The Integrator

“ Vijayanagar??”
“Jaayegi !!”
And so I step into, or rather hang on to the gate of an overcrowded bus. It takes some time to gouge out standing space for oneself. Having done that you can heave a sigh of relief and congratulate yourself on being successfully accepted into this box full of bodies, and have a look at the other passengers (bodies) around you. Each face reflects the day it has seen, weary faces of office goers, tired faces of students; having sat through hours of grueling lectures, exhausted faces of day laborers, blank faces of drunks, curious faces of those new to the city, smug ones of those who’ve been here long, twisted faces of crying children, innocent ones of those too old to cry. Every tone of emotion, reflected so openly, it makes you think.
“Ticket!”
I fumble with the change and grab the pink token in my sweaty hand. The conductor moves to a pudgy man, with well oiled hair, sporting Ray-Ban sunglasses, clad in an impeccably white kurta- pyjama, with a tri-colored dupatta draped around his neck. His sharp moustache shows 10:10 on his face. He sits there with an uncomfortably complacent aura around him.
“Ticket sir!!”
Where did that ‘sir’ come from? It wasn’t there in my case. I look down; I’m dressed in a decent shirt-pant with a tie, why was the ‘sir’ missing then? I guess it must have been the aura.
“ Humara naam Munnalal Yadav hai”
Now, what kind of an answer is that? When asked for a ticket you pay for it, or show your pass, or in the worst case you show your incapability of paying the fare, in any case your name has nothing to do with the ticket.
But somehow it turned out to be the right answer. How much would the ticket cost? 3 rupees – 4! But this neta, as we call them, found it beneath his dignity to pay for the ticket.
Seated next to him is an old villager, a complete contrast to his co-passenger. The wrinkles on his face speak of the hard days he has seen. He wears a dusty dhoti and a worn off shirt, and a fluorescent turban which strikes a remarkable contrast with his otherwise morose attire.
“ Dewas naake ka kitta lagega?”
“4 rupiye”
The expression this answer brought on that man’s face is something I won’t forget in a hurry. The sudden pain in those eyes, the mental calculations he made, the things he thought he will have to compromise. He then opened a knot at the end of his dhoti, interrupted by the conductors’ irritated “ jaldi karo baba” . The open knot revealed some coins and a 10 rupee note folded and folded again. I somehow could not look anymore and I turned to look in another direction.

A bai, had just occupied an empty seat beside a teenage girl. The girl immediately reacted by shrinking in a corner of her seat, visibly uncomfortable. We very enthusiastically talk about how the youth is forgetting the whole ‘untouchable’ dogma and moving on. But I think I’m getting this all wrong, it has nothing to do with the untouchable idea, it’s almost an involuntary act, and even I would have done it had I been in her place. How exactly this has come into out behavioral pattern I do not know. As the bus jumps a few potholes, and drones on, the girl loses the initial reserve and is now sitting normally, not trying to shrink away.

I hear snatches of conversation
“ this time the juniors have lost it. I’ll slap them one by one tomorrow. Fucking bunch, what do they think…..” and he guffaws .

“ Haan, haan….. ho jaayega sir. Nahi. …haan.. abhi bus mein hoon….. Thik hai….. Par woh bola 5000 toh dene padenge kam se kam. .. haan sir…” some contractor is shouting on his phone.

“jai ram….jai ram….jai ram….jai ram….” the old man’s lips move, almost soundlessly, his hands fumble with the rosary.

“ tum bhi, koi kaam thik se nahi karti ho… abhi ghar jaake jaldi se khana bana dena, kal office mein bade saab aa rahe hai, jaldi jaana padega…” a man scolds his wife.

“papa… papa… mai toh darwaje pe khada hoon…” a child shouts, at which his flabbergasted father jumps to grab him and pull him into the insides of the bus and scolds him, not entirely angry.

A man smokes a bidi, though several notices prohibit him to. But I guess he cannot read, and nobody around him says anything, some make a face.

The conversations and the engine noise mingle into a monotonous hum. I feel like I’m in a trance. I’m seeing a lot of things and thinking.
I feel as if I’m breaching a private domain of all these people. I am not meant to hear what they are saying, or am I?
What a thing these public transports are, they bring together the widest variety of humans, and with this thought I stick a recent word I learnt at college, INTEGRATOR.