The Bus Ride

Today while travelling to office by bus I saw a small play of life enact in front of me. I was in the aisle seat and the window seat was taken by a father son duo. The man looked in his mid or late thirties, worn out clothes and a well used pair of slippers. The boy on his lap was between 2 to three. He was playing with his father’s pen. One moment he would pull it out and next moment he would put it back in. The father was oblivious to all this. He was just making sure the boy is in his lap or at least in his embrace out of any harm in the moving bus.

In all his playfulness the boy pulled the pen again and held it out of the window and said “main ise faink doon”, shall I throw it. On seeing this I felt a pang of terror. Ages ago, when I was a small boy I had done something similar. I had held my mom’s handkerchief out of the moving bus’s window and the kerchief flew away. I got no noticeable punishment for that but somehow the incidence got etched in my mind as a sad incidence. Today when I saw the kid with the pen in his hand, that pain sprang back to life. I was getting tensed. Under my breath I was praying and praying hard, “Oh God make sure the pen does not slip out of the kid’s hand”.

The kid finally pulled his hand in and replaced the pen in his father’s pocket. I took a breath of relief. The kid jumped down from his father’s lap and for this the father scolded him with just one word ‘oye’. Suddenly before anybody could react the boy snatched the pen and threw it out of the window. My heart skipped a beat. The boy had a look of terror. He just realized what he did. The eyes were swelling with tears. And before the moment was lost the father pulled his son into a big hug. He just made a pretence of looking out of the window to see his pen which is not his anymore and then hugged his son again. The small boy hid his face in his father’s chest.