Theandric Thursday: Girl At The Bus Stop


Note: This is very long story. I would suggest you to read it when you have enough spare time.

***
A scene forms in front of my eyes, slowly, as if I am rubbing them open after a long satisfying sleep.

I am sitting at a bus stop somewhere in the southern, quieter part of Delhi. The road crossing through, a narrow two-lane track, looks washed up and extremely clean. The cool air carries a strange enchanting mysticism. The golden rays coming from the newborn sun, filter through the moving clouds in a dancing fashion and make the wet road and steel railing glow up.

The bus stop is peculiarly, of a small and high frame. Unlike any I have ever seen. A flowering, old, low bent tree stands on the side of the bus shelter. Fresh yellow & red jasmine like flowers hang from it. Some lie on the shelter foot and road too, shining in the warm sunlight. It smells like a mixture of wet earth, flowers and a sweet fruit. I feel there is a rainbow somewhere behind the the row of trees that line the road.

I look around, there's nobody in sight. Except a small girl, of maybe 5, sitting on the opposite bus stop. She is wearing a cream coloured, slightly worn out frock and has a shag style of short hair. A rectangular basta  hangs by her shoulders. She is sitting quite still and alone. I keep looking at her, wondering what a girl of her age, is doing alone at a place like this. She notices this after some time and lifts her head to look at me. I pass on a smile which she answers with a straight face. Then I tear away my gaze and focus my attention on other things. The other bus stop is identical to the one I am sitting at. A name is painted in front of the shelter, but I can't read what's written.

While I am busy not looking at the girl, a white-green bus arrives at her stop and she hops on it. The bus goes and I stare at the empty bus stop for a minute, then the dream dissolves.

***

It's a Saturday morning and I don't have any class today, but I plan to go and return some library books. As expected, I don't find any friend there. The only ones I recognised were 'Chaipatti'(she lives on tea), 'Aunty ji'(she dresses like her mom) and some guy in specs. I avoid all three and leave the college as soon as I return the books. I don't do much the whole day and go to sleep early, before 9. I see a dream.

I am sitting at a bus stop. A high, small, rectangular structure with an asbestos roof tilted towards the back. It's a warm sunny morning, but the trees suggest that it rained here last night. The road is mostly empty, except for a scooter or two passing every 5 minutes. The bus stop at the opposite side of the road has a tree with ripe peach coloured fruits hanging from it, they smell sweet. A girl in a school uniform is sitting at the bus shelter. She looks at me just as I notice her. There is something odd about her today, but I can't say what. She is gazing at me, maybe there is something odd about me too. I too keep looking at her and it feels almost as if we are talking to each other through our eyes. After some minutes of mutual gazing, the bus arrives at her stop and takes her.

Suddenly, the scene cuts to afternoon. I am still sitting at the bus stop. A bus slows down and stops by the shelter and the girl hops off it. She looks cheery. Maybe she's excited about something and that's why she doesn't notice me. On getting down, she simply crosses the road and goes into a street behind the opposite bus stop. I get up, automatically, and cross the road behind her. But by the time I get to the street, she's gone. The dream dissolves again.

***

I wake up early in the morning, and lay in bed for some more time. Yesterday, it was just another weird dream, but now it's something else, like a story. I rerun the whole dream into my mind and it comes to me now. The thing that was so odd about it was her age. The girl was older than earlier, around 8 or 9 this time. After musing some more, I finally get up.

There's nothing to do much today, so I try to pass the time by eating, lying, eating, watching tv, eating, facebooking and well eating some more. After doing so much work, I settle down on my bed with the copy of 'A brief history of time' and fall asleep within 5 minutes, like I always do. I dream.

