Phone calls on speaker, refusing to queue: Why don’t Indians respect other users of public space?

Last month I was in the business lounge at Delhi airport when the man next to me, linen shirt crisp, noise-cancelling headphones hanging around his neck like an expensive irony, spent 40 minutes on speakerphone, his business banalities booming across the room.

Nobody said anything. But a few of us exchanged the look. You know the one. Eye contact that contains an entire indictment: why are we like this, what is wrong with us, why can’t we just...not. Then we retreated back at our screens and ceded the room to the loudest man in it.

The man looked like the kind of man who probably prided himself on being well-travelled, well-resourced, frequenting Frankfurt layovers and going Mauritius holidays. He must have opinions on single-origin coffees, and posted reels from Tokyo cafes.

Yet in shared spaces, he collapsed, like so many others. We make endless video calls drowning out restaurant diners, play reels in full-volume in lounges, or refuse to form queues with personal space as a quaint, alien notion.

We know better but choose otherwise. It’s easy to call this entitlement. But I think it is more interesting than just that.

There are the usual explanations: public space in India is treated like government property, which is to say everybody’s dumping ground....

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