“It’s fun; someone’s misfortune”
29/01/2004. Jayaprakash. As narrated.
She must have been a different woman. Else, how could she wade off all these men passengers and go this front and find a niche-like room for her in this crowded bus of this evening. She stood towering to the ceiling of the bus; Built like men. The whole complement of the bus was looking at her. She seemed she knew it as well. She cared not. She bothered not, and she sounded not that differentiated either.

I didn’t find it awkward when I found this lady looking at a carry bag and smiling at it. I didn’t find anything fishy when she looked at all confidently and kept on standing. It was on, the bus, taking in and off passengers at various stops. And as it was nearing the nearest bus station, it was getting empty, or I would say, it was becoming breathable inside. Not many were to be added to the complement from that bus station.

What I did find embarrassing right after the bus left the second station was this; a lot of empty seats including the one three-seater, which got empty by two passengers leaving the side-seater comfortably day dreading notwithstanding, the lady was found undecided whether to sit and where in not to. And then this lady sat on that seat leaving that man in his own world. And she sprang up as though she was sitting accidentally on a live coal.

The towering woman started taking still more towering a proportion right after she sprang up from the seat.

Hei, what is wrong with you. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?
Ladies cannot travel safe in a KSRTC bus? You have no other job but this; to pinch and stroke lone and levelheaded ladies? I have been observing you since long. And the moment you got a chance to, you showed what you are and are upto. Stupid.
Do you know who I am? You don’t have someone female back home? Look aged still.
The ears and eyes of all passengers got stung on her and her tirade. The poor man, who had been sitting and daydreaming looking outside, woke up to find this lady lampooning. And he felt something fishy in the whole affair, for the lady was lurking at him.
Are you taking on me, lady?
Who the hell had been sitting in this seat when I sat in it a moment ago?
See, madam, I have nothing to do with what you point at. Ask anyone in this bus what I did. I didn’t even notice you shared this seat. I was really slumbering.
No, you stop it. I know you well. Why you? I know you folk very well. You’d sit like sleeping and slumbering, and would send your insensitive parts prying at the privates and properties of ladies. This is what you are all traveling for in these crowded buses.
Barring a few passengers’ suppressed reactions and not-so-surprised looks, there was nothing seemed to be happening. But I could not but go to the details of that lady. Because her wordings on her experience sounded calculated.

She was not that attractive. Nor was she advanceable behaviourally. The way she cut a figure inside the bus was a little short of an ordinary passenger. I thought. I had been looking at her face and expressions right from the stop she got in. And she was also seeing me. She gave me nothing as to mark her differently, barring her smiling at a carry bag, though. But this scene? Reprimanding a man of 40 plus years for nothing noticeable sounded to be a little extra-ordinary to me. I even went into checking whether she was normal. The bus had covered a lot by this time; but she seemed going straight with what she had been doing, vomiting her imaginary problem and indignation at that man of her choice. Was she making an imaginary case? I was in the dark.

Wasn’t she finding a little comfort by posing that she is, though that well-built and not-that-womanly-looked, capable of inviting the prying hands and ogles of middle aged men? Was she not telling me too that it was not that easy to be a woman among these skin-sucking men? Were these passengers not giving her the impression that she was not worth pursuing? Had she been harassed? Or Had she had a hand in this affair? My investigative faculty went out looking for clues.

Is it not psychological to be behaving like a woman inaccessible to all and sundry; all the while cutting and presenting herself to be exactly so accessible and thereby finding an auto-contact-remedial-mechanism being implemented willfully so as to become what she actually wanted herself to become; and virtually unable to be; and all the while remaining to be one and only one who knows about that inability much more than anyone else? Was she indulging herself a little by exposing herself as one who is not worth shunning?

I had got storm-brained by my own brain when the bus was about to reach its destination. And she wanted the bus stopped. While she was leaving the bus, someone was throwing a comment.

Ei, take this too with you. She is short of one like you, it seems.
I was really unlucky that I missed the rejoinder for this statement.
She walked down the bus and after responding to it. One can imagine how would she have responded to that comment. She had been responding so vociferously to no comments at all.

And then one passenger said that she had been working at Trivandrum and been traveling everyday in this route; and none of her day was different from what she had us all to have it today. She is not normal.
Really? Not normal? I came to know it with a shock. For, I had been observing her for long; her going animated with an inanimate carry bag; her standing among men; her cutting so-confident-a-figure; her sitting and not sitting when there were seats innumerable and so on. What if she took on me? It sent tremors down me.

The rest of the journey was hilarious; everyone was making this or that comment on the misfortune of that lady; a fellow being; a better half of someone; a counterpart; a mother of a few children; a good neighbour of a locale; a part of the society; a member of a workforce; a citizen; a voter obviously; a home manager and a breadwinner. And many more was she, I knew.

I felt sad. I felt disturbed. I felt my normal composure abnormal; for these so-called normals were all behaving really abnormally when they got an unfortunate being at hand. Are we, the normal, including me, really normal? Is she not better than many of us; for she has no intentions vile and vilifying?

When are we going to be normal men and women? A question easier asked than answered. “It’s fun; someone’s misfortune”. It’s commented; and I got a little relief, for I had wanted to reiterate that comment; or did I do it in between? I know not. For, I haven’t been normal since then. May God help her!
End of the text