I am sitting at a bus stop. Occasionally, a car or a three wheeler would pass through, making a chirrr kind of sound on the wet road. The sign on the opposite bus stop reads 'Sainik Vihar'. A girl with a ponytail and glasses is sitting there, looking at me. Her eyes look very familiar, but I can't remember why. And she's older still, 3-4 years older than when I last dreamt of this place, of her. I notice that she has an intrigued, slightly bemused expression on her face, as if she's trying to understand something. Her gaze, friendly albeit all the confusion, is only broken when an all green bus arrives, and she gets on it. But before the bus could leave, the scene shifts to afternoon and a bus instead, is coming towards the bus shelter I am sitting on. The girl, in her school dress de-boards.

She looks at me for a moment before moving towards the street at the opposite side. I follow her at a distance, a little scared, a little excited. I think she knows that I am following her, but she lets me do it. She takes a right turn then another right and then stops by a small grocery store. I hide behind a corner, feeling guilty of sneaking up on her. I wait there a bit, but before I could turn back, my dream pops in flash..

***

I am jerked up from my sleep by a rubber ball which has just smashed square into my face. I learn that my little brother and his friends decided to play cricket 'in the bedroom'.
I spend rest of the day with a hand on my right cheekbone. I wonder if I'd ever know where the girl went. I lie down thinking this for a very long time and sleep only comes two hours past midnight. I see a dream where I am running after those kids with a plastic bat in hand and  shouting curses. I wake up within an hour and decide its better to listen to some music while I am awake so I settle down on the sofa with a water bottle listening to lady gaga 'marry the night'. I soon fall asleep.

There is a bus stop by the washed up road, I am sitting at. Opposite me, on the other side of the road, a girl is sitting on another bus stop. She is wearing a sky blue salwar kameez and has long braided hair. She is older still and looks strikingly familiar to somebody I know, in fact she is somebody I know. But I don't want to believe that thought, so I shrug it off and wait for her bus to arrive. A yellow-white-green bus comes at the bus stop after some time but she doesn't get on it. Many buses come but she won't get on any of them. She just sits there staring at nothing, then she gets up and goes to the street behind her.

I jump from my bus stop and hurry after her, not worrying about keeping a distance this time. She takes two rights and a left, then goes inside a ground floor small flat in the government quarters. I tiptoe to a window left of her door and peek in. She's bending over a bed, and it seems as if she talking to somebody. Then she straightens up and goes out of the room. A moment later, her front door opens and she is standing outside analysing me. I straighten up, startled,

"Umm...I was just..err..I was..", I stammer, searching for words to describe my little sneaking exercise, while she looks at me intently, hands folded on her chest. She waits for me to abandon my unsuccessful attempt at making an excuse , then says
"So ... you want to come in?"
"Ah..no..No!", I say guiltily.
"NO?", she asks, surprised.
"Well..oh okay..ahh..not exactly no..I was thinking that maybe you meant..umm..you know..err..actually.. yes, yeah..yeah. Can I..can I come in"
"Come", she says, tilting her head on the side a little.

We move in her house. The front door leads to an open living/drawing room on the right. The curtains aren't drawn so I take a quick look inside. It's a little dark and there's just an old, sort of antique wooden sofa at the far end of the room with a centre table. Most of the rest part of the floor is covered with a rug. Down the small hallway is a bedroom on the left. It's the room I was peeking into. She leads me in and addresses the lady lying on the bed,

"Maa, look we have a visitor. A friend of mine"
"Hello aunty", I say enthusiastically. She lifts her head and looks at me with a puzzled look, after a minute she says, 
"Manas... is it you Manas. When'd you come?"
"No maa, he's not Manas. He somebody else, you don't know him. You lie down..okay, I'll get you something to eat"

She goes out with that, I get busy looking around the room. Like the drawing room, it too looks fairly modest. It has a low window on the left, the one I was peeking through. Opposite the window is the bed with a small table on its right. On it, rests a small table clock and a photo frame. A couple and a small girl are beaming from it. On the far end is an almirah and a door, probably bathroom's. The windowsill has a small water plant in a transparent plastic vase. An old dressing table sits right of the window. I stand there, looking out into emptiness, quiet. The girl comes back with a tray,

"Here!", she hands me a big mug of coffee busily. "Want some biscuits"
"Ah no! Thanks", I take the cup and sit on the chair beside the window.
"Maa, sit up, your soup is here."

