Tuesday, January 10, 2006

In Which I Prove That I'm Loony

It's wierd how things that happened a long while back and which you hadn't even thought of for ages can have an effect on you.

Today, on my way home after a truly horrible exam, I boarded bus no. 604, going to Vasant Kunj. It was a DTC bus and there were plenty of seats.

So I was sitting in the bus, minding my business as usual. An old man was snoozing on my left, clutching a black bag tightly to his chest. His head drooped down periodically. A window with a broken pane in the front part of the bus allowed in the chilly wind. The bus was unusually quiet, possibly because everyone was busy shivering.

A red and black Adidas bag lay next to my feet. I was thankful for its presence, because it ensured that anyone walking to the front of the bus wouldn't pass too closely to me, if you know what I mean. I assumed that it must belong to my snoozing copassenger.

A young guy sitting on the seat on the opposite side of the aisle took it into his head to stare at me. I looked away to avoid his eyes and the Adidas bag caught my eye again.

It was a nice bag, good-sized and well-filled. I wondered what Sleepyhead had in it.

Soon, Sleepyhead got off. He didn't take the bag with him, though.

That was when I started to get worried. The bus was half empty and Young Guy and I were the only people for about three rows. There was nobody else that the bag could possibly belong to. Young Guy seemed quite unconcerned about the bag; he was whistling cheerfully to himself and anyway, if it had been his bag, wouldn't it have been on his side of the aisle?

At the next stop, a couple of Army men boarded the bus and sat in the seat in front of me. They didn't even look at the ownerless bag. I suddenly realized that, to other people, the bag must look like mine, since I was sitting right next to it.

I stared at the letters painted onto the seat in front of me:Aapke seat ke neeche dekhiye. Lawaris vastu bam ho sakti hai. Turant shor machayiye. Inaam payiye. I remembered how I'd made fun of these words a couple of times and how I'd promised myself that I'd never do so again.

Should I raise the alarm, I wondered. But how foolish I would look if it turned out that the bag belonged to some guy sitting at the back of the bus. I didn't have the guts to do that, I decided. And anyway, the bag was probably absolutely harmless.

I wished the bus would go faster, so that I could get off the bus and stop obsessing over the bag.

But suppose I was right? Suppose the bag contained a bomb and it was even now ticking down to an explosion? I tried to imagine the explosion and all I could summon up in my mind was some yellow-orange colour. It suddenly came to me that, if I was right, I would never get to know. Because I would have ceased to exist.

It's an unsettling thing, you know - imagining one's sudden erasure from the world. We all survey the world from our own viewpoint and that viewpoint has certain parameters, things that you take for granted. The existence of self is one such. And to imagine the non-existence of self - why, that's contradictory, because how can you imagine, if you don't exist?

Like I said, it's unsettling. Which is not to say that it doesn't have its good points. Everything seems clearer suddenly, better defined. You suddenly notice the man sitting in the front seat with trousers so short that the tops his socks are showing. His raucous laughter isn't background music anymore, it's right there inside your head, mocking you.

I imagined him ceasing to exist and it was rather pleasing. At least his laughter wouldn't hammer its way into my head. But I suddenly realized that he probably wouldn't cease to exist if the bomb went off, because he was sitting at the front of the bus and would probably escape with extensive burns. And with that realization, it hit me that I would much prefer to live - even with burns - than to die and that it would be better for me to shift to the front of the bus so that I would be away from the blast. This also had the added advantage that the conductor would realize that it wasn't my bag and then it would be labelled lawaris vastu.

So, feeling very pleased with myself, I shifted to a seat right in the front of the bus, almost next to the door. So what if it brought me closer to the man and his laughter? I would be away from the bomb. After a while, I chanced to look down and - Aargh! - the bag was right there, next to my feet!

"It's determined to kill me," I thought fatalistically, staring at the bag in horrified fascination (the cliche is very apt here). I wondered why no one else had noticed that the bag had followed me all the way to the front of the bus. I wondered if I was going crazy.

Suddenly, the bag shifted. A hand had come out of nowhere to grasp it. After the initial mental recoil, my eyes followed the hand up to the shoulder and from there to the eyes of Young Guy, who gave me a winning smile. I didn't smile back.

Young Guy got off the bus at the next stop with his bag.
• • •

18 comments:

witnwisdumb said...

Way to go, Sherlock /:). You could have just asked who's the bag was. Anyhow, I'm glad you haven't ceased to exist. Take care. And all the best for the rest of your exams.

the Monk said...

paranoia makes for good posts...wait, after the recent blasts, I guess it's better to be paranoid...anyway, the point is, good post...

thedq said...

wow! i could almost hear your heart beat ;-)

Ravi Handa said...

in the words of great andy grove, "only the paranoid survive"

ss said...

you won't believe it..i had gone thru a similar experience last year...

clemenza said...

jasmine

A gem of a post...awesome paranoia....


trust me..me had a really paranoid xperience yesterday...
me and my team mates had gone this new amusement park in bangalore....
while enjoyin one of those thrill ride..a sudden feeling came into my mind...

the ride is basically run by a program...what if the program during execution had a floating point error or a divide by zero error...??? [cant help..as a engineer i am used to it...]
me was praying tat the ride had a rating which is better than 6 sigma!!!

wat if the harness could not handle my weight...what if the power goes while we are mid air...

i was scared shit....was waiting to read level ground each time i got inot the ride...

cheers,
tECHJ

*`~. R a j .~`* said...

quite intriguing... nicely put down .. was sort of forced to read the whole of the text though was quite big....

Thetis said...

I seriously imagined J Snow's music in the background, while I read it.

Mistral Noir said...

i imagined simon garfunkel singing 'america', i dunno why, it doesnt make sense, but life doesnt make sense either. route 604 though made me nostalgic, i was in school and we went to priya to catch a movie and check out the ladies, and we missed playing cricket and having pepsi outside verma stores for a day, and ..*sniff*, and vermaji with his pants tucked under his potbelly saying 'paintee rupaye'(35 in punjabi)

Kaala Kavva said...

Oye good yaar!
nicely written...

Anil The Great said...

Jasmine :

sometimes its not easy to say things about which you are doubtful and which can end uo making mocery of yourself. But I guess, we should look it at the other way. Had you asked in the bus about the owner of the bag and if the guy responded, then you could have ridiculed the guy for not keeping the bag with himself and also he would have stopped that stare. But make sure you do that thing when you are pretty sure that things wont go against you.

-ATG

zypsy said...

kept me in suspense...wondering whose bag it is and what's inside. beautifully written!

Golden Words said...

:) nice read.

on a more serious note, therapy wouldnt be a bad idea...what say.
and yeah u could just have stood up and asked to whom the bag belonged.

SmartOxymoron said...

Forgive poor GW above. He's one of the normal kinds. The kind that likes to stand up in an (almost) empty bus and embarass himself.

Frankly, I see a good excuse to ask your dad for a car. Or a Yamaha R1 at the very least.

SmartOxymoron said...

And if I havent mentioned already, I like your old template better. More Jazzy. Or Jazzlike. Basically, I liked.

Anonymous said...

yes, i like more jhajjy stuffs not normal kinds, very jhajjy and phuntashtic type i like. you please change to jhajjy. also ask daddy car or bike will do also.

Primalsoup said...

Hello and howdy. Just wanted to break this wonderful piece of news, 'You have been tagged!'. Sweeter words were never spoken , no?
Now be good and just do it!

Much thanks!

Archster said...

been a while it sure has! nice template. Though i agree with smarty above.

the occassional paranoia is just so much fun! when it settles down of course.