Victoria-Line Fate

The tube was delayed today because someone commited suicide by jumping in front of it - an act that has been made commonplace with the description of "a person under the train."

I was warned of the frequency of this situation in London, and also of the apathy with which it is received. Subway travelers see it merely as an inconvenience, and there is no expression of sympathy for a lost soul whose final moments were simply the cause of a jolt in the flow of a London commute.

I have to wonder, though, how many times one must consider such an act before commiting themselves to it. How many thousands of times must one watch a subway train rush past their own still body before he or she sees it as nothing more than an instrument; a means to an end? After accumulative hours of staring at the empty tracks while waiting for your train, there must be an epiphany of sorts - perhaps on an evening of particular hardship, when salvation from the melancholy of waiting on a platform is offered in instant when you look up from contemplating the track filth to see your approaching train. And in that moment, one must realize that the train offers an escape not only from this perpetual, lonely moment, but from this life of equal meaninglessness. And so they jump into the empty tracks, and fill them futilely with their own remorse.

But how horrifying for the subway train driver to be awoken from the mundanity of his daily tube route to watch the final seconds of a stranger's decisiveness, and to have no control over his inevitable influence on their fate? I wonder whether the automatic reaction is to look away or watch in horror... And what of those individuals employed to clean the train and tracks afterwards? These are things that nobody discusses but surely people must wonder... I presume they have training for such situations, and counseling, too, for those who have too much heart to stomach it, but surely their salaries cannot compensate for such a startling reality.

It's really rather unfortunate, and does indeed prove to be nothing more than a tremendous inconvenience for everyone involved.

Except, of course, for the "person under the train."