She pulls up another chair and sits by her mother's bed holding a bowl and a spoon. She helps her mom eat her soup by spoon. I wonder if she does this everyday. While I sip my coffee, a thousand questions fill up my mind like 'What happened to her mom?', 'Why is nobody else in the house?', 'What's her story?'

I look at her, she has tied her hair in a bun. She looks beautiful. She is simple, chaste. There is so much different about her. She must be a teenager still, but her eyes tell another story. Inside, she is at least 10 years older.When she is finished feeding, she gives her mom some medicine and collecting the tray says,

"Maa, we'll be in my room. If you need something, call me okay.. Okay!!". Her mom slowly nods.

Her room is adjacent to her mom's. We sit with our mugs on the mattress spread on the floor. There's no bed in this room. Apart from the the almirah, two high racks filled with books stand in a corner. There is a study table on the right of the window. Ambient light coming from it fill up the room. We sit in silence for a minute, not looking at each other.

"I saw your family photo", I say pointing towards her mom's room.
"Oh yaa..it's pretty old", she smiles. "It was taken ..on.. papa's last leave, you know..vacation..with us"
Silence ensues. She bores her eyes at the floor, then adds after a moment, "He was posted far east on the border that time"

Silence. I think of changing the topic.

"You called me your friend back there". A smile appears on her face,
"Yeah, I couldn't have said like 'look maa, this boy was sneaking up our house, so I brought him in'"
"Hmm...that's right, probably", I say, thinking about how she would have reacted to it.

Silence again.

"So, why were you sitting there on the bus stop all that time, doing nothing except ... staring at me", she asks.
"I wasn't staring, I was just looking ... you know. I don't know but, it was kind of a dream ... always at the same spot, seeing you grow up", that sounds absurd.
"Seeing me grow up? Excuse me grandpa, don't you think that holds true for you too?"
"Would do mean by that, I was always the same. It was you who changed each time, little girl in cream dress grew taller and taller..and how many hairstyles did you change exactly", I say, totally at ease now. While thinking about why are we having this strange discussion at all.
"Acha..did you ever saw how you look while you were sitting there, all busy. You know, how you looked the first time.. or the second ..or third?"

Actually, she is right. Now that I think of it, I never even saw how my hands looked like, let alone my face or clothes. I look out pondering over the thought. Grey clouds have formed a party outside and it has started to rain.

"So, do you like rain"
She answers with a big yes. Then she asks me something and soon we are asking questions and chatting about me, her, the bus stop and many other things. Its like we are long lost friends. She tells me about her life.


She was four years old when her papa died. A fire had broken out in a village near his post. He along with some other soldiers of his company were sent to the village to carry out search and rescue operation. He saved a lot of lives, more than any other person, but got severe burns on his body in the process and later fainted. He was taken to the hospital but succumbed to his injuries a day later. The government gave a medal in his honour along with some cash and the flat was named to her mom uncustomarily.

His death left her mom traumatised and though otherwise normal, her mom stopped going out much. Due to this, she had to go to school alone, had to get groceries and do other outside stuff on her own from a very young age. They had no relatives in the city, just family friends in the colony/quarters.

Manas was her best friend ever since they were toddlers, but a few years after her father's death, he had to leave due his father's permanent transfer. Slowly, many people moved out and those who were left or who came new could never make very good relations with them. Mostly due to her mom's ill health in the later years. Just a handful of people even visited her house now. Manas used to visit them every year, but he too hasn't contacted for the past three years. 

She did not make many good friends at school because she never had time for friendship, for outings or picnics as her mom needed her more and more lately. Even when her friends visited home, she was mostly busy. So slowly, they were just left as normal friends/classmates.

