at the pretty decent and even sometimes magnificent floats depicting everything from local food to Sri-Lankan dee-lights. This seems like the ending to a story. It actually is. Coz what I want to tell you actually happened, usually happens on the train.

Speaking of trains, it usually is a train of thought I have in trains when I see old people on trains.
Old people, our venerable aunties and uncles, are supposed to fall into 3 categories
a). the meek kind that hobbles around
b). the tough yet grandmotherly kind who allows you to snuggle into her folds of god-given comfort
and c). the mean, bitchy kind that will go straight to hell coz she ruined her son's, his wife's and her husband's life.

Unfortunately, the first two categorizations go straight to hell when it comes to squeezing into the train at rush hour.

Typical scenario:

Waiting for the train to rush into the station, the screen says the train is two minutes away which means it will be here in less than a minute. So we slowly inch forward towards the yellow line, safely behind it as the kindly announcers have already told us. And we wait patiently and cautiously so that the old lady behind us doesn't go flying into the face of the oncoming train with a clumsy adolescent flick of the wrist.

The train arrives with a whoosh and we resign ourselves to the effort in trying to get onto the damn thing. However, my plans to slowly but surely progress are halted by the bitch behind me, who, even though is around 125 years old has the strength of a damn rhinoceros in heat.

Unfortunately, or fortunately for my detractors (those who want Gautam to go straight into hell), it doesn't end there.

We feel compelled to give our seats to the elderly because they seem to deserve more comfort than we do. Usually I don't have a problem with doing that if they fall into the first category. However, these bitches, and they're mostly women, think that because they've been living longer than us, they've achieved a sense of Nirvana, which entitles them to a plastic seat on the damn thing they're traveling in, which btw, they shouldn't really need, as Nirvana brings with it a sense of content that transcends the primal urges to consume and visit relatives and with that a desire to transport oneself is isolated to a mental process that does not involve the MRT, obviously so, since it is very much a physical phenomenon: a result of the Modern Man's desire to consume.

Yeah, old people slip into all sorts of freaky bouts of bi-polar disease on the trains. The monsters usually don't give up until they get a bloody seat and then they close their eyes, serenely, as if they were the fucking Queen of England.
So what do YOU think?
I'm going straight to hell aren't I?

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