THE PASSING GLIMPSE

The Passing Glimpse

It was indeed strange that I found myself sitting on a stone bench by the side of a road when I came to my senses after what felt like an unintended dose of sleep or a bout of unconsciousness. The mind was momentarily disoriented as I instructed it to gather recent memories. It came up with hazy images that muddled things up a bit more. I gave up and started focusing and my surroundings instead. When I saw the familiar houses and buildings and shops I sighed with overwhelming relief and crossed off “amnesia” and “drugged, kidnapped and dumped in an alley” from my recovering mind. Besides I didn’t think I looked “dumped”. I felt fine and my clothes were in good, almost pristine, condition. The sun was beating down with vengeance but I wasn’t sweating. It was probably because the bench I was sitting on under a gigantic, sprawling banyan tree. My brain was still sifting through memories and it found one that showed myself in the mirror getting ready to head out. So that was how I ended up here, not far from my house and the heat and the seemingly slow moving time of the early afternoon had lulled me to sleep. As if on cue a bus arrived and stopped right in front of me and a couple of men got off it. Automatically I got up and got into the bus, my actions propelled by an indescribable urge to get moving. Since my conscious mind was still meandering in uncertainty, my subconscious had seemed it fit to take over and guide me to my destination.

There weren’t many people in the bus and considering the ungodly tedious hours of the day I could understand why. All the window seats were taken and so I moved to the last row of seats which was currently occupied only by the bus conductor. He was dozing fitfully which struck as slightly odd to me. What if someone got off the bus without paying? Then I saw the helper standing on the footboard of the rear entrance. He had placed a whistle between his lips and was looking out with a bored expression on his face. It wasn’t one of those common sights where young men like him dangled off the footboard. Barely holding onto the poles for support, with the wind hitting their faces and buffeting their hair and clothes wildly. Deciding to pay the helper if ever the conductor failed to wake up before my stop arrived; I settled back in my seat and began gathering my recuperating thoughts. Then the first wave hit me with a shocking force.

It caught me off guard with such intensity that I bolted up from my seat. With nothing to hold on to, I fell back on my seat again but the shock still remained. The wave was not physical, not tangible, not visible. But it might as well have been a solid onslaught of iron blows on my face; such was its effect, its determined presence. It passed as quickly and unpredictably as it had arrived but it left me dazed and wary with a sense of sense of unease and fear settling in like ashes on a burning city. Once I could think steadily I began wondering what it was. I looked around and everything seemed normal enough. The conductor was still dozing fitfully, the young man still stood on the footboard whistling feebly at bus stops. I tried making sense of the event that had occurred, that had taken only for a few seconds. The second wave hit me then, but my wariness had anticipated the uncanny happening this time. As if sensing its inability to catch me off guard the second time the wave rushed towards me with relative slowness and great deliberation. This time the shock came with the realisation of what the wave really was. And this time the wave didn’t recede. A commotion of thoughts, emotions, sounds and feelings that made up this wave had washed over me inexorably. My senses were being drowned and the unwitting culprits behind it were the people in the bus. It dawned on me with sudden and much needed clarity that the feelings, emotions, thoughts and sounds were of the poor unsuspecting souls around me. I’d have laughed with relief if it wasn’t for the simple logical fact that strange things like this never happen in the real world. What was the explanation then? Was I dreaming? Should I pinch myself? Or had I suddenly turned clairvoyant? I quickly dismissed these questioning thoughts as soon as I realised how downright silly they sounded even in my head. I looked around once again, my eyes sweeping over all the people in the bus beginning from the partially obscured driver in the front to the dozing conductor at the back. The effects of the wave still lingered and there was no beginning or end to them. They were in me and around at the same time. They played with my outer senses, tingled every nerve in my body, probed my soul and dared my mind to unravel them. My mind did dare and they all but willingly unravelled. The thoughts and sounds came to me as swirling murmurs and whispers. The feelings and emotions were like shimmering revelations.

I looked at a middle aged man in the first seat of the left row. He prayed for a profit this month. He had worked hard in the garment shop and his third child would be arriving soon in to this world. I sensed his elation, his anxiety, his hopes, and his joy as he thought of his wife and children.

A young woman sat in the first seat of the right hand side row. She wasn't exactly enjoying the bus ride. Maybe she should go to those driving classes like her mother-in-law had suggested. Or take the driving lessons her husband had offered to give. She smiled and blushed at the thought. Six months now. Who would've thought arranged marriages worked out so wonderfully? I felt her disapproval of bus rides, her sweet shyness as she thought of her husband, her prayers thanking God for blessing her with such a nice family.

A teenaged boy was sitting next to his best friend in the third seat. The best friend, a girl his age, wondered if it was okay to have feelings for her best friend. The boy wondered if telling her he loved her would ruin their friendship. I felt their blossoming love, their loyalties towards each other, their fears, their dreams.

A young man in soiled clothes sat in the last row on my right. He thought of life ahead now with his only sister married off. He had spent almost all of his hard earned money on her wedding. He wished for her happiness. He loved her more than his own life. I felt his loneliness, his pain from the bruised knuckles, sun-burnt skin and blistered feet that he got from working at the construction site all day long. I felt his immense love for his sister, his only family.

I saw two young men in the third seat on my left. They had both been recruited by a company at the same time. They had known each other only for a few days now. The one next to the window talked animatedly, with sound effects, about a new video game. He hoped he wasn't boring or annoying his new found friend. But no one else bothered listening to his video game stories. His friend actually listened more out of pity than interest. Sure, he talked a lot. But he was a good guy, kind at heart. His narration of the stories amused him more than the stories themselves. Somehow both knew they were going to be best friends for life. Every person in the bus had a story in their lives, a lesson that could be learnt, an experience that would become a part of my soul for an eternity.

A girl sat alone in the only row of seats beyond the front entrance, on the driver's left hand side. She seemed lost in thoughts as she looked out the window. She didn't have to support her family. She was enjoying the bus ride and she preferred it, although she knew how to drive. She thought she was in love once, but now she knew she wasn't since she had learnt there was a lot to take, lots more to give and even more to understand and sacrifice in love. She had had her share of loneliness and pain that was more emotional than physical. She had many friends, but only a few she really loved and cared for. She seemed content with her thoughts for now and I couldn't feel much from her like I did from the others. She turned then, to look at the conductor it seemed, and I saw her face. Thus began the greatest realisation of all.

I saw her and it was like looking at my reflection. She smiled my smile when she saw the conductor dozing. Someone let out a scream and she frowned just like I always did. She turned around to look ahead. The realisation was crashing on me now. I wanted to yell, reach out, do something! But all I could do was stare helplessly as a monstrous truck, a speeding harbinger of destruction filled up the whole front view before I was wrenched out of the fabric of reality. The wave finally receded as I was pulled into an unknown oblivion. And I finally realised in the fullness of that moment that in the slowness of that day, that life, death had come quickly.