Undeserving

Traveling in a bus. Got a seat. Fiddling my mobile. Being someone who uses the public transport regularly, I also had my earphones on (to ward off people and discourage any initiation of small talk).

The bus conductor comes by.. I open my wallet.. hand out a 100 rupee note.. yes I did not have ‘change’ then. I have never understood why all conductors are suspicious that we civilians hoard unreasonable amounts of ‘change’ and are unwilling to use it to transact. I find loose coins inconvenient.. can’t keep them in my wallet and almost always discharge them the first chance I get. It was an 8 rupee ticket I had to get (5+2+1). The conductor also claimed to have no ‘change’ and my callous attitude towards this trivial matter put him off and I was asked to get off the bus if I couldn’t give him the 5+2+1.

Sigh. Okay. I make my peace with getting down and catching another bus and a woman .. a fellow traveler offered to pay for my ticket and dealt with the conductor directly.

I was not used to this.. nobody can help another without an ulterior motive right? I was now under the pressure of reciprocating for her act of kindness. I immediately hand out the 100 rupee note to her and mumble something and she gives me a puzzled look as if expecting her to give me back 92 rupees for a 100 was absurd. I clumsily put it back in. What was I to do next? Should I find a seat close to hers and smile at her whenever she looks in my direction or should I just go back to my original seat which was far away feeling good about what happened to me? What disturbed me more was that, that middle aged woman.. clad in a saree.. who didn’t look well off.. striking conversations with passer-by’s.. is the kind of people I avoid. The ones that you move away from in reflex to them standing close to you in a bus. That kind. And she found it in herself to help probably the most detached-from-reality person traveling in that bus. In some metric, I felt I was the most undeserving of any help amongst all the other faces in that bus. I didn’t thank her. I couldn’t. I wasn’t grateful. I was only puzzled. But I did accept it.

Unable to do anything, I look at her to find her not looking in my direction and get back to seat in which I was sitting.