Bus-Stop

Your destination is approaching and you're peeking out of the window. You know you've got to get down. But you somehow don't. You stay immobile as if you're protesting against yourself. You don't have the will to move your ass and leave the bus for good. Maybe you're too elated to have finally 'earned' a window seat and you don't want to relinquish it. Moreover, you don't even care that if you fail to act within the allotted 30 seconds, you'll have to get down at the next stop. And commute back home. However, the countdown begins. Kolkata’s bus service, like time and tide, stops for none. You keep looking out of the window, staring into the nothingness that makes you travel between this point and that. You don't even know anymore what is nice and what's not nice. You don't expect anything interesting to happen to your existence. Your friends from school are yet to stare out of the window. Or maybe they are better off in some other place where humanity is not humiliated in overcrowded public transports. You are one of the zombies now and you've accepted your future. You're probably never going to walk and explore or stand and stare. You've learnt that your life is going to rattle on the public roads within the periphery of this godsmitten city. You'll never escape the loud throes that engulfs everybody on this island of chaos nor will you ever travel alone again. You'll always be in the company of strangers who smell worse than you. They'll be called your co-passengers and they shall fight for those imaginary seventh seats that lie in front of them. With such fellow-morons around, perspiration will become your act of silent defiance. You must surrender yourself to make it or else you'll be left behind. On the bus-stop. Outside the bus. The city is not to be blamed nor are its inhabitants. If you really wanted to break free, you would have. By now.

Strangers in the night

One rainy night, he looked out of his window and then peeked into himself. The contrast between crowd and loneliness was evident like never before. He pondered for a minute and then took out his smartphone to foolishly text "I think I'm falling for you!" to an unsuspecting female friend. She, on the other side of the town, picked up her cellphone in return and read his loud message under her noiseless breath. Since chivalry was synonymous with this guy, it was bit of a shock to her to receive something as straightforward as this from a person like him. Well, love indeed makes people act in irreversibly weird ways. So she too decided to act weirder and didn't reply a word. But then she couldn't sleep either and the same was true about her poor cellphone. After all, she kept reading the message again and again as if it revealed her entire future. In the end, she replied "Think again!" unlocking a brand new gate of conversation.