Train Rage

I keep telling myself that I will stop travelling by Mumbai local trains, and I keep going back. It is the fastest and cheapest way to get around even though travelling on it is a hellish experience. Today, I had an unpleasant experience on it, which made me reconsider my loyalties to it. I was standing in a crowded local this morning, minding my own business, when a man a few feet away from me accused me of hogging space. He claimed he had been watching me since a few stations back, saying that I hadn't moved an inch and that I was squashing the person next to me. I told him to mind his own business and that the person next to me could speak for himself. A testy exchange followed, but didn't last long. I was irritated but not raging. A few minutes later he piped up again, which made me mad. He spoke in Marathi, hoping to establish that I was an outsider but I replied rudely in Marathi. He then did the annoying thing that is unique to India where a person doesn't talk to you but about you to the people around him, hoping to win bystanders over to his side. I clearly looked out of place among the working class commuters of the second-class compartment so I didn't even try to do the same. A few minutes later someone else started arguing with me for not giving him enough room and I suddenly felt threatened. Maybe this is me reading too much into it, and maybe I was really being a dick. But I felt a clear vibe of class resentment, as though I was intruding into their class space and they were making me feel unwelcome. Some people move across class boundaries with ease, and some don't, attracting resentment. As crass as it  sounds, someone of my class is not accustomed to being talked to in that way by working class folk.