Come with me now

She stood there like any other day, at a dusty bus stand in the heart of Calcutta. Standing completely unaware of the people who came and went, her mind skipped through the edges of a poem that seemed to have no reason or rhyme. You couldn’t blame her really, it was the middle of a working day. Everyone had a slight bend in their eyes, watching the road carefully, knowing that the sky wouldn’t change from its facade of blinding white. The newspapers that were stretched in the morning now crumpled with the wind that was left by trams that chugged along. Little sparks from its electric placenta, crackling in moments that were few if you cared for the time. Time moved, though you couldn’t be certain if it were moving forward, or backward or even sideways. Calcutta moved sideways sometimes. Every now and then, you could spot a shadow that went along from left to right.

She must have seen this little symphony of strange journeys that traversed across Calcutta some other day, but today, today was bland. She was a surveyor of steel, structures that stood tall and shined through the blandest of days. Her job was to dig a little deeper, knock a little harder and tell you what a piece of steel was worth. In a place crowded with the worthless and priceless, her task was cut and dry to a common man’s eyes. She however took a lot of pride in what she did. Listening to a traveller and wondering if he saw a gleam of steel in his tired eyes. She was curious about everything that had to do with steel. She didn’t really find many people who talked about it, so she often lost track in a conversation that didn’t have that kind of high tenor.

Her bus finally arrived, huffing and puffing to a halt, its tyres picking up anything that inched across the sticky road. ‘Hmm, a composite of steel’ she thought to herself as her fingers curled around the handle bar of the steps. There were a dozen eyes looking at her board that bus, yet her mind listened to the curious clanking sounds of the steel that were bolted all around. She sat in the only seat that was available, a seat in the aisle right in the middle of the bus. The middle of the bus was often the worst or the best place to be, depending on whose word you took for comfort. Some say it’s that jarring point in between the bus, like two Teutonic plates crashing into each other and hoisting you a couple of inches mid air every now and then. The others however disagreed with this wave like theory and said that the front went up, the back went down and middle stayed where it was. It was hard to tell really, the seats were all uncomfortable at best. She was just about to fall asleep to the noisy hum, when the bus jerked to a stop and the lady besides her hurried out as if she had just seen a ghost.

Shrugging herself back to a lazy thought, she moved to the window, looking out at all the illusions of Calcutta but still completely unaware. Her head gently hit the hollow steel on the side as she was poised to sleep. When a lady arrived and said ‘ Is this seat taken?’ She looked up and nodded her head sideways, or was it diagonally, or was it an imaginary circle. Either ways, she suggested that it was a ‘No’.

The lady sat and immediately introduced herself. She announced her name twice just to be sure and made herself comfortable. ‘ I am from Bihar.’ She said. ‘Have you been to Bihar? It’s a lovely place if you go at the right time, meet the right people, do the right things’ She said with a smile.

By now, the girl from Calcutta, the one Calcutta quietly followed, woke up from her premature sleep. She looked at her newly found Bihari friend. She was pretty. She had deep bright eyes. You could see a storm in there if you looked hard enough. Her hair elegantly fell down her forehead like a lonely stream coming down a hill in summer. Her head was covered by an orange and red Saree. Her lips moved wide as she continued to speak and tell her everything about her hometown in Bihar. She couldn’t really hear the lady speak, for her mind was so attentive to the language of steel. ‘Clink, clank, clonk’ it said out loud with every turn of the wheel. She didn’t want to stop her from talking though, the Bihari lady seemed to have found her stride. Her lips moved endlessly, like a historian tracing a map in the sand.

Twenty minutes had now passed, the Bihari lady was animated in her speech. The bangles on her hand clinked along with all of the steel. The girl from Calcutta was fully aware of her new found friend’s face. She was drawn by the expressions that turned in and out like a mirage, but she still couldn’t hear a single word.

‘Ballygunge, Ballygunge’ screamed the driver of the bus from up front and the girl that Calcutta followed woke up from her trance. She smiled at her Bihari friend, and gently collected her bag from her feet and rose from her seat.

‘Ja rahi ho? Are you going?’ asked the Bihari lady whose lips had come to a stop.

‘Ha. yes.’ replied the girl.

’Saat Chalo na? Want to come with me now?’ the Bihari lady asked all of a sudden.

Two years has passed since that moment. The girl from Calcutta had then mentioned that she had work and she had to leave and hurriedly got away from the bus without even looking back at her Bihari friend and her unexpected invitation. She has stood at the bus stand almost every single day after that. Boarded the same bus, on the same route to the same destination. She sits looking for a conversation for she can’t hear the steel anymore. As every day passes, she wishes more that she had embarked on an adventure that she has no way to articulate. For now though, she simply sits in the bus and stares at everyone who gets on hoping for an invitation. Her throat’s dry, her thoughts collected, her lips shivering at the idea of someone coming along. You can see what’s on her mind if you ever see her on the bus. She’s ready. She’s ready to say yes.