Get back or I'll knock you down

There's a hair-trigger explosion built into every single human being — I don't care who you are, it's there. It's that little No-Go Zone with a trip-wired bomb that goes Kaboom! if anyone strays into it.

For some, it might be rudeness that sets off their bomb.
For others, it could be people faking an accent.
For another set of others, it could be loud mobile phone ringtones.
Then of course, there's people eating their own boogers, people burping loudly etc. etc. etc.
The list is endless...

While those things can and do often annoy me, none of them are what makes my hair-trigger bomb go off. What does it for me is the lack of Entry-Exit Etiquette (which will hereafter be referred to as EEE or E3? I like E3). So, what is E3 (I like it a lot; rolls right off the tongue and into your heart)?

Put very simply, it's about the etiquette and manners one should really observe when alighting from or awaiting entry into a building, train, bus, elevator, tram etc. It is the awareness that people who are exiting are entitled to right of way and those trying to enter must yield. Bloody obvious fact, you'd think. After all, you can't keep filling a glass with water unless you take some of it out.

Clearly not obvious enough as evidenced by the fact that there are some train stations in Mumbai, its suburbs and outskirts, where it is physically impossible to get off the train, thanks to the barrage of people trying to squeeze their limbs inside. On an average day, you manage to get off the train, with no more than a smear of someone's sweaty armpit across you. On a bad day, you end up getting bruised, your spectacles get damaged and your portable music player might find itself bereft of any earphones.

On a terrible day, however, all of that happens and in addition, you are still stuck on the train, unable to alight and dreaming of one of the good days, when you avoid the train altogether. The story's the same in an elevator, with an army of people trying to run you down as you aim to achieve that oh-so-difficult task of stepping off onto your floor.

Things get really bizarre when you get to taxis though. Taxis aren't your usual form of public transport in that they're a private sort of public transport, if that makes any sense (unless of course, you look at the concept of shared taxis, which is a whole different ballgame). But you would expect that a taxi would pull up at your chosen destination and that you would get to pay the fare and step out of it, making way for the next customer.

Right? Well, not always. Take for instance, this recent experience I had of trying to vacate a taxi while a man clutching a computer monitor (those box-type ones, not LCD screens) tried to make himself at home... on my lap!

Taxi pulls up
Surly north Indian taxi driver quotes price
I says, "Bullshit, show me the card"
Fare is lowered to normal rate and I pay
I notice man with computer monitor outside
Feel the need to hurry up so man can sit down quickly
I get my change from driver and open door.

"Here, put this inside," says the PC monitor guy
I says ok
Takes the monitor and keeps it inside
As i try to leave taxi, monitor man is entering and about to sit on my lap
WTF? I asks him and gives him a gentle nudge
He doesn't budge
So, some increased momentum from my palms moving forward, is transferred to his body which finds itself falling out of the taxi and onto the road.

"What was your problem?" I asks him rhetorically as I leave the taxi.

I'm usually quite a non-violent person, but when the hair-trigger is pulled, I am given to the odd incidents like these or jumping out of trains at a station with my elbows raised to protect myself from and smack some of the people running inside. I get the same primal sense of joy from knocking these non-E3-inclined people down as I used to in a moshpit. So sue me.