While returning from college I was waiting at the Bus Stop. A middle-aged man, carrying a white plastic bag, shaped in the form of a boulder (also weighing like one) arrived on the bus stop. His shoulders sank and the more he walked with that weight the more he seemed to get smaller. His legs were ready to give way any moment. He wanted to reach New Delhi. A vendor selling moong phali, popcorn, mathri, salty chips told him the many bus numbers that would take him. But when the bus came, the man did not move.
The vendor was busy. The pavement, the road, the streets nearby, the city itself was churning. Everyone was going to get somewhere. In those moments I got a feeling of being tossed instead of being suffocated. I wanted to know why I wasn’t able to smell any of those food items on the cart. The pollution, the smoke of petrol. All this should have made me dizzy but that is not what happened. I could have also taken a picture and sent it to Wes Anderson fan accounts - that was how much inviting the colours of those shelled nuts, unshelled walnuts, raw popcorn and banana chips were.
Even though I was so impressed by the food and the cart, yet all this was not translating into sound of crisp notes. The vendor was growing impatient, and yet he was busy. But not by selling those delicious brown matthis. He was busy revealing significant digits to the people at bus stop. There was pride in uttering those three-digit numbers, numbers that only he was the master of in that moment.
The immovable man stood beside me. The bus was now sliding in front of our eyes and the vendor was becoming impatient behind me. I raised my hand to signal the bus to stop. The vendor rudely told the man to hurry up as the bus would not wait. “You have to make the bus stop. Nothing will happen if you just keep standing.” And true to his words, the man missed the bus.
The bus stopped for a few seconds. He lifted that load again, ran after the holy transport of Delhi, looked like he was about to catch the bus, but the door closed at that moment and the green bus with all its back seats lying vacant, saw him relaxing his shoulders as he kept the load on the side of the road again. The next bus 311, was going to central secretariat and the vendor signaled to me that this one will also go to New Delhi. I did not want him to miss the bus this time because it was really sad. He had such a heavy weight and he needed someone to tell him that this is the bus, he also needed someone to hold the bus for him. I raised my hand again and signaled the bus in his direction. This time he saw the bus and got ready to transfer the load on his shoulder again. The bus stopped. Two three passengers got down from the front door and then the bus was moving again. The man had only taken one step forward. He was still some feet away from the bus when the passengers who deboarded shouted at the bus to stop. “Aree ruk ruk. Dekh na uske paas samaan hai”. The bus stopped. The man got in through the same front door from which they had exited.
As the bus began moving, the vendor and I looked at each other, and heaved a sigh of relief. The vendor continued to say as if he had not just said the same thing, “Jab tak rokoge nahi bus toh apne aap thodi na rukegi.”
People continued to pour in at the stop from nearby streets but none of them carried that heavy a load. I waited for my bus and was wondering whether I should just walk back to college and take a metro. Other buses kept coming in. I did not move and waited. I was just wondering whether I should have done more than signal the bus in his direction. I could have easily walked up to him and shouted for the bus to stop. The bus would have. I could have easily walked to where he was standing and kept on making the bus wait till the time, he got in. What if the passengers were not there to shout? What if he missed the bus? What if the vendor had been ruder to him just because he missed the second bus also? What would the person have felt if he missed the bus (after carrying such a heavy load, running with it, calling out, taking help from people) just because he could not understand that the bus won’t stop even though he was standing at a bus stop