You just want to cross the road, hop into your car, drive home and get through the evening with minimal talk. There’s a shopping bag in your right hand, your work bag over your left shoulder and a million things in your head.
But there is a bus standing beside you. You wait a minute for it to drive away. But the bus is not moving. The engine is kept running as if they are waiting for more passengers. You slowly walk in front of the bus now and look up at the driver who is not looking back at you.
341E
Once you have seen the sign on the bus, you can’t look away. You sense the traffic around you but you don’t hear it. What you hear now is the LED sign on the bus. Yellow dots making soft clicks as they move from right to left.
Bangur Nagar
You don't want to go there now. You slightly shift the bag in your hand and feel the weight of the other bag on your shoulder. The voice in your head is telling you not to do it. But the voice starts to dim even as it is speaking.
It's just one smoke. What harm can it do.
The door closes as soon you walk in and the bus starts moving. Of course, they were waiting for you to get on it. The bus is full but not crowded. As always, you prefer to stand and appreciate the functional design of the bus interior. That's when you realise your hands are free from the weight of the bags now. You stretch your arm and legs a little. What a bus! You can't help thinking. You wish you could take this one everyday.
The bus inclines as it climbs on the flyover and keeps going and going until it takes off into the sky. You can now see where the polluted air ends and the clean air begins. You look down upon the little SUVs and the busy people going around town. Through flyovers, underpasses, expressways, roundabouts and what not. They’ve all been going around the same circles for years and years.
You make up a joke right there.
‘Hey, so where does this Ring Road take me?'
'It takes you nowhere, it brings you back right here'
You chuckle within yourself. Ring Road, Outer Ring Road, Concentric Ring Road, Sea-linked Ring Road. Everything brings you back here only.
Why do smart people live such stupid lives? Why are they all running about in circles in such congested spaces? Pushing ahead, pulling back, elbowing, scampering. To buy a bigger car? An apartment on the 44th floor? But they still have to keep chasing each other on the streets. The streets that take you nowhere. That's how you get ahead apparently.
Oh well, if only they get on this bus. Everyone seems so happy here! Just look at them!
Oh wait, you know these people. Not know them, know them. There's the aged school watchman who would wear a red beret cap, that hotel receptionist in a different country, the elderly lady you talked cricket with on a bus journey, the cat who only wants to climb over you and sleep on your chest, your classmate from 3rd grade who went to the same dance class as your sister.
They’re all only glimpses now. Glimpses holding stories.
As the bus flies higher you can see how the city is tied in knots. It's a trail of paper that is holding it all together. It's the paper that keeps people running, chasing and elbowing. It's the paper that does not allow people to sell their Ferrari and walk away from it all.
Now, who hasn't been to the Himalayas and asked themselves - What if?
But there's always the paperwork. The damned paperwork.
The bus gets on such a steep incline that you fall back on a soft white mattress. You now see a creaking ceiling fan right above you. You watch the sides of the bus come apart and turn into more familiar beings. The wall next to your childhood bed on which you wrote secret codes in pencil, there are posters on the other wall with slogans on them, some dreams, some memories, that hostel room with no sunlight and undergarments hanging by a rope, your own pad with a fridge full of beer, that broken chair you have to warn people about when they are sitting on it, the barsati with a terrace and someone making chai, plants that somehow believe in you, the warm smell of unwashed utensils, laughter from the other room.
You don't want to close your eyes now. You know it could all go away in an instant.
Image made on craiyon.com
wonderful imagery! loved this piece :) It could become a short story!