Today’s chair-car coaches are classy. Compared with the earlier “individual window” provision for a seat, they have windows spanning two seats. The window is as though stretched to cinemascope proportions. However, it is now a shared resource.
The moment you grab the window seat, you hoist the sunshade. The late afternoon sun streams in, and as the train picks up speed, it is a pleasure to leave the teeming metropolis behind. Just when the mind eases into a reverie, lulled by the images of a pastoral landscape, it is jolted by an unexpected interruption. The man from the adjoining seat pulls the sunshade down. He makes a frontal attack, “Why did you pull up the sunshade? It is so bright outside!” You answer, “I wanted to look out of the window!” He stares at you incredulously, on the verge of questioning, “Are you a five-year-old child?”
“I get a headache when it is so sunny,” he says. Eventually, you arrive at a compromise — the sunshade is pulled three-quarters down. Still he mumbles that the sun is in his eyes. And all you can see is the adjoining track and a few pebbles.
