A Word and an Experience - "Fighting"

Its been a long time since I added to my “A word and an experience” series (from my indiatimes blogs). This time it is about “Fighting” - about fights in public. Last Sunday I was on a tram with my housemate and all seemed normal and slow just like every Sunday is. And out of the blue came 4 guys (in their teens) into the tram and started beating the daylights out of another guy (also in his teens) who was already inside the tram. They seemed to have vengeance written all over their faces. From the looks of the guy, he was an innocent and chubby bloke, but from the yelling it was quite clear that he had done something really wrong. The tram was on the move and none of us co-passengers intervened, in what I thought was but natural, given the aggressive nature of the fight. The tram driver was alerted and he came up and opened the door for the 4 guys to jump off the tram.

The guy who got beaten had a swollen eyebrow and a few bruises here and there. It was a shaking experience. My housemate and I debated if our actions were right in not intervening. We concluded that we had no clue why they were fighting and obviously there was some reason for them to fight. Given that we neither had an idea as to why they were fighting nor we had the authority or the relationship to try and forge a truce between them, our action in not intervening was right and justified. Had we intervened, we could have ended up with a few bruises as well.

The quartret were yelling that he had done something really bad but did not say what he had done. I suppose its not like he had a gun, coz if he did it would be affecting us as co passengers and then perhaps they could have warned us, but obviously it was not something like that and it was a personal fight.

On our way back, my housemate and I were on the lookout to see if those guys were anywhere in the vicinity.

Luckily it did not end up like “Khaya Peeya kuch nahin, glass thoda barah aana”.