I am talking to Daggu, and time flies by. We're talking. Still.
Suddenly, I see the buses, at the other end of the field moving. "Bye!" I yell, and run off after the bus. I'm gonna miss it, I know. I run and I run, but my bus is gone. I still don't give up, still try to look for it, when suddenly, I trip. And crash on the ground.
Knees, bruised, hurt. I'm covered in dust, sitting on the ground and my bus is gone and its cold and I don't know how I'll get home. Pathetic, is my state. Barely anybody came to school today, so nobody could hold the bus.
Slowly, I get up and move a little, stretching my legs. Then I remember- Mallika's staying back today. She'll have her phone. I go back inside the building and find her. She tells me that I can go back with her, she'll leave at 4. Okay, I say. Lets see Behind the Scenes of Interact Thunder [Which is like a Battle of the Bands, scheduled for tomorrow!]
I hang around watching what they do, occasionally helping them out. Then we go to B.P. to eat something. When we get back to school, I find out that there's still loads to be done. She'll have to stay till 5 30. That won't do for me.
I decide to take the Stayback bus, which leave at 4. Although they take a longer route, I'll be home before 5. I search for my route and find my bus. I didn't want to be the only one in the bus, so I waited to see if anybody else was there.
There was.
So I got on it and settled myself nice and snug on the second last seat. I braced myself for fifty minutes of pure torture, with nothing to do. Tired, but alright. A boy, fat and bulky but cute, about three years younger than me, comes and stands beside my seat. Dressed in a jersey and shorts, football coaching after school, I think.'Hato, yeh meri seat hai.' he orders.
I'm exhausted and comfortable and I don't want to move an inch. I know I won't win if I fight, so I put on my sweetest voice.
'Aaj baithne do, pleaseeee. Just for today...' I say. His expression changes as I say please. 'Okay you sit' he says, and takes a seat adjacent to mine.
Magic Word. Or maybe because I look like a pathetic mess. Doesn't matter.
But Motu's face rings a bell in my mind.
"You're Sanchita's brother, right?" I ask him. Sanchita's my friend. I don't know her very well, but she's nice.
"Yes" he says and we start talking. His friends too enter the bus and take seats around him.
Awkward, uneasy, I look outside the window. But they were all smaller than me, so I hoped that they'd be busy in their own babble. They were.
Motu opens a bottle of Coke and holds it out to me. 'Didi?' he asks, asking me if I wanted a sip.
I'm touched. Seriously. I'm very touched. After a rough day, if a small kid offers you his beloved Coke, that seems about the kindest thing anybody can do.
As the bus starts, so does their conversation. They argue about who played the best and its clear that Motu's a bully. He hits anybody who says anything against him. But he's a good bully, not a harmful one, I realize. Good kid. I listen to their conversation, which contained a wide range of expletives. But since I've nothing else to do, and they seem pretty funny to me, I listen.
Enter Blue Jersey. Blue Jersey is taller than any of them, smarter and obviously much more respected. Motu daren't hit him and Blue Jersey daren't say anything to Motu. Mutual respect. But all the other guys were made fun of. They all looked up to Blue Jersey, they did. Anybody cracked a joke and everyone would look at him; if Blue Jersey laughed, the joke's funny. If he doesn't, katta! They all wanted Blue Jersey's approval.
But Blue Jersey's popular for a reason. He's the funniest, his mind the dirtiest and well, best in football, I gather.The bus stops and many people get down. So does Blue Jersey.
After some time, its just Motu, one or two people in the front and I.
Motu and I talk some more, when this guy older than any of them, in Ninth I'm guessing, comes at the back. He's wearing really weird jeans. "Aapka stop kaunsa hai?", he asks me. I reply curtly, and turn away. The jeans is giving me bad vibes. Weird jeans sits beside Motu.
"Chal yaar, mai tere ko ek gaana sunaata hoon." he says to Motu.
Motu refuses in his usual cute funny way. And surprisingly, he asks me. "Aapko koi gaana sun naa hai?"
"No, thanks." I say. Weird Jeans is actually Weird.
"So if I sing, aapko koi problem toh nahi hai naa?"
Whatever.
"Its your mouth, do whatever you want." I reply.
And. Believe it or not. He actually starts singing. Singing.
And not the latest hit. No. His song contains phrases like,
'Party mein jaaonga,
Scent lagaoonga'
I look at Motu, appalled, and he looks at me, appalled. I resist the urge to laugh, lest I offend him. Soon, I learned that he isn't the type who takes offense; his songs are entirely for our benefit.
And dear Lord, that was just the start. After that, came MANY other songs. 'Dil de diya hai...' and others. The guy just sang non-stop until he got off the bus. He kept asking us if it bothered us and after a while, we started replying in affirmative. But the guy was sincere to his singing.
It was when he started screaming in my ear that I asked him to get lost and he did.
After an hour, I bade goodbye to Motu and got off the bus. As I walked back home, a lame dog growled at me and I dodged him and almost got crashed into a car; truthfully, the lame dog scared me more than anything else had in the entire day.
And finally,
I reached home.
All my love,
Srishti
P.S. Check out this link
here. Its NaNoWriMo, a novel writing compettion, 50,000 words. I can't take part because I have pre-boards this month...but if anyone's interested, please go for it. :)