When she was 11, her mother started forgetting things. First, small things like putting salt instead of sugar in tea, then one day she went out and forgot her way back. "Maa was never the same after that", she says. Her mom stayed ill most days and had to be looked after most of the time. She became pale and her eyes sunk. The treatment didn't help much and the doctors pulled their hands last year saying they didn't have any cure for Alzheimer's and that there is nothing left to be done, other than to wait.

"Her health has deteriorated very much in the past few months. I am worried what'll happen when I join college later this year. I would rather stay at home, but she made me promise on the college thing when I she was good...better. People and even some doctors have suggested taking her to a cheshire home, and eventually I would have to, but I don't want to to go away from the only person I can call mine."

She goes blank sometimes while discussing these things, but she doesn't cry. I guess the crying phase is long over for her now. She has grown up way too fast.

"The rain has stopped. I should be going now", I say after an uncomfortable silence, looking out.
"Hmm..yeah"

I take one last look at her mom while going out. But just before she closes the door, I remember something.

"Hey...what's your name?"
"Kanak"

She doesn't ask my name. The scene fades away.


***

I am half-lying on the sofa when I wake up. The cushion where my head rested is wet...with tears, there are dried tear marks on my cheeks and my throat feels very dry. I drink some water and go to my bed. Either the clock's broken or I slept for just one hour. It feels like a lifetime. I lay on my bed looking at the fan, thinking about the last word she said. Maybe I knew the answer before asking her. Maybe I knew it was Kanak ever since I recognised those eyes at the bus stop. Maybe I knew that Kanak was my classmate who used to dress like her mom, the one who we called 'Aunty ji'.

I feel disgusted thinking about the silly things I smiled or laughed at, when someone made a comment on or about her clothes in college. But why do I feel bad? It was just a dream, a very realistically vivid one, but still a dream. It has nothing to do with the 'real' Kanak. I keep thinking about her and don't know when I sleep again.


I am sitting at a bus stop. It's evening and raining heavily. The road in front of me is jammed with cars freakishly blaring horns. I notice that the girl is not there on the opposite bus stop today. I look both sides and then without waiting for a second, I stand up, cross the water logged road and enter the street behind the bus stop on the other side. I first walk fast, then break into a run to reach Kanak's home. 

When I get there, she's standing at the door, seeing off some women. She is wearing a white salwar-kameez. Her head is covered. On noticing me, she just stares into my eyes blankly from the distance and I don't need telling what has happened. I go and  hug her without a word and she begins to sob on my embrace, quietly. Then, she breaks down totally and starts getting hiccups. I don't tell her to stop. She hasn't cried for years and today she really needs to. We stay at the doorway for a long time, until her sobs subside a little. Then I take her inside. We sit on the sofa, her head resting on my shoulder. She is quiet now and very tired.

"Why don't you try and sleep, here spread your legs up over there", I say shifting over to the side. She spreads her legs on the sofa, puts her head on my lap and soon, goes to sleep. I take off her glasses and put them on the table. 


Asleep and without her glasses, she looks very different from herself and much like any other girl her age. She reminds me of the girl I first saw on the bus stop. Cute and fragile. She looks as if she has nothing to worry about in this world. Like she still has everybody with her. Like she still has her papa, Manas, her mom. Looking at her face, I too fell asleep in my dream.

***

When I wake up, the sun has already come up. It's 7am and my first lecture is at 9. I get busy preparing for college. Somewhere in my mind, I know that I won't have these dreams any more. But I know what I am going to do now.

Even after all the haste, I reach the class late. Thankfully the teacher allows me inside. On entering I quickly scan the classroom and find Kanak sitting alone on a bench of two, third row from the back. I go and sit with her. She adjusts in her spot at this intrusion. 

In the third lecture, it starts raining outside. I look out all excited, then turn to her and blurt out,
"Hey! do you like rain?"
"Excuse me", she was actually paying attention to the class.
"Do you like Rainn..", I say, stressing on the word Rain.
"Who doesn't like rain", she shrugs
"Yeah... but, do you like rain or do you love rain", I press on

"Pay attention to the class, okay", taken aback by my brazen attitude 
"Okay, just answer this one question and I won't ask more"
"Yeah...I LAAV rain. Happy!", she animates in an annoyed manner.

