Childhood

Yesterday morning I had to go to Nagerbazar for some work. It was usual for me to stand on the Dumdum road waiting for an auto to pass by and wave a hand to a vehicle with an empty seat. But yesterday proved futile to all my waiting. I stood there for 30 minutes and not one auto went with a single seat left for me to hop on. So, finally I decided to board on a bus to my destination. I usually avoid the public buses given a choice that I have an auto to ride – at least I can sit in it and reach my destination much faster than standing on an already overfilled bus with the conductor try to push in more and more commuters as the thing slowly slogged on to the road with the driver paying least heed to the angry shouts and occasional slangs coming from angry commuters on board. And the experience gets even worse in summer season with the hot and humid climate that we have here in Kolkata in those months. All those warm and moist bodies rubbing again each other; at times the nauseating smell of sweaty body odor emanating from a fellow passenger against which you are so firmly pressed on the bus that sometimes it feels as if there is a serious possibility of asphyxiating yourself to doom and then the point at which you have to take out you purse to pay for the ticket and the bus taking a turn – I have many times marveled at the ease with which many Kolkatans ply over the heart of the city every day over the years.

 

As for me, I feel a sense of impending doom, rather claustrophobia when inside such a space cramped vehicle. However, yesterday was a cool December morning and my rush with no available auto to ride on finally made me wave to the next bus that was coming my way from the Dum Dum metro station and I got on. As usual, there was no seat but the space immediately behind the driver’s seat was vacant and I went there and stood holding onto a vertical pole in the middle just behind the driver for a support and balance.

As the bus moved stopping at every two to three minutes with commuters entering at every halt and some people getting down, thus resulting in the bus getting more and more filled over time, what finally caught my attention were the two young kids in school uniform who got up from Motijheel. They were accompanied with their mothers jostling through the crowd with school bags on their backs and hand holding the tender aged kids. Once into the bus, on the side reserved for women, one of them got up and made seat for both the kids while their mothers held on to the hanging handles with the school bags on their back. Rather big bags for kids of this age, I thought. As I looked at the kids, amid the entire crowd, they were lost in their own world, each one telling something to the other and once in a while parting their eye lids in wonder while at other times catching a cute little smile at maybe an innocent joke let out by the other.