A sonic boom of rage, an intrusion on the everyday that our weary public transport users are all too familiar with

Commuters plagued by drug addicts or Gen Z-ers broadcasting lives to all around

- ROY CURTIS

IT arrived as a no-warning thunderstorm, darkening the atmosphere, pressing the air down beneath a quilt of foreboding, shattering the tranquillity of a mid-afternoon commute with deafening rumbles of four-lettered fury.

A row by loudspeaker, a sonic boom of rage, the kind of megaphone intrusion upon the everyday with which anybody who uses public transport in Ireland on an even infrequent basis will be wearily familiar.

"Quiet is peace. Tranquillity. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it," wrote Khaled Hosseini in his best-selling novel turned Hollywood movie The Kite Runner.

The book, along with its brother title, A Thousand Splendid Suns, has shifted almost 40million copies. The 2007 film grossed some $75million at the box office.

Clearly, the struggling young woman spitting expletives at ear-splitting. Angus Young Highway to Hell guitar-solo volume - the phone into which she was directing her choleric rant entirely superfluous if the target was anywhere this side of planet Jupiter - was a disciple of neither Hosseini's acclaimed original nor its big-screen adaptation.

"Ya f***in' pox-bottle. You took it. You were the only one who knew where I stashed it. I hope it f***in' poisons you, ya thieving c**t..."

The immediate, entirely understandable temptation is to recoil and mock and condemn.

To hazard a wild guess that the figure playing the lead role in this drama was not among Paddy Power's favourites to be named as the next Dalai Lama.

Nor was she on the return journey from a contemplative Lough Derg Easter retreat.

PITIFUL

As somebody who has seen very close relatives grapple with the rapacious demons of addiction, Ifelt - along with deep unease - an overwhelming sense of sorrow.

And hopelessness.