In Bewteen and Out: A Short Story

“I told you, it won’t be crowded now,” I assured.
“Hmm… when do you suppose we will reach?” nodded Grusha.
“If traffic’s going okay, by noon we will be standing at the gate.”
It was entirely my idea to spend my first meeting with Grusha at the Botanical Gardens; a time-tested bolt-hole for the romantics. Though at first, I planned for a restaurant, considering my depleting funds I switched to open-air, which she approved of with her reticence.
“How do you feel this Kolkata bus ride?”“Enjoying so far,” she said.
I was risking no effort. She is my first registered affair since past seven months and I am not letting it go, not in this life. Grusha is a domiciled Bengali from Delhi, whom I met in the chat room. She comes to Calcutta only to meet her grandparents once in every two years and meeting me was ‘just an opportunity to put me up for consideration.’
The moment I saw her, I felt anchored and proud at the same time, with a queer sense of belonging.
Now for all my karamfal, here she is with me, somewhere between Esplanade and the Gardens, enjoying the pleasures of Kolkata transportation system.
“Why don’t you take the seat, Ved?” she wondered, half knowing that going for the seat at the men’s side would spoil my comforts of hanging around her. To tell the truth, these private buses have very anti-romantic seating arrangements, especially for guys like me who cannot risk a taxi ride at the first date, lest be misunderstood as licentious.
“It’s okay…,” I replied.
By the next stop at the Dalhousie square, I imagined a good exodus of office crowd and fancied my chances at sitting on the ‘ladies’ (a ubiquitous caveat on every bus) seat beside Grusha. By this time, Grusha has gracefully managed to balance her attention between the passing images outside the bus and my expectant face, inside.
As a straphanger, it was not my call to initiate a poetic mood in the journey since for over 10 minutes an elephantine figure was indefatigably trying to edge me out from my spot. It was the limit, I thought. “Can’t you stop pushing me like that, I’m with her.”
The figure ignored my plea, and instead asked me to step behind the line so that she could secure the support offered by the back rest of a two-seater. I compromised, thinking that at the next stop I could come round her to stand sideways facing Grusha.
“Ved, have you read ‘Da Vinci Code’ yet?” Grusha attempted to make me feel ‘at home.’
My answer got interrupted by the conductor’s throwing, “Dalhousie, Dalhousie,” in a tone of professional repetitiveness.
“Ah!” I thought, time to make room for some romance. But foiling my beginners’ luck, a swell of crowd overthrew me creating a two-row gap between Grusha and my awaited answer.
“What happened?” she piqued. “You said it’s supposed to get emptier, Ved.”
I knew exactly what she meant, “You ripened fool, and didn’t you have any better plans, eh?” But the point was to make her feel the ‘quintessential bongo wont of serenading love,’ which typically takes place inside jalopies of this kind, albeit in a less interfering setup. The blooper was which I realized powerlessly, the wrong day to have selected this route. It’s a Monday, and of course ‘black’ one for me. How daft of me! It would get worse with more people onboard for the Howrah station. And busting my guts, as I was about to attempt a self-rescue, a virago materialized from nowhere and stomped my kolapuri-worn feet with her sheer 140lb presence.
The bus went on with Grusha, the crowd and myself.
Entrenched in response, I generalized, “Grusha I’m right here. Don’t worry it’s just a passing crowd.”
Initially, she didn’t figure out my exact location, and realizing that I was dislodged from her civil audible range, she chose not to bother herself with a reply. I was not to be put down and genteelly requested a square-figured guy to lend me a ‘window of opportunity.’
He obliged. And as I stooped between the crook of his arms to catch a glimpse of Grusha, my sight collided head on with a dun-colored bald gracing lank and floppy bit of hairs that went right inside my nostrils. Goddamn!
The bus went on with Grusha, the crowd and myself.
I was getting impatient, knowing very well that all this is not impressive for a fist date and simpler arrangements could have been devised. By this time another thought crept in-pickpockets. Kolkata bus, pouring crowd and pickpockets are a lethal combination. I bent my arms to check my pocket and in the process I elbowed a stomach. The hit, an unintentional KO for the gangling, sporting amir-khan-beard guy, immediately triggered a ‘class- struggle,’ between the ‘have-Grusha’ and ‘have-not Grusha.’ And by the absolute strength of numbers, I was bullied further out of the domain.
The bus went on with Grusha, the crowd and myself.
I literally assumed the middle ground: support less, addled and adrift. At this point, I was exactly standing in-between, with the two doors on my either side, and Grsuha sitting on my left, next to the rear door. Any effort for communicating was simply unthinkable.
I felt hipped and sufficiently crossed with the goings-on.
I suddenly realized that even though I had been lurching between the ends for sometime now, there seemed to be no sign of the crowd mitigating. “Are dada, what’s this place now?” I conjectured, looking to a man whose face uncannily resembled Dominos’ six inch pizza, flat above, tapering below.
Blowing a thick mass of snout onto a white cloth, he replied, “Traffic jam, last twenty minutes.”
As it was, I was beginning to esteem myself like homemade sandwich paste; I felt a tug, followed by a bare sensation on my right side of the body. To my surprise, I saw the pizza-face man getting ready for his second blow with my khurta-end clutching firmly before his gaping nostrils. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” I protested. “Leave my khurta.”
With a rustic ease, the man replied, “Oh! I was thinking this was my kerchief, hehe…”
A clinker of a plan, a snagging kolapuri, mishandling by the crowd and now a snout-smeared khurta. I could not it take any more. I felt betrayed and alienated by everything that symbolized hope. “Now or never,” I resolved.
I immediately engaged myself: jabbing my way through the sweating, smelling and inconsiderate mass; “I’ll take them one by one,” I thought. But, lover proposes, commoner thrashes. Within a snatch, I got tonked like baseball and found myself before a rank of women who were standing in a baroque ensemble. For the first time I had to resort to a sexist stance. These days anything can pass for as a ‘sexual assault.’ At the most innocuous pretext I could be hauled up for a stark display of perversion if I contacted these baroque figures. Though I have been an optimist lover, no one has ever called me a pervert and thus playing to my reputation I assumed the shape of a parabola with my convex away from the ladies.
The bus went on with Grusha, the crowd and myself.
A fear overcame my present distress. “Is Grusha still on the bus, or did she get off?” I craned myself to see her on farthest end, and to my relief she sat there, however, completely lost. Naturally, she hardly knew Kolkata and moreover, even I was not very fluent with this stretch between the College Street and the Botanical Gardens.
At this end, near to the front door the crowd seemed less sportive and held their ground with martial precision. I felt little inspired and yapped, “Hi” at Grusha craning my neck to the limit. She heard me and with an effortless stare conveyed her total disgust toward the condition and at me. I returned a smile assuring that distance makes the heart grow fonder.
Now, we were right in the middle of the Howrah Bridge: “Into the last leg of our separation,” I thought. “Once this bus comes to a stop right after its descent, I will heroically walk up to her and even out all grimaces from her face.
The bus dipped down the bridge, unceremoniously curved around a pole, and screeched to a halt that centrifuged the passengers at my end, near the front door. As I surmised, the multitude poured out fast and thick, but in the event, like a tsunami drew me out from my niche, stood me before the door and chucked me out straight into the road. With that the junker took off, dumping me to the ground. I made a doughty effort to keep up with its gaining inertia but to add to my consternation, it sped off taking my ‘sixty-day hope.’
I was duly dumped the next day.