After a long day of what was but unproductive corporate-sector work, I started heading back home. I normally walk back from work but occasionally prefer to take the public bus up to a point that is a couple of blocks short of my home.
Now, if I choose to walk, it’s one long and lonely walk for 3.6 miles. But if I choose to take a bus, there’s a bit of pinch to it. It includes three phases.
Phase 1 involves walking from the office building to the bus stop. Then I would board the bus and get down after a couple of stops, which is Phase 2. And the final one, Phase 3, is the walk from the bus stop to my home.
Now, I want to talk about the time when I have chosen to take a bus. So the moment I start heading back, Phase 1 begins. It usually starts with taking my phone out and putting the headphones in my ears and playing some music. Then I start walking, and as the music goes smooth on my ears — my playlist includes random musical scores from movies or just dramatic albums — I slip into a different dimension where only I exist and there’s music in the background.
There’re so many thoughts that cross my mind and several that I cross during the brief, brisk walk. This is when my brain chooses to think about the theories of the universe, multiverse, space-time dimension and inter-dimensional travel. There’re so many aspects to it. There’s not just one way these ideas fall across, but various ways. One of them begins with me imagining my walking, not on this earth but in a special dimension that is just a null filled with void coordinates. So once this imagination of mine comes to full-fledged existence in the way I walk, I have the freedom to place myself anywhere that I want to be in this existential void filled with beautiful and marvellous entities.
Then there’s another theory that has swayed its way across my mind many a time: that there are multiple realities in existence, which function with their own laws of classical physics and operate within their own boundaries of limitless dimensions, and all of this are aligned in a parallel, tangled manner.
And one more theory is of how we are all abstract entities in a dimension unbeknownst to this human world, where the very existence of the physical being is of a creature with visionary projectors attached to the brains, and all we see and feel is what that projector shows and what the creature feels.
So, amidst all these thoughts and battles of the thoughts of realities and existence, I walk on crowd-clad roads, and all of a sudden I stumble upon a rock and almost falls. It makes me regain my consciousness and pulls my mind out my own thoughts and puts me in the reality I exist. And in that moment all my imagination is blown to smoke, just as the smoke that comes out of the vehicles make me realise that all my thoughts are just figments of my imagination — just like my friends.
So, post-reconciliation of whatever is left of my senses I wait at the bus stop for the bus. Hence, the inception of Phase 2 of my journey of heading back home. As I wait for the bus I take a look around and notice, obviously, a lot of people. Now, one more thing I notice is the rush that’s happening, not just on the roads and pedestrian paths but also in the minds of the people. OMG! The amount of rush that goes through people’s mind, and to one’s surprise all of this happens without people even realising it.
Sometimes, not sometimes but many a time, I keep wondering what goes on in the minds of people and why something as such keeps going on in the minds of people, Then I start speculating on the thoughts of the people, the how’s and the why’s. And it immediately strikes upon the question of what my thoughts are, and then raises another question of why do I do things the way I do, why do I walk the path which I did, who’s making all these decisions, who’s been given the power of decision-making. If the power of ultimate existence lies in the principle of decision-making and if I’m making my own decisions, does it not make me the most powerful man in the world of my own imagination?
All these questions make my soul take a deep dive into the pool of self-discovery and self-realisation, and all of this with my music still playing in the background. Amidst all this zig-zagged tranquility I’m brought back to reality again by the loud honking of the bus that has just arrived at the stop. People have started making a run towards it. Maybe someone should tell them it’s called a Bus Stop for a reason, and one does not have to rush to take the bus. It waits for people for a while and gives them time to board it and also de-board, unlike some people who just push us off the bonded journey of relationship randomly at unexpected stops.
So I board the bus quickly enough, ’cause it not going to be there for more than a while like so many other opportunities that come in life. Unless one owns the opportunity, that is, by creating one of his own. So I board the bus and get a ticket to where I need to get off the bus, and take a seat. Then, as usual I start looking around, and yet again I see people. But I see a difference.
Oh wait! Is it what I think it is? There’s no rush on people’s minds; they are relaxing, they are checking text messages on their phones, listening to music, watching videos. Some of them have dozed off, because they are tired, and a few owing to their relaxed state of mind. Most importantly, there’s no rush on people’s mind, nor do I see it on their faces.
Now, the curiousity part of my brain fills the rest of the brain with several questions. Why has the rush in people’s thoughts come down all of a sudden? Is it because they are heading home? Is it because they know what their destination is? Is it because they have complete trust in the bus driver, who’s not sure of how the traffic and roads turn out to be?
With all these questions pouring on one side, there is one part of my brain that is just embracing tranquility, which is free of any kind of turmoil. Then the bus starts moving, ’cause no matter what, everybody’s got to move on one day or the other.
To me the brief period of journey in a public bus means a lot primarily because I’m surrounded by people, and sometimes the aura created by these kinds of crowds are enough to boost the confidence to live on, and the same vibe can also contribute to the downtrodden state of the mind. So one must know when to absorb what from the surroundings we live in. The way I see it, the bus is helping me stay at one point whilst the rotation of the earth brings the point I need to get off, to me. As I’m surrounded by this aura of the people, all of which settles down to one thing — a civilised and forward way of living together. As I’m surrounded by all this, the point I need to get down arrives, marking the collective end of my brief journey, and Phase 2.
The casual descent from the bus is the staircase of entrance into Phase 3. This phase consists of a walk for about 10 to 15 minutes through the human-clad streets filled with all kinds of food and grocery stores. All the way along the final phase, the consummation of all my thoughts take place and conclusions without any boundaries or limits are agreed upon by my conscience, the sub-conscious and consciousness, where they standardize. Or what should I call it? The principles of life are set upon by the time I reach my room.
So a 30-minute long collective journey comprises all this, and constitutes to my purpose of existence, and I live to tell another tale!
So…what’s yours?
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