On the four-hour bus ride today, there sat an obnoxious man in the seat behind me for most of the journey. For an irritatingly large part of the ride, he bellowed into his cellphone, speaking to one “client” after another. The man claimed to be the “director” of a “crushing” company – stone crushing I gathered – that was the “market leader”. It’s a different matter that several people he called could not identify who he was.

Apart from the fact that he used sugar-coated “Hellojis” for one category of people – and even invited himself for elusive lunches and dinners – and snapped at his “MBA” employee for not making enough calls, he got on my nerves simply because of his utter disregard for fellow travellers.

He was not the only one to talk one the cellphone. The woman next to me did. The guy across the aisle did. They were almost inaudible. The fellow behind me amply made up for everyone else.

Yes, I should have turned around and asked him – Mr Nagesh, as he repeated for the nth time – to pipe down.

The man, I must say, is not an exception either. And it’s not the ambient noise that makes the likes of him holler into their cellphones. For the lack of a better excuse, I think it’s just the way they are: they think the people around them are not worth considering.

And it is up to us to remind them once in a while that they are wrong.