A Dreary Affair

He liked his mornings slow and quiet. He liked to cling on to the dreamy languor induced by the remnants of past night. He liked to loll in the bed trying to regain the sense of world around him-- the moment of cusp between oblivion and cognizance. He would try hard to recollect all the dreams he saw the previous night, make sense out of them, join a few dots—feel ‘Freudian’. He would revel in that moment of stillness and inertia, which only that part of the day can allow. He would glance at the mirror right opposite to his bed to catch of a glimpse of his uncontrived and rumpled form. “If ever a person is to love me, that person will have to love me in this form of mine, too. I can’t always look primped.”

Even his folks knew better than to disturb his tranquil reverie; for they knew that even if any attempts to converse were made, replies would be vouchsafed only in the form of perfunctory nods or monosyllables.

But the one thing that would wreck havoc in this dreamy state was the wall-clock hanging right above the mirror opposite to his bed. It would remind him of the pressing need of getting out of his cozy bed, and get ready for work. It was excruciating for him. Work wasn’t bad. Once at it, he would completely invest himself in it. But there was something else that disconcerted him immensely.

 If he was asked to choose one aspect of his job that he despised the most, he would unequivocally choose commuting. The very thought of going through the rigmarole of switching between multiple modes of transportation between his work-place and home every day used to make him grimace.
He didn’t own a vehicle. He didn’t know how to drive, so there was never a question of owning one in the first place. Thus he had to depend on public transport to ferry him between his work-place and home. There were so many things that he detested about travelling in public transport.  For starters, he never liked the whole idea of ‘rush-hours’. He did not like to be a part of the madly rushing crowd. All of them wore the same jaded and anxious expression. Most of them dressed alike—in perfectly ironed formal apparels which would be ruthlessly crushed in the “rush”. He never wanted to be a part of the ‘rat-race’; for he knew that even if he won, he’d still be a rat. Even the choice of his vocation was deliberate attempt to alienate himself from the ‘rat-race’, but the commuting made him feel coterminous with those racing rats.

 However, he could not help but admit that travelling in public transport was an enlightening experience in itself. It exposed him to a totally different world. It was like a play where the settings and plot remained more or less the same; but the characters and dialogues varied every day. The other day he was travelling in a bus, where he saw a group of a young school-girls dressed in natty uniforms. They occupied the seats right in front of his. He didn’t notice anything any remarkable about them till the time they started talking, or should one say-- not talking.

He observed they were mute. But there was something extraordinary about this bunch of lively school-goers.  For the entire time they were in the bus, they were talking to each other (in sign language). So animated and lively was their conversation, that not even for a moment did he realise that their speech was impaired.  The fluidity of their expression left him in sheer awe. For the first time he realised how eloquent silence can actually be. He suddenly felt so puny in front of these supposedly disabled kids. He realised how often, despite of his high-flown vocabulary, he struggles for words and stutters. And on the other hand, these young kids who were far from knowing the intricacies of grammar and language were so much more articulate than he could ever imagine to be.

It was surreal moments such as this that made him enjoy his otherwise drab commuting. Travelling in the public transport taught him very many things. And like many other teachers, this one too, could be awarding as well as reproaching in turns. It taught him, for instance, the distinction between beautiful and simply beautiful. He would find some of the finest specimens of human morphology so carelessly traversing the lobbies of metro stations or sitting right across him in a bus. Some would have him transfixed, some would have him awed, some would leave him dreamy and some would get him thinking. But his favourite were the kind that he slotted as “simply beautiful”.  The ones who possessed the kind of beauty which eases itself into your eyes-- nothing striking, nothing that looks contrived, sans the heftiness of brands and labels. Beauty that is raw and bare, yet warrants decipherment. Simply put, beauty that is not obvious.

Commuting was also a humbling experience for him. He felt it was conspiracy by the universe to squelch his pride. It was an equalizer of sorts. He would see the traces of his vanity rarefying when he would find himself travelling with the masses. In the sweaty touch of a co-passenger the sense of distinction would dissolve. The sense of superiority would be impaled when he would condescend to haggle with rowdy auto rickshaw drivers, and be at their mercy to be ferried.

