Respected Sir/Madam,

Sorry, I must admit that as I write this to you I am unable to control my laughter ­— in fact, Mrs. Mathrubootham has just come to ask if the retirement lifestyle has finally caused a mental imbalance in my brain.

Now that I show her the news item on my mobile phone, both of us are laughing. Sir/Madam, there are tears in our eyes from the comedy.

Last time there was so much laughter in my house was when my oversmart son ignored my suggestion to use our family travel agent Gurumurthy. He said, ‘Appa, travel agent and all who uses in the 21st century. Why you want to give money to a man to browse the Internet when I can do the same and save commission?’ I made a cup of 20th-century tea and sat on a nearby 19th century–design sofa to watch my 21st-century son perform a 1st-class bit of comedy. After a few minutes he came running with his laptop to show me how he had found London Heathrow tickets for his family holiday that was lakhs and crores cheaper. Congratulations, I said, but why is your flight only six hours long? That is when my son realised that he had put LHE instead of LHR in the Internet online box and found extremely cheap tickets to go to beautiful European family holiday destination Lahore.

But today, Kamalam and I are cackling with mirth because we have just seen news of the rowdiness that has taken place on the new Tejas Express train from Mumbai to Goa.

Sir/Madam, what kind of an idiot puts LCD TV and headphones and hi-tech toilets on an Indian train? What did they think? That the public would sit and use everything decently and go back home? And that too on a train from Mumbai to Goa? Sir/Madam, in the history of this country has anybody gone from Mumbai to Goa for any civilised purposes? If you want to try such modern things on a train, why not do it on one from Chennai to Trivandrum, or Bangalore to Chennai or Chennai to Hyderabad?

And now everybody is upset because passengers scratched the screens, stole the headphones and destroyed the toilets.

There is one person who is not at all surprised: I, J. Mathrubootham.

Sir/Madam, I urge you to just go and stand outside an AC restaurant. The hotel door would carry a sign saying ‘PULL’ in jackfruit-sized letters. And yet the public would stand outside and push and push and push and push the door for 20 minutes as though it were a broken-down Ambassador car.

When they go inside they tell their children Shamiana and Maryaavan, "Please go and destroy everything in this restaurant, it is included in the service charge." Then, while Maryaavan is trying to cover a Buddha statue with salt and pepper, the parents sit and complain about India — in Paris, children sit quietly and eat; in Frankfurt, the service is amazing; in London, the table is made of gold the plate is made of diamond and the spoon is made of Mysore Pak, but here everything is so dirty.

Bloody fools! Your Shamiana is drawing Mona Lisa with a chunk ofvadumaangai pickle on the wallpaper, and in the toilet your Maryaavan is trying to break-dance and urinate at the same time while you sit and complain about India!

Sir/Madam, public will be public. The government should have the common sense to know that the moment people step out of their homes they immediately forget all civic sense. In the future, I hope Indian Railways will remove all such modern items from all trains. Trains are for travel, not entertainment. Will you go to cinema hall and say One ticket for Sindhu Bhairavi, please, but during the movie please carry me to Rameswaram?

Yours in exasperation,

J. Mathrubootham