My grandfather always maintained that the best way to broker a lasting peace between India and Pakistan was to shovel all the leaders from both sides on a long distance train together. He was convinced that the shared joys and trials of train travel would achieve a convivial working relationship by journey's end. He's long dead now and travel has changed immeasurably — but the truth is inescapable even today.
There's something about trains in India that seems to dissolve boundaries between people.
Certainly, part of it is to do with the camaraderie victors feel. Having boarded the train means the passengers have already been assaulted by and triumphed over (in turn): the IRCTC servers when the tickets were booked, honking auto rickshaws disgorging aunties outside the station, coolies circling and baying like hyenas at the platform and a million harried parents dragging along their own body weight in luggage with one arm, while steering a brace of squawking kids on the other. So settling into one's seat and looking around, everyone is allowed a tiny smirk of victory and relief — a bond of sorts with one's fellow travellers.
Using any public transport means that some sharing is inevitable — a shared continuum of space and oxygen and shared knowledge of the collective clenching of bathroom muscles has been known to forge some sort of alliance over all journeys. However, trains go beyond this passive kinship into deeper territory.
It's only on trains for instance, that the default setting for seats is facing one another, which makes some amount of contact with the other travellers inevitable. The "settling in" that is essential to a train journey — delicate negotiations on whose suitcases can be shovelled under which berth, tentative questions on one's destination and a certain housekeeper-ish jostling while making up the beds — all further this interaction.
To cement the burgeoning relationship, the engagement ring of "seat adjustment" is always produced before the train has left the platform. Someone, somewhere, always needs a berth, a lower berth, a berth with the family, or simply a place to park their grandmothers. There's good natured grumbling, but the larger spirit of accommodation and "do unto others" always prevails.
After all, seat adjustment exists only to prove two facts