[Mb-civic] Talking to strangers on the London Underground

[Alexander Harper]

This was penned yesterday by Sathnam Sanghera, a Sikh, who writes for the FT.
AB


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Main page content:
Sathnam Sanghera: Be a devil, say ‘hello’
By Sathnam Sanghera 
Published: August 18 2005 19:31 | Last updated: August 18 2005 19:31

I’ve found myself doing some pretty embarrassing things in the course of writing this column – walking around the office in a gorilla suit, for example, hiring an escort for an evening, eating cat food on toast. But last week I did something so cringe-making that the thought of it, even seven days later, turns me puce.

In short, I went up to a complete stranger on the London Underground and wished them a good morning.

Non-Londoners, I realise, may require some context. And this is it: people travelling on public transport in Britain’s capital don’t communicate. There’s no chit-chat. No eye contact. Nothing. As someone (probably on the Evening Standard) once put it, if God wanted people to talk on the Tube, He wouldn’t have invented the Evening Standard.

So what, you may ask, led me to break this taboo last Friday morning? Well, it all began a few weeks ago, on the first Thursday morning after the failed London bombings, when I woke up, felt a bit frightened and thought: “Actually, I’ll cycle to work today,” and then: “Actually, I’ll get the Tube,” and then: “Actually, I’ll cycle.”

In the end, sheer laziness triumphed and I padded off to my local Underground station. On the train my anxiety turned into something more intense when a nervous-looking man of Asian descent took a seat next to me. He was demonstrating so many of the well-publicised characteristics of the average suicide bomber – dark complexion, aged 20-35, sweaty, bulky bag – that at the next station I got off, walked down the platform and joined a carriage at the other end.

Still feeling jittery in my new compartment, I noticed that, standing opposite me now was a City worker looking as anxious as I felt. I thought about smiling at him, but being a Londoner, I didn’t. But when he got off at the next station, walked down the platform and joined the train at the other end, the strange reality of the situation dawned on me: I was in fact demonstrating many of the well-publicised characteristics of the average suicide bomber and he was terrified of me.

Afterwards, I was briefly furious with him, and then briefly furious with myself, and then curious about what Asian men such as me could do, in this era of fear-inspired carriage- hopping, to stop giving fellow passengers the willies. Obviously, not carrying a large briefcase would help. But would it convince Tube users that we were fully paid-up members of the decadent west if we wore our work passes on our jackets, or carried a copy of Pride and Prejudice, or played the new Foo Fighters album very loudly on our iPods?

In recent weeks I have tried all these things, sometimes in combination, but the suspicious glances have continued. Meanwhile, comments from Asian professionals feeling similarly paranoid haven’t suggested better solutions: one man admitted on a website that he now lugs his luggage around in a transparent polythene bag; another that he now carries a bottle of wine around, even though he is a teetotaller; and another that he now sports a sticker declaring “Don’t freak – I’m a Sikh”.

But it struck me last week, as I read an article in a local newspaper about Dominic Nelder, a 34-year-old teacher running a campaign to improve the atmosphere on the Tube, that I hadn’t tried an obvious strategy: chat. This is what Dominic has been trying to encourage by spending every day this month travelling on trains, greeting passengers. I caught up with him last Thursday on the Jubilee line. Dressed in a comedy pinstripe suit and sporting a bowler hat inscribed with the message “Say hello, wave goodbye”, he wasn’t hard to miss. “So far I have received 7,190 responses!” he declared as he shook my hand. “I am aiming for 31,000 by August 31!”

That sounds like a lot, I said. How much time does he spend on the Tube? “I start at 7am and finish at 8pm.” Five days a week?! “No, seven.” Gosh. And is someone paying him? “No. I’m paying for the tickets myself. I wanted to help after the bombs. It would make such a difference to the atmosphere if people said hello.”

I said I agreed with him, but at the same time the idea of chatting to strangers terrified me. We all know that the only people who try to talk to strangers on the Tube are either drunk, foreign or mad. Even Tony Blair, who in 1999 famously tried to strike up a conversation with a Tube traveller, was rebuffed and left to shuffle awkwardly through his papers.

Dominic replied that he understood the apprehension, but chatting wasn’t so hard once you started. In fact, he added, as he turned to a stranger, he could demonstrate how easy it was.

At this point Dominic caught the eye of the man next to him and remarked: “Good afternoon!”

As I held my breath, never having witnessed such a scene in seven years of Tube travel, the stranger, incredibly, smiled back. It was a lovely moment.

Indeed, Dominic made chat look so easy, and the man in the suit responded so warmly, that I tried it myself the next day. Sidling up to the woman next to me, who, I could tell, had me down as someone fishy, I trilled: “A very good morning to you!”

Unfortunately, her reaction wasn’t quite as generous as Dominic’s 7,191st response. In fact, she glanced back as if I had just asked her to hold down a baby seal while I clubbed it to death. And then, at the next stop, she got off without comment. I didn’t see if she joined a carriage at the other end, but cycling to work suddenly felt like an appetising prospect.
 


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