Nobody was moving. Those sitting in my near-empty carriage took little notice of the automated warning to mind the doors, which slid shut compliantly with an hiss somewhere behind me, trapping us together in a tube of steel and electricity which surged relentlessly onward. For we were certainly trapped, that much was clear, and it was only a matter of somebody realising this and resigning, through looking outside at the trees and houses that rushed past, to the harsh reality that there was no escape.

The train, it would seem, was designed with two intentions playing on the minds of the developers. One, that passengers should be able to arrive at their desired destinations in a fraction of the time it would take them otherwise- a most noble venture- and two, that all people should experience in their lifetime a few moments of complete helplessness; for once the doors have closed, all faculties of self-reliance disintegrate within one’s mind. The train should, in fact, strike fear into the hearts of all passengers, simply because they cannot see and cannot determine that which is happening around them. And so it would seem that it is reasonable, therefore, to suggest, that the safest man on board a train (excluding the driver, although he too only has limited power over his machine!) is he who already does not have the capacity to see.

I was not such a person, but nonetheless sat, fresh-faced and without entertaining such morbid thoughts, looking out the window and at the people with whom I shared the carriage:

A foreign woman sat in the seat adjacent to mine, her head buried in a book and paying no attention to myself or anybody else. I wondered if she was ignoring her surroundings deliberately- asserting to us her cultural difference and her pride in it- or if she was too engrossed in her book to be interested in what was off the black and white pages. It didn’t matter, for I knew that there existed, in fact, only two types of people, irrespective of race or religion: Those who read books, and those who write them about what most miss as a result of not looking over the pages.

Further along, a young man stood wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase (probably a lawyer, or something) and immersed in his newspaper, as if there was actually something new to read. His eyes darted up briefly to meet mine, albeit only to make it abundantly clear to me that I was bothering him.