N. Raghuraman's column: How many of us are trained to see those 'invisible people'?

On Wednesday morning, a 20-25-year-old man was sitting on the window seat in that local train. At the same time, a middle-aged woman was sitting on the third seat with her eyes closed. The train's AC was rattling. I was in the front seat. There was no crowd in the train. I was looking around and wondering why there was no crowd in this AC local, and the young man's world was confined to the screen of his smartphone. A viral comedy was playing on his mobile and he did not have headphones. Since there were more punchlines coming in that video, he turned up the volume. The loud and exaggerated laughter of that comedy filled the empty space between the seats, and the sound clashed with the rhythmic clattering of the tracks. The middle-aged woman was trying to take a nap, but her head was unable to hold up due to the hard plastic of the seat. Maybe she would be getting up early in the morning, finishing the housework and going to the first shift of the office. Every time that recorded laugh was loud on the phone, his eyelids would startle, his face would wrinkle. But the young man did not pay attention. He was in his "personal empire", where the entertainment he was getting was what mattered to him. Welcome to a world where many people have mistaken public spaces for their private empire. For people like me, these new empires show a "lack of empathy" in modern life—where individual convenience often outweighs collective dignity. I opened the laptop, typed the paragraph above and asked him to silence the mobile because I have to do office work. Perhaps he felt bad, he got up and walked to the next compartment. Then the woman slept comfortably for 20 minutes. Five minutes before the last station, she got up and thanked me for the help. This reminded me of a press release from United Airlines that hit the office last week. The airline has issued a new rule, which has made some passengers happy, according to which the passenger can be taken off the plane if he listens to the audio without headphones. The airline had already implemented a "headphone policy", but has now updated the "Contract of Carriage" — the rules that passengers follow for flying — which clearly states that "if passengers listen to audio or video content without headphones, they will be taken off the plane or cannot be allowed to board." Airline spokesman Josh Freed said: "We always encourage our customers to wear headphones – and our Wi-Fi guidelines remind us of this. If you take any train from Narmadapuram to Bhopal, Chandigarh to Shimla, Jaipur to Jodhpur or Raipur to Bhilai, you will definitely see some passengers there, who consider their right to the peace of others, believe that their fun is more important than the peace of others. At the same time, if you go from Rourkela to Bhubaneswar in the eastern end, the lack of empathy is not limited to the voice, but is also seen physically. It is common for passengers to throw peanut peels around. This causes the most trouble to the housekeeping staff. Due to the possible shortage of LPG cylinders in the country, the catering service of the Railways may temporarily stop the arrangement of food and drink. If that happens, we'll have to bring our own food with us. But it is our responsibility to dispose of the garbage properly and respect the invisible housekeeping staff who come to clean after we leave. The trick is that real empathy requires moral imagination, so that they can be seen by all the people who are invisible or behind the scenes. It is the ability to hear the silence or silence that someone needs. Or remember the staff who clean up the mess we leave behind.