Walk among Equals

Few weeks ago, on a humid breezeless Chennai evening, I had to catch a bus to get back to a place temporarily called "home".

There were people around me whom I didn't know; yet I felt at peace. One of the crowd. There was no sun though I felt the heat emanating out of the tarred road, it felt as if the road was trying to breathe its heat out. A heated teapot put under a stream of water to cool.

I could feel the sweat tricking down my spine, tickling me and giving me a chill. Minutes went by and I checked my watch again, and saw that a quarter of an hour had passed, though it seemed to me that I had been standing there for more than two hours.

The wait was long and I started counting backwards from 543. At 437, I stopped. I couldn't count either ways. It seemed that my mind went blank. No thought. No sensation. I looked around and it registered in my head that there was a Higginbothams' opposite to the bus-stop.

I started walking towards the big white building made majestic by glass doors and artificial lights. The honking auto brought me out of the reverie and I walked back tiredly to the solace of the waiting shed. I still stared at the big building and saw a inconspicous 1844 written in green, on top of the building - like an ugly git on a pasty face.

There was nothing to do and I had lost the count too, so I stared at the building opposite and I read "Associated Printers" written in blue on a small white rusting board. It was a neighbour to the Higginbothams'. Those two seemed to me to be like the Prince and the Pauper. Like a haughty giant standing sneering down on a miserable dwarf. I felt empathetic with the rusting board.

The sweat had glued my salwar-kameez to me. I felt invisible eyes on my person, felt as if some unknown unseen hands were groping me. I shook my head forcefully and I realised that the heat was bearing down on my brains. I took out the water-bottle I carry with me to find the water was still cold from the freezing air-conditioned room I sat in. I swigged noisily.

Minutes later the bus, which would take me home, came. The bus was so full that I could barely step in. With all the body odours and sweats surrounding me, I felt nauseated.

Bodies rubbed against me. Someone was leaning so strongly on to me, that I could feel his groin pressing into the small of my back. moved a little to my right and a woman's handbag pressed into my stomach. I tried moving back and the groin pressed in harder. ... it was a war-dance of a loser. I was the loser.

About ten minutes later, I found some breathing space - near to the driver and the engine. It felt like I was gasping in a dragon's breath, it was hot and smelly and sticky. I couldn't move. I was pinned to myself by the disgruntled force called Human Sea.

It seemed the heat was making me see things, or rather feel things that were not there.

Or maybe they were. Who knows???

A hand roving on my back. A finger grazing my nape. An elbow poking my side. A heavy sigh in my ear.

I couldn't even turn to establish whether the assaulter was one or different persons. Or a figment of my imagination.

Then suddenly I found myself at the door of the bus and a gust of wind, caused by the moving bus, brought me back: to where, from where, I don't know.

The moments went by. It seemed that I was stuck in a time-warp.

And then suddenly someone said Mehta Nagar.

"Erangamatte??"

"Vazhithaa. Eranganam."

I said in the Tamil I didn't know. And then it was all over. The humid air outside the bus was more welcome that a rain on a parched day. My dupatta had twisted chokingly around my neck and wrapped itself around my stomach.

The descent was a gay affair. I descended the bus and felt like kissing the first person I saw. Thankfully, the urge subsided as soon as it had come. Or else, I would have kissed a pretty 12-year-old girl.