The other day he saw a bunch of uncouth people waiting at the metro station among the regular bourgeoisie that usually populate the metro. They were dressed rather garishly. Their hair-dos were messy, and one could easily see the lasting impressions of Salman’s character from the movie ‘Tere Naam’ on them. Their conversations could be heard all over the place. They would pause and literally poke their nose into someone’s I-pad, and ask whether it’s a cell-phone or a computer. And then cackle with laughter.

 “What business do they have here in metro?” he thought crinkling his nose. He decided to stay as distant from them as possible. As soon as the train arrived, he was ushered inside by a tide of huge crowd whose only objective was to board the train and secure a room enough to stand. Once again all the distinctions dissolved. He cursed the crowd. A couple of minutes later he accidentally bit his tongue. It dawned upon him that the cursing was circular. He was cursing the crowd that he himself was a part of. He observed the same bunch of rowdy travellers standing right next to him. This time he did not shrink. He slowly began to realise that if he cannot come to terms with diversity, he has no business expecting to be assimilated. Equality has to be inclusive not selective. His lips curled into a smile. It was a moment of epiphany. He was not sure as to what extent would he practice the idea but he was glad that he understood it in principle. He realised that this rather tedious daily commuting was capable of according many more of such moments of epiphany. And indeed it did.

Very often, while waiting for his at  the bus-stop he would watch several other buses passing by. The buses would come and go vomiting out the passengers from the front end, and gobbling up the ones waiting to be taken away from the rear one. And finally after making him and his co-passengers wait for a considerable amount of time, the desired bus would arrive formidably packed already crushing their collective hopes. But when following the lead of his fellow travellers he would summon the courage to take the plunge murmuring his prayers, he would find himself just being sucked in the crazy vortex of hasty travellers; and after a few frazzled minutes he would find himself coalesced in that one organic mass of commuters—for those few minutes while they would travel together all the other identities of  every person would be suspended and each of them would be identified as merely someone travelling on route no ‘xyz’. "All of us fit perfectly. Just as the grains of rice would arrange themselves evenly in a rice-container after a couple of tosses, so would all of us. Perhaps I underestimated the malleability of human body"


He made various attempts at deconstructing his dislike for commuting. He soon realised that it was the inherent tendency of turning his face away from what was ugly, what was harsh. He did not like to leave the safe confines of his home and face the harsh and ugly reality that awaited him outside. And when, after much self-cajoling, he would step out, he’d feel like a naive and oblivious Prince Siddhartha unable to come to terms with unpalatable sight of the sick and the aged, the poor and the crippled, the ugly and the wretched.  He just did not want to face it. “Despair and disparity abound the word. Is it a way of life? That scrofulous guy who sleeps nervelessly under the footbridge, without any concern for the blistering heat of Delhi could not have done so had he not been stoned. Is there a justification for everything in this world? That girl who wears the same tattered pink frock every day is lucky. There would be no possibility of her squabbling with her mother, unlike myself, over the colour the room should be painted with, for she has no walls to paint. Isn't it amazing how there are full-fledged families that thrive under these footbridges. They go about doing their daily chores absolutely unconcerned about the legion people passing by, and I was fretting about that one strip which came off my Venetian blinds making the interiors of my room visible to my neighbours right across”

 Sitting in the auto-rickshaw seeing those numerous dwellings just rushing past him, he would cast a poetic glance at them realizing that what appeared to him as flitting visuals were actually little universes in themselves—a potpourri of people, their lives, their aspirations, their struggles, their joys, their disappointments, their existences, and most importantly-- their stories.  

Commuting in public transport demanded of him being everything he was not: confrontational, pushy, usurper, bumptious even. He could not for instance “fight” or “argue” for a seat in a bus or metro. He would rather happily and graciously(?) stand if it meant avoiding squabbling over something as petty as a seat. However, this also made him realise his incapacities. It dawned upon him that these are the very qualities one is expected to have if one wishes to survive- let alone excel- in this mean world. "How does one learn to be pushy? Is it something that could be learnt? If yes, then it’s high time I learn it. "