The Empty Seats on the Train

On class and division

The train was already full when it arrived — a small replacement for all the cancelled ones, another day of “technical issues” and “reduced service.” People stood shoulder to shoulder, bags pressed against knees, strangers breathing each other’s air. I looked over and saw them — the empty first-class seats, glowing like an insult. A whole section of comfort fenced off from the people actually using the train.

Then came the woman whose job it was to enforce it. Fierce, uniformed, apologetic but firm. She told us we couldn’t sit there. And I said to her — quietly but clearly — “I have a lot of opinions about this, but none of them are directed at you personally.”

Because they weren’t. She didn’t build this system. She was just made to carry it out.

That’s the cruel poetry of it, isn’t it? The people with the least power are made to enforce the most senseless hierarchies. The same logic that built colonialism, capitalism, class segregation — just scaled down to a train carriage. They divide us into classes, then make sure the people at the bottom turn their frustration sideways instead of upward.

You could say it’s just a train. That it’s not that deep. But it is. Everything is. Every “no” from a person who doesn’t want to say it. Every “rule” that prioritises comfort for a few over the dignity of the many. Every silence we swallow because we don’t want to make a scene.

And today, I couldn’t be quiet anymore. Because the whole thing is a metaphor for the world we live in: the first-class carriages of power and privilege sitting half-empty while the rest of us are told there’s no space left.

But there is space. There’s always been space. It’s just guarded by those who were told it’s their job to keep the rest of us out.