Dear diary,
I was sitting in a bus, DTC’s red AC bus to be precise. As usual I was busy with my thoughts. (When you manage a blog this serious, with no one else’s help, because you think they might interfere with what you actually wanted to say, you keep thinking all the time). Anyways, I was sitting in the DTC’s red AC bus. It was a cool morning and the tinted glass windows made it a treat to look at the skies above, a light brown colour sky with light yellow colour clouds. It seemed perfect like an edited photo, with perfect hue saturation. The bus, though a ‘new bus’ - like we call it, was now rickety. It doesn’t actually matter what you gift the people in metro cities. They just personalize it in their own ways. DTC had procured high end busses for Delhi roads, but Delhi roads are quickly turning them to blue-lines again. They were dented badly, thanks to the ex-blue-line drivers who now drove 60 lakhs of Indian tax-payers, apart from being government funded, with utmost devotion to god, sticking posters of lord Sai and Krishna all over their dashboard and non-authorized advertisements at other places. The conductor had drawn an arrow to point at his seat and had scribbled ‘Candacter Seet’ (Conductor’s seat) with a nail polish. So brilliant – a posh looking red TATA Marcopolo with red nail polish graffiti – so wow! Anyways I was in DTC’s red AC bus just sitting idle, thinking to kill my time. I feel so broken now-a-days that I don’t even care checking out girls. I barely open my eyes full; neither do I shut them completely while I sleep. So I guess I always stay in a ‘half sleepy’ mode. I have grown a little beard and I plan not to shave again in my whole life.
“Do you mind getting up?” a soft voice asked me from behind. I came to my senses, strained my eyes to open wide, managed to keep my equilibrium and turned around.
“Can you please get up? This is a ladies-seat.”
“You mean it is a seat reserved for ladies, right?” I got up with some difficulty and made way so she could move in. Maybe I should start eating from today. I was turning weak and I felt dizzy when I got up suddenly. I almost felt like I was blacking out. I had to move my feet a couple of times to keep balance.
“Bloody Drunkards” the cutie yelled and rested her bums on the seat. I smiled at her in pity.
So there I was – in DTC’s red AC bus, now standing because some trendy chick got me dislocated within 30 seconds and the bus was passing by a temple. The way my hottie prayed, I knew she was a Hindu. She joined both her hands and put them in front of her while she murmured some things. I liked to see her lips move. Not because she was a hottie, but because she was ‘my hottie’ now. I knew I was going to write about her stupidity tonight. It somehow made me constantly look at her and smile foolishly a couple of times whenever she looked me in eyes. I was making her quiet uncomfortable as she pulled her bag and half-hugged it, so I couldn’t stare at her ‘assets’. She looked at me again; she knew that I knew why she had done that. Now this was too much for me. I didn’t even look there once. It wasn’t my intention in the first place.
“Are you alright?” I startled her. She was too scared I guess. Tall brown guy, unshaved, heavy eyelids, shabby hair, dizzy and dead slow at his actions, and I am so good at scaring chicks – wow!
“Excuse me!!” She hugged her bag tighter.
“I asked if you are alright.”
“And what makes you presume I am not?”
“You think I am drunk?”
She kept silent and kept drifting in her seat to get away from me. I rested my hands on her arm-rest. I blew air on her face. Apart from my bad breath she couldn’t smell liquor. Well how could she? I hadn’t had a sip in ages.
“So you think I am drunk?”
“No. Not now. I thought…You couldn’t stand straight and you look…” she paused.
“I look like filth?” I smiled again, this time close to her face, “Guess what? Even my girlfriend is mad at me.”
So till now the scene is such – I am in this DTC’s red AC bus, I have a girlfriend and I am fluent in English. Though my hottie was stupid, but she wasn’t stupid enough to still think of me as a drunkard.
“Actually I am diagnosed to be suffering from chronic dengue. Some air-headed mosquito decided to new pinch me an early morning. Now I have some serious drop in my blood platelet levels. They say it has no cure except popping paracetamols and resting. So they will be admitting me today. I threw up every time I ate in last 4 days and I can’t sleep now-a-days due to this high fever”, I put my hand in front of her which she touched and was shocked.
“You are hot!!” She couldn’t control my temperatures I guess and shouted this loud enough to let the whole bus hear it. Many heads turned towards us with a look – ‘if he is hot then I gunned down Osama’.
“I am so sorry. You should have told me to let you sit. I am so stupid at times.” You see she admitted. Didn’t I tell you my hottie was stupid? She was about to get up to let me sit.
“AIIMS” (read-aims) the conductor shouted.
“Perfect timing baby. I am off here.” I just smiled at her, more important, she smiled back.
“I am really sorry for this. I had no clue or else I would have let you sit.”
“My girlfriend would love to meet you. I did write about you tonight if they let me use a laptop. You are not only stupid but blind.”
She was startled by my sudden unappealing choice of words but tried to smile half heartedly.
“Next time you grab your ladies-seat make sure the guy is not a drunkard. He could load you with enough curses to compensate for your 100 hand-joints.”
She understood what I was referring to. Joining hands in front of a temple is just not enough if you piss off someone who was as sick as me. I was bugging the lady a lot I guess. Moreover she was hot. Hot girls, generally, aren’t supposed to be bugged by guys.
“You know you are pretty, but like this DTC’s red AC bus; Marcopolo outside but blueline inside. It doesn’t matter however pretty you are in these metro cities, the city personalizes you to be cocky. Such is the similar analogy between chicks in busses.”
“I said I was sorry. Please don’t be angry.” She made a face which pulled out mother Teresa out of me.
“It’s cool. I am not angry at all. You are too much of a chick to make me angry.”
I got her smiling again and blushing. We had reached our stop and the automatic doors opened. I raised myself from leaning onto her and started to walk towards the door.
“Hey. Stop. Can I have a number, email id maybe?”
“Not too soon dear.” and I kept moving. She had risen from her seat and walked behind me. I got down from the bus but she didn’t. Of course it was my stop, not hers’.
“Hey. Wait. I don’t even know your name. Listen.”
The automatic doors shut and I winked at her. She stood near the gate and kept looking at me till the bus went out of my sight.
So there I was – Outside AIIMS ready to get admitted, in style.
PS : 1) I wonder how people in the bus might have thought her to be mad. She felt and ugly-sick guy hot and ran behind him to get his number. I totally love this thing about girls.
2) This is precisely the reason why I never visit religious places. I don’t deserve to be there. If I look inside, I am even more stupid that my hottie. Whenever I visited a temple (though it was a long time ago) I felt ashamed. I had abandoned my friends when they needed me most. I had compromised with my life to please a few people. I had done wrong to those less fortunate than me. I know I was not clean enough to be at a religious place. When I stood in front of god with my eyes closed, it made me feel ashamed. I didn’t want to replay all my bad memories in which my inability to act right had hurt people around me. It was painful and scary. I could have stood beside them if it were some other time. Everyone needed me at times when I was broke myself. I was too busy sorting out my own life when they needed me for support. How could I support them then? I had no way but to pretend, to be even more stupid than my hottie in bus today. She didn’t even know that she was offending. But I knew I was wronging the people I cared for, yet I did it for a few personal benefits. It’s all fucked up. It’s all messed. I guess its remorse. It does not matter how insightful you are, or how true are you to yourself, or how good hearted you are; this world just personalizes you to be betrayer. Such is a funny similar analogy between buses, chicks and life. All are bitches.
All a writer’s heart wishes is readers. If you find this work interesting then do share it liberally within your network.
