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A middle-aged man, lugging a big white plastic bag, shaped like a boulder (and weighing as much as one, by the looks of him) arrived at the bus stop. His shoulders sagged, and the further he walked with that weight the more he seemed to shrink. His legs were ready to give way any moment. But he wanted to reach New Delhi and had to get on the bus.
A vendor stood nearby, selling peanuts, popcorn, salted crackers, and salty chips on a cart. Asked for help by the man, he shot off a list of the many bus numbers that would take him to his destination. When the bus came, though, the man did not move.
The vendor was busy. The pavement, the road, the great many sisters of those roads nearby, the city itself, was churning. Everyone was going to get somewhere. In those moments, I got a feeling of being tossed, if not suffocated. I wondered why I wasn’t able to smell any of those food items on the cart. The pollution, the acrid smell of diesel, the vibrant sun — all this should have made me dizzy. But the colours around me — the shelled nuts, unshelled walnets, raw popcorn, banana chips — were so inviting I felt like I was in a Wes Anderson movie scene.
I was quite impressed by the food and the cart, yet all this was not translating into a sound of crisp notes being exchanged for crisp snacks. The vendor was busy — not selling his delicious mathris, but rattling off bus digits to the growing crowd at the bus stop. He looked increasingly encumbered and impatient, as if the whole city was spilling onto him then and there. Imagine a person looking overpopulated. But he looked proud too, uttering those three-digit numbers, information that only he was master of in those moments.
The immovable man stood beside me. He had just asked the vendor for the bus to New Delhi and got the answer. A minute later, the bus was gliding up in front of our eyes and the vendor, seeing that the man seemed to be in no mood or position to catch it, made his state of mind audible. I raised my hand to signal the bus to stop. The vendor brusquely 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 sure enough, the man missed the bus.
Another bus stopped for a few seconds. He lifted that load again, staggering after the holy transport of Delhi, looked like he was about to catch the bus, only for the door to close in the last second. As the green bus trundled off, all its back seats vacant, I saw him relax his shoulders as he dropped the load on the side of road. The next bus 213 was going to Central Secretariat and the vendor signalled to me that this one would also go to New Delhi. I wanted to ensure he caught the bus this time, because he was sad picture to look at. He had such a heavy load and he needed someone to alert him to the arrival of his bus; he also needed someone to hold the bus for him while he lumbered to it.
I raised my hand again and signalled the bus in his direction. This time he saw the bus and began transferring the load on his shoulder again in good time. The bus stopped. 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. “ Arey, ruk ruk! Dekh na uske paas samaan hai ! [Hey, wait, wait! Look, the man has baggage.]”. 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 at having discharged our ward. The vendor continued his refrain, as if he had not just said the same thing multiple times just earlier, “ Jab tak rokoge nahi bus toh apne aap thodi na rukegi [You have to make to stop the bus; can’t expect it to stop on its own, can you?].”
People continued to pour in at the bus stop from nearby streets but none of them carried so heavy a load as that man. I waited for my bus, pondering the vendor’s words and their logic, and wondering whether I should just walk back to my college and take the Metro instead. Buses kept coming up. As I waited for mine, I wondered whether I should have done more than signal the bus in the portly man’s 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 made the bus wait up until the time he got in. What if the passengers had not shouted for the bus to stop? What if he missed the bus? What if the vendor had been ruder to him after he managed to miss the second bus too? What would the person have felt if he missed the bus (carrying such a heavy load, running with it, calling out, taking help from people) simply because he could not understand that the bus wouldn’t stop even though he was standing at a bus stop?
