Maladjusted

As people we are all used to making adjustments just to get what we want, whether we like it or not, and as Indians we are more familiar with the term. Whether in school, college, in the train or the bus, we always squeeze to make place for that one more person in our lives, on our seats and sometimes even on our toes.

I have nothing against making adjustments just to accommodate that one more person, but not at the cost of my well-being. I get all irritated and fidgety when I am squeezed and scrunched; I feel encroached upon. The feeling is worse when it happens in church. I mean, I make all the effort to get there well before time so that I can sit comfortably in a decent enough spot, and then the latecomers straggle in and ruin my peace. I know, I am supposed to display charity and goodness especially in the house of God, but I cannot, honestly cannot. How can I when my shoulders are scrunched in, I have someone nudging and jostling me every time I move?

For the last few weeks, I’ve had to sit up, squeezed just to make place for a pregnant woman, a lady with a child and a younger girl and her sister. If there is place, it is indeed shameful to deny someone a seat, but when we are already shoulder to shoulder, how can the usher expect us to adjust? I cannot pray when I am distracted by people stepping on my toes and elbowing my sides. What is the use of pray when I want to shove the next person or am grumbling about the lack of decency in people? When we were asked to shift and make place for the pregnant lady, there was place to sit, but the lady next to us wouldn’t move her kid who was sleeping across the bench. This only meant that I had to move forward so that the pregnant lady could be seated.

Okay, so you make the place, but then the newcomer decides that they want more. They start shifting, moving forwards and backwards till they can rest their backs. Hello? Whatever happened to being grateful that you got to at least park your butt? Even the fourth-seat passenger in the train will ask you to try and move! What happens then is that you have to take your shoulders in, sit with your legs crossed and lean towards the next person, all the while making you look like the interloper!