"Gentlemen will lift the seat."

Few days back, I was travelling by train from Pune to my home-town. It was a pretty boring journey as I had no one accompanying me. And to add to my misery, I was travelling by 2nd AC. Now one would think, "Travelling by 2nd AC...that should add to the comfort...but not misery". But that does not hold true for me. Being gregarious by nature, I was hating the deadly silent and serene surroundings, where no-one was interested in talking to any stranger (including me).

In the otherwise boring journey, an interesting thing happened. It was 4 a.m. in the morning when I woke up. Reason?? a nightmare?!?! Naahh...rather I badly wanted to pee. I rushed to one of the toilets. It was a western style toilet. And I was just about to start to have a leak when all of a sudden, I observed a line written on the wall next to the commode that caught my attention. It read "Gentlemen will lift the seat.". I looked down and...Oh my God, I was not acting like a gentleman. But I am a gentleman and so immediately, I lifted the seat up. Feeling proud of myself on being and behaving like a gentleman...I peed with honour, washed my hands properly and checked if I turned off the tap properly. After all, I am a gentleman and I should behave like one. I returned to my berth and lied down. But I was amused with something. That line had an impact on me in no time. And the reason my brain acted upon the line in no time was the word "Gentlemen". Had it been a normal line saying something like "Please...do this, do that...blah blah", my brain would have easily overlooked it (especially when it was 4 a.m. in the morning and you have got up to pee :) it's easy to neglect everything else).

And I was wondering that even in a closed toilet, where you are all alone by yourself, you care about being called a Gentleman...not by anyone else...but by yourself (or probably a dead wall). Isn't the feeling/wish/desire of being special/gentleman so deeply ingrained in any human being that a person sometimes ends up doing anything (good/bad) and everything to gain that importance. And this is the very tendency that is used by all the advertisements, marketing people,etc. Just by making you feel that using a deodorant can turn you into a girl magnet, they make you buy it.

Yet another thing I realized that this power of FEEL GOOD factor can actually be harnessed in a proper way. Today what I observe and probably what is true as well is that the human brain (in general) has become blind to instructions reading like "Please don't...blah blah", so may be signboards having instructions like "Gentlemen will not spit here" or "Well mannered will switch off mobile phones" will serve the purpose better than "Please Do not spit" or "Please Switch off the mobile phones"...and here is my first experiment... "Gentlemen, brainy, well mannered, intellectual, smart, handsome people will leave a comment after reading this post" ;) :) After all, we all are well mannered gentlemen ;)