I smile and turn towards the board. 'Oh God! this is going to be difficult. Very difficult'    


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© Ashna Banga
This post was part of the meme 'Theandric Thursday', a fortnightly feature hosted by Ashna Banga.
The dictionary definition of 'Theandric' is 'Relating to the joint agency of divine and human nature'.

P.S: I wanted to make this a happy cheery post, but it seems my brain is hard-wired to it's opposite. I just hope that it doesn't turn out scary because I desperately avoided anything scary. :P

P.P.S: I know its a theandric thursday post should have been on a thursday and not on a sunday and I'll make sure that it is as such from the next time.

Comments

  1. I'm actually speechless. I don't know how you can write so brilliant! I feel bad that I don't have a great vocabulary to describe what I am feeling after reading this. It's beautiful, scary, mysterious, emotional, picturesque (I could imagine every single scene in my head) and just splendid. I feel so happy I know you at all! :D
    I have to learn writing descriptions from you! For me, the descriptive aspect is the most important and is something that can make or break a story. Just write a book, please. I want to be the first lucky one to read it! ;) And if you see me trying to write something similar, please know it's not plagiarism but inspiration. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You, Miss, are the one who started this awesome meme, and it's because of this meme that I got to write the stuff I like writing. I'm was so happy when I first read the comment that I'm was literally beaming uncontrollably. :P
      And was it scary too? I so tried not to make it scary. Koi nai, I'll try better next time. :D

      Delete
  2. Highly absorbing. You have developed what I & my friends call the 'pro touch' (more about it later). Every detail has been well tended to. The flow is engrossing & due to the first person narrative, it's very vivid & extremely picturesque. I'd second Ashna in her compliment :)


    The error that caught my eye:
    "Acha..did you *see how you looked while you..."

    Looking forward to more interesting stuff from your end. Godspeed.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks a lot for the compliment Shivang. Such a compliment from somebody like you is just so encouraging. :)

      I hope to write more, better stuff, sure. It's only the beginning, thanks for wishing luck. :)

      P.S: Checked that error.

      Delete
  3. I always love how you explain every detail in your Theandric Thursday posts! They are always the most inspiring and a treat for me to read. I still have that spider and bird story in my mind! :)

    I had goosebumps reading this post. This is one of those posts which brings emotions to you. Directly. Why did this story ever had to end? :(

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    1. Your comment is here, at last. Thank you Leo, I always want to write which I like to read, hence the descriptions.
      I may look like bragging, but I love this story, not meaning how I wrote or the descriptions in it, but just the story. :)

      Waise, the story didn't end. We still don't know if Kanak's life in the dream is the same in reality. ;)

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  4. Firstly.. I am extremely sorry for being so late.. Wasn't getting any time to read your 'longggg post' :p
    Let me tell u, that I am totally amazed at your story-telling skills..
    ( And a little envious too :p ) I think I can never write fiction.. Just like Ashna says she cannot write poetry ! :P
    I don't know, you write with so much ease.. I actually imagined the entire story in my head.. ( And like you, never paid attention on how 'you' looked like :p)
    Really.. A beautifully crafted story..
    Keep it up!
    Looking forward to more such amazing stuff :)

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    1. Thank you so much for just reading. It was verrry long yes, kya karen, can't help it much. :P
      I was waiting for your comment ever since I wrote this. And I am sure you can't write fiction, just the way Ashna can't write poetry.. :P

      Thanks a lot again for the wonderful comment. :D

      Delete
  5. Hello!

    I really liked this blog! :D

    I work for Half Baked Beans, A start-up publishing house based in Delhi. We are looking for Short story Indian blogs. Please drop me a mail at nehamishra.fas@gmail.com and we can talk?

    -
    Neha M.

    ReplyDelete

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