When you board a bus and plan to sit next to strangers, you mentally prepare yourself for mildly unsettling encounters. Naturally, I had to interact with three people
- The guy sitting next to me: Normal
- The guy sitting in the next aisle: Normal
- The hostess: No
Every hostess has a character of her own. Mostly they just
provide you the service and you forget about them the instant you are off the
bus. This one, however, was a liiittle bit strange.
The moment I got on the bus I noticed that she was someone
with huge temper problems. She kept complaining to the driver about this and
that, how someone didn’t count the passengers properly, how someone was trying to pin the
blame of missing headphones on her and how she was making him regret it. Etc. etc.
Once the bus started moving one of the passengers ringed the
bell. The hostess rose up from her seat, turned around all surprised, and asked
out aloud “kis ko maslah parh gaya hey abhi sey” obviously no one dared to
raise their hand. Sitting back down, exasperated, she said to the driver “ajeeb
pagal log hen, abhi sey tang kar rahey hen”
This would repeat every 20 odd minutes. Whenever someone wanted
water or some headphones, she would get up, glare, ask the passenger to wait. Sit
back down. Only once she was satisfied that she had shown enough attitude would
she actually go and serve.
"nokar samjhtey hen ajeeb"
"abhi tou paani pilyaa tha"
"kitni piyaas lagti hey"
She was handing out headphones when I asked her to kindly
spray the air freshener. Pulling out a
sarcastic smile and raising her hands, stuffed with headphone bags, as if to
say “cant you see”, she said “aap wait kar lein please”. I matched her smile and tone “ji bilkul. ap pareshaan mat hoya karien please”. This confused her a
lot. A few minutes later she returned, smiling, with the air freshener.
An hour later she got up to distribute disposable cups. I had
my headphones on so i couldn't hear her but I could see that she was in an argument with a passenger
two rows ahead of me. Anyway, she hands me a cup.
“thankyou, magar mujhey nai chaieye”
“kyon” surprised
“mera roza hey”
“uffhoo mein abhi paani nahi dey rahi”
“tou phir is ka kia karun”
“aftari k time pey paani duun gi naaa”
“aftari k time tak tou hum puhanch jaiin gay”
“uff. mujhey nai samaj aa rai. Ghar ley jana aap issey”
I obviously couldn’t respond.
About an hour later she had gotten up for something. She comes
up to me. Stops.
“yeh aap kia parh rahey hen”
I show her the cover of my book
“is ko parh kar kiya faida ”
“yeh acha banda tha, shayad mein kuch acha seekh jaun
issey”
“nai mera nai khayal”
Leaves
