No Obligation

You know I am a poor private bus driver, and I have been driving a bus on this route for a long time. I am driving ever since more than half of the roads were mudy. Now the roads are fully concreted and well kept.

 
Earlier there was no electricity outside the city, but now there is electricity all the way, on every road. And now we have a rule to give free rides to boys and girls below twelve years of age while going to school or returning home after school. But I have been giving poor children a ride in my bus for a long time, even before this rule.

I remember an incident. At that time this two-mile stretch was totally muddy. I got a fever, so another driver came in my place. The poor children kept suffering barefooted under the hot sun, but he did not stop the bus for anyone. He said he had no obligation to stop the bus fr free passengers.

You know children are very smart. They removed the bricks of the culvert of this unpaved road. So he had a lot of trouble, and he started giving children a ride in the bus every day. I love it when the children, carrying their school bags under their arms, seated in the bus, look at me with love and affection. I forget all my sorrows on seeing the happiness on their faces.

Many boys wait for the bus under the mango trees near the canal after school, and when I reach the bridge and stop the bus for them, they surround me dancing and jumping.

Since I have been traveling on this route for a very long time, there has been a lot of exchange of messages and carrying of things. But I never refuse because if I do a little work for others with a little effort of mine, the pleasant memories of people's faces make me sleep at night. It seems that I am sleeping on a bed of flowers and not on the hard roof of my bus.

Sometimes I carry messages of young girls for young men! One day a very pretty girl handed me a letter at the city bus stand for a well-educated boy from my village. When I reached the village, that boy was already standing there. He looked at me with the letter as if I had brought him all the happiness present on earth.

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The next morning that boy boarded my bus ten minutes before the bus departure. He had white and pink lotus flowers in his hand. The same glow was on his face as these flowers. I had never seen his face glowing and radiant like that day.

Thousands of passengers must have boarded my bus in so many years. Things must have come and gone, but no one with such a face had ever boarded; no one had ever brought lotus flowers. When the bus reached the city, the girl with the letter was waiting for this boy.

In the evening, the same girl came to drop that boy on my bus. Now the lotus flowers were in the girl's hand. Both of them stood outside quietly till the end. They kept staring at each other. What a strange desire or thirst they both had in their eyes as if they wanted to drink it till the last drop. The boy got on the moving bus last but still kept looking back.

I don't know how to write a story. Yes, I read stories, but I don't know why writers don't write stories like the ones we see happening in life every day.

Yes, it is true that a lot of things keep happening in the lives of us drivers. If I knew how to write a story, I would have penned down all I saw over the years. I don't know about the skill of writing in these stories of mine, but they definitely would seem alive.

If I knew how to write a story, I would not have written the story of the boy and girl with the lotus flowers first. I would have written another story. One day, while passing near a canal bridge, I stopped the bus, and an eight- or nine-year-old boy gave me a message for his father. Perhaps I would not forget this message in my life.

When I stopped the bus near the canal bridge, this boy came to me. He said, "You know my father, right?" He asked me in such a casual manner as if he had come to me to give me something left behind by his father. Then he said, "Where your bus finally stops, my father works at an electrical shop. The shop must be closed now, but he sleeps in the shop at night. You tell him that my mother said, "Today also we brought flour on credit."

I will remember this even when I am leaving this world. And even if I forget everything, even those lotus flowers, the pain of this message will always remain alive. Actually, I did not have the courage to deliver this message.

That boy returned as naturally as he had come, but I kept thinking the whole way— even if I gave him some money, what was the use for him? Would he ever provide his wife enough money, who was kneading the borrowed flour and could see the empty plate and the hungry and thirsty face of his son?

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