I am calling this series - Stories from Traveling by Public Transport in Bangalore
Day: Thursday, 14th March 2013
Time: 8AM
As I sat in the bus, headed to work, a girl was seated to my left. I
was reading “The Pilgrimage” by Coehlo, one of my favourite authors. Something
about the girl was distracting me. I re-read a sentence almost thrice and still
wasn’t able to move on with my reading. That’s when it happened!
The girl by my side, unzipped her backpack (a tell-tale sign that you
are in the IT capital of India is people with laptop bags that contains what
seems like everything one would need to stay alive stranded in a desert for an
entire month!), she fished out a packet of something. She began opening the
packet, the plastic making enough noise to fill the usual silence inside
the a/c environs of the Volvo bus. The noise was bad enough as I tried telling
myself that I was needlessly irritated because I couldn’t concentrate on my
reading, and out came a biscuit, Bourbon cream layered biscuit at that. And I
thought to myself “The poor girl has probably not had her breakfast and is just
hungry.”
Feeling slightly less irritated, I got back to reading the same
sentence for the fourth time. You might thing I’d have moved on with my reading
but it was not to be.
As the biscuit was bitten into, what followed was slightly worse than
the racket of the plastic packet a few moments earlier. It you have had the
good fortune of witnessing someone chewing their food with great abandon;
crumbs flying out and much chewing sounds emanating right from the gut upwards
to the throat and out through the mouth, I strongly recommend that you stop
reading this now. I could try to help you visualize what I was witness to but
that would mean taking away your innocence a little bit. Don’t say I didn’t
warn you.
Moving on, as the biscuit was consumed with great passion and oblivious to the God-Knows-Why discomfort it might have caused any co-passengers aboard,
out came the packet once again. Oh yes! The packet was promptly stashed away into
the bag after the first biscuit was freed from its shackles. The entire scene
repeated.
That’s when my eyes met the eyes of another girl sitting on the other
side of the aisle by the window. Very briefly, mind you, a mutual electrifying bond
was created between her and I.
I got back to the sentence, now probably my most favoured sentence in the book, for
the fifth time. The chewing and devouring had stopped so there was some hope
that I might be able to digest the full meaning of this elusive sentence from a
book by after all my favourite author.
No such luck, my lovelies. My very considerate and hungrylicious neighbour
prepared to unzip the bag once again. This time though, I was mentally prepared
for the onslaught of the sounds that would follow as she devoured yet another
biscuit, chewing with her mouth so wide open that just maybe, the entire
backpack might have fit into it.
However, I was in for a great disappointment because this time around,
a noisier yellow and green packet emerged. Lo and behold! It was a packet of
potato wafers (also known as chips before wafers became the cooler term to
use).
Our eyes met once more, the electrifying bond converted into a shared
smile, a nod and then each of us looking out of our respective windows to
distract ourselves from the uncontrollable distraction that was my neighbour.
After what seemed like an hour of the repeat performance but with crunchier and
more crackling sounds added to it, the pack went back into the great abyss of
the backpack. To be fair to my co-passenger, I must clarify that this wafery episode
lasted about 10 minutes (let it not be said that I exaggerated or stretched the
truth, thereby rendering my writing a work of fiction. There, I’ve set the
record straight.)
Finally, I re-read that lovely sentence written after great thought (I
am sure) by Mr. Coehlo. I moved on to
the next sentence and then the next and so on. There was peace at last and my
world was spinning at the right speed yet again. Happy and content, I was now deeply
engrossed in my book.
The end? Definitely not… just a small scene left, I promise.
Yes, the bag was unzipped one last time. As I imagined all the crunchy,
crispy, crumby and noisy packaged food imaginable in the world being retrieved
from the great, big bag, I was let down yet again, as a small box appeared instead. Fortunately,
I was disappointed only for just a few seconds. My girl’s hand overturned the
box and brought out two small pieces of innocent looking rectangular white tablet-like
elements and popped them into her harmless looking mouth. Chewing gum, what
luck! And then the chewing began right into my ears, for now she had a great
urge to look out the window over my shoulder as well!
One last time, our eyes met and this time the bond that had transformed
into a shared smile moved to the next level in our newfound relationship –
uncontrollable laughter and yes, we did sense all our co-passengers smiling
pityingly at me, while my neighbour was oblivious and continued with the
movement of her lower mandible while peering over my shoulder.
And so I had no choice but to shut my book, put it into my very own IT
signature-style backpack and sit through the next 20 minutes or so to reach my
destination, enjoying the sights and sounds of nature so close to me. I was
blessed. Amen.
LOL..poor you! loved the account, Amitha :-)
ReplyDeleteThank you Uma! Hoping to share more stories... have tons of them :)
ReplyDeleteam sure there are many who can relate to your predicament. Then again, you haven't had a true blue public transport experience until you have been invited to a religious gathering/ mass marketing event or been felt up a member of your own gender :P
ReplyDeleteRohit babu... Let's not go there... I have public transport stories from the '80s and '90s that might have to be censored before it is deemed fit for your age group to read! ;)
ReplyDeleteInterestingly connecting to everything written.. no I am tempted to put down my experiences..
ReplyDeletei admire the way,or the style of presentation ! I never knew until today,that an hungry-person's eating could me so humorously narrated! keep it up..
ReplyDeletegot reminded me of a friend who used to write such snippets from his travels in bus ..
ReplyDeletethis was funny read !
Pity you though ..