Just One Chance

Social Short Story  – Just One Chance

“For the last time, do you really have to go right now?”

Her cousin asked her with irritation as she kept urging him to drive faster. He was the brother of the bride and she had dragged him away from the post wedding hungama to drop her off at the bus stand.

“How many times do I have to tell you that I have a presentation tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock to some stupid Japanese clients.” , she replied with equal irritation.

It was an important family wedding that she couldn’t have missed and she had rushed in from Chennai the previous day. She cursed herself for not having booked a train ticket well in advance. She had always been a last minute person and had depended on the tatkal quota, but this time, her luck had run out since it was the Sunday after the long Pongal holidays in Tamil Nadu. All trains were fully booked and she didn’t want a torturous night cramped, probably on the floor in an unreserved compartment. She planned to take a bus to Salem or Erode and then take a connecting bus or buses to Chennai from there at midnight.

As they entered the bus stand she saw a bus just leaving the bay. It was a Chennai State Transport bus. She couldn’t believe her luck. She got down from the car and without even saying a good bye to her irritated cousin, rushed, hoping against hope that there will be a seat for her. “One seat…lady”, she yelled to the conductor. He motioned her to get in. It was a lucky day for both. The conductor had one seat to fill up and she needed that one seat. She climbed up, stood on the steps and waved to her cousin who was glaring at her, his car headlights blinding the bus driver, blocking the bus’ path as he drove away. “I’ll call you”, she mouthed and smiled.

She looked inside the bus, searching for a seat. There it was, right at the back. The seat no one chose because it was right above the wheel. Cursing she moved towards it. There was a man sitting there already. “Hell”, she thought “No window seat too”.

Everyone was staring at her. She had come straight from the party in her silk saree and jewelry. She felt foolish. It would have just taken two minutes to change, she thought with regret. She looked around; there were no other seats vacant. A few people had already begun to doze off, wrapped in shawls, some with their mouths open. Some stared blankly at the tiny video screen far up in front. One idiot was speaking loudly on his phone about some cement bags that were to be delivered the next day, closing some business deal like the bus was his own private jet. The bus smelled of food, sweat and sleep. She wrinkled her nose and walked towards the seat.

The driver suddenly took a sharp turn. She dropped her luggage on the floor and instinctively reached out for the rod. Muttering the strongest curses to herself, she picked up her bag from the dirty bus floor and stuffed it into the overhead compartment squeezing on top of somebody else’s bag. Her mother had made her pack those five sarees she had bought for her. She never wore sarees to work, but her mother had insisted she take them. She was a horrible packer and had just stuffed the sarees into the bag angrily. The bag looked as though it was ready to burst.

She looked at the man sitting in the seat.

“You want the window?” he asked.

Bless his soul, she thought and nodded smiling. He moved and she made her way inside, her handbag brushing against his face, her silk saree rustling noisily.

The moment she sat down she removed her heavy earrings and choker and put it into her handbag hoping she would look a bit less ridiculous. She didn’t want to remove the bangles because she was afraid she would break them. They jangled noisily. She pushed them up and hoped at least a few would stay there, tight, way up closer to her elbows. She looked at her co passenger and smiled again, a bit sheepishly this time. He smiled back understandingly.

It was only after she settled into her seat that she realized how uncomfortable the rest of the trip was going to be. There was hardly any leg space, the backrest was hard and straight and there were speakers right above her head. It was supposedly a video coach, but there was only one small screen far up in front. The audio spread throughout out the bus on speakers above each seat, disembodied voices in sync with mute pictures moving, playing from some pirated DVD on the