This is one question that I have heard so often from Mira without really knowing the answer so I decided I would sit and think over it. This question generally is asked in context of work or actually in context of my office. The tolerance level of an average Mumbaikar seems higher than the same of a north Indian. Mira is of the opinion that people would get together and raise a voice against the decision makers when not so bright decisions are made. Ever since I joined TIS, if there was a development that would adversely affect employees at large, Mira would ask “Why doesn't anyone protest against it”? I generally kept quite.

Today I thought why didn't anyone actually protested. To be fair I want to add that Mira's expectations are also wrong. People don't just take a red flag and start shouting slogans, something major needs to happen for that. Most of the time the things were not as serious as she felt and on many other occasions people anywhere, be it Bombay or be it Delhi, would have silently accepted it if not approved it. But this is my opinion and I could be wrong.

One thing I am almost certain about is I have seen people getting aggressive more easily and for smaller issues in Delhi as compared to Bombay so to be fair to Mira, people in Delhi would have made a noise at some of the things that were silently accepted by people in Bombay, including me.

When I thought of it, I felt one reason people in Bombay are not so aggressive is the conditioning. There is a lot more struggle in Bombay as compared to Delhi. By Sunday night I start getting very angry with the prospect of traveling in a train for the next five days. From Bombay standards I am the lucky one as I travel in the train from where it starts to where it terminates and most of the time I get a seat and the time spent in train is not bad - 45 minutes. There are people who have to stand for most of the way and have to travel in excess of an hour. So if you think about it one has to struggle for even the smallest of the thing in Bombay. Hell you have to push and shove people even while you are walking on the streets and on railway stations it is even worse when I am often walking in front of a homosexual who is almost trying to fuck me from behind with clothes on. When I turn around I see a poor soul who is not trying to have sex but just trying to find his way out or into the station.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that people are so used to suffering like this that they have developed immunity. They take these things as inevitable and don't bother about them. They just try to duck or move aside to avoid these things as much as possible and they are in the same mode when handling things they should protest about. They are always in the same mode, they even push and shove while entering and exiting an elevator as they would in a local train. I guess they keep practicing as they don't want to lose the edge.

So you have people who have learned to keep quite but the human nature doesn't change and all that pent up frustration does come out every now and then. They won't get angry at office where they might have to suffer the consequences but at places where they can safely shout at some one with no one saying anything to them.

I have two examples of the same. One example is of a guy near Manu's school. I one went to pick him up and parked my car at a place where it was blocking another car. It was wrong to do so and there is really no excuse for doing it. I thought I would pick Manu and drive off in no time but he wanted to have his snack sitting in the park and I forgot about the car. Manu's teacher called me and asked me to remove the car and as I was going there I saw a man and realised he was the one who wanted to take out his car “I am very sorry about this”
“You know this the word in English that you can use and break anything”
“Break! What have I broken?”
“You know I have been waiting here for so long”
“Really? But I parked my car here 5 minutes ago”
The gentleman said something which I didn't hear properly but those 5 minutes will be like an eternity for him.

After I moved out the car, he had a clear passage to go out of the complex and get stuck in infinite traffic jams on his way. He couldn't say anything to the authorities for dug up roads, to encroachers to make the small road even smaller for causing a delay but he could shout at me which he did.

The other example is the man who lives below our home. He had come twice complaining about the constant noises coming from our house. He complained that because of washing clothes in our bathroom, the ceiling of his bath room is falling apart and at night Mira and I are taking turns to stay awake just to make noises by dragging around the furniture. He can't say anything to Kalptaru and Oberoi who are making buildings on two sides of our building and are a 24X7 source of noise. He couldn't say anything to anyone for the noise of traffic from JV Link Road but he could come up to me and complain for the noises we made which he did. Actually he didn't stop there, he went ahead to make a written complaint to our housing society.

So if you are a frustrated Mumbaikar who is unable to shout at people generally making his or her life a living hell, I am at your service.