Hey all!
As usual, my absence has been prolonged. Anyways, without much a-do, I switch to the main point…
It had rained throughout the previous night and it seemed that the Gods had no plan to alter their plan. So, with my lungs full of fresh, moist Monday morning air, I somehow succeeded to cajole my father to drop me to the bus-stop. Oh, by the way, I work as a summer intern with MoserBaer (naam to suna hi hoga…!). So, waiting for the chartered bus to arrive, I opened my latest novel, the color purple, and started from the first page. I mustn’t have read more than 6 pages when the bus arrived. Feeling an adrenalin rush on seeing the bus after 4 strange days felt even stranger and abruptly, I promised myself to have a successful and a work-loaded day. But sometimes, your resolves stand sterile in front of other men’s vice. I had heard a fleeting talk about “Desh Band” today… but never had the thought struck that it would affect me and I would find myself cursing the whole system vehemently.
We boarded the bus as usual, got ourselves a seat (reserved for ‘ladies’) and I resumed my reading. We had hardly gone 3 kms that I saw unusual activity going on right in the middle of the busiest crossing of that national highway. It was the political party activists. At first, I could only see a lady, clad simply in a worn-out saree, carrying the party’s orange and green lotus flag in one hand and a 2 ltr plastic bottle of a soft drink filled with some wine-colored liquid in the other. Till then, the gravity of the situation hadn’t hit me. And since the weather was favorable and the air was soothingly cool, I dint bother myself too. Suddenly, I saw a man rushing towards our bus as it was put to a sudden halt. He was swearing at the driver and was gesturing putting a match to the bus if we dint vacate it. I was still composed coz till everything remained verbal, I was OK, I thought. But the scene got worse when they deflated the tyres of the bus and set some more tyres on fire, right in the middle, on the very crossing where the lady has first stood. There was a gang of atleast 20-25 people who were shouting out loudly and making sure no public transport shall pass through that crossing.
We were advised to take a U-turn and head back home, ofcourse on-foot. When I say “we”, I mean the girls in the bus. The very next minute, we saw ourselves marching over the flyover in a queue, like ants. At that moment, the water coagulated on the sides where we walked and made the route back home even more dreadful. My delicate slippers dint know what lay ahead, later in the day and I know, they were the worst sufferers. We vented throughout. We cursed the system. Atleast I did. This wasn’t really the idea of an educated common man to present his demands. But then, not everyone can refuse to get paid for the daily bread without having to earn it though a day’s hard-work, but a slice of violence.
It is surprisingly sad how the damned people carry out such obscene jobs at the name of “public welfare”, at the very expense of that very common public, the aam aadmi.
