The comfort of strangers

I'm sure I've missed the 5.20 bus. It's five minutes past, and it always happens that the day one is late, the bus is dot on time. Quirks...

I’m sure I’ve missed the 5.20 bus. It’s five minutes past, and it always happens that the day one is late, the bus is dot on time. Quirks of life, these. No point hurrying now, it’s a good hour before the next one…. Hey, my daily co-traveller, the woman who works in the linen department at Sassoon Hospital, is still there reading her eveninger. Which means the bus is mercifully late, I can still catch the film I’d planned, no need for me to fret!

She is not family, and we are not really friends either. Yet, there’s a certain bond we share that gives me a strange sense of security. For she is one of the people I see day in and day out, people who share the bus (and the dailiness of life) with me, people who help me ascertain that the world’s moving just fine, that nothing drastic happened since the last time I saw them.

In their own way such everyday people’ contribute to the pattern of our life. Not to the multi-hued kaleidoscope of experiences, but to the quotidian routine. Significantly so. By theirvery presence. They are the important signposts as we walk our daily walk. Like the familiar landmarks in the town we grow up in, where each alley and bylane reiterates that this is home. The linen department supervisor on the 5.20, the clerk at the corporation who boards a different bus at the same time from my bus-stop, the receptionist across the floor with whom I share a few seconds in the lift, the lift operator who waggles his extra finger at the kids bawling their way up to the fifth-floor paediatrician… we do not talk philosophy or heart break, merely shop. We exchange not sob stories, just pleasantries. The weather, the prices, the cricket scores. Very rarely does the conversation venture further than necessary.

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“Haven’t seen you for the last three days.” “Sorry, but your bus just left probably a new driver methinks.” “Are those dark clouds in the east headed this way, do you think?” “Is that the latest John Grisham you are reading?” “Seen that new art exhibition? Good stuff.” In factwith the lift man, it’s only “Dus baj gaye kya, madam?” as I walk into office, and “Aaj late?” when I am held up at work. Not even waiting for a reply, he moves onto the next floor. That’s it. A couple of words, and on with our respective lives, into our individual worlds, to our own set of friends.Nonetheless, there’s a concern in each such cursory query. A concern that wants to know not if I am single and withering in solitude, or if I am married to somebody who has OCD and gives me hell after a hard day’s work at the office. Or if I am a communist or pacifist or even a feminist, whether I exercise and meditate every day, whether I think India should simply close doors on refugees or ban IIT folks from emigrating. Heck, they don’t even know my name. I know that ’cause I don’t know theirs. And really, neither of us could care less.

Yet we do care. For EACH OTHER. And want to know if all’s well in a general sense. Simply because we are fellow-humans. And co-habit this place called the Earth. Experiencea similar scheme of things more commonly known as Life. A smile and a hello are our only communication. A feeling of oneness our mutual emotion.

Yeah, the linen supervisor waves her newspaper as I smile at her in relief. As I sit down to wait for the bus, I mutter a silent prayer, “She’s here at the bus-stop, and all’s right with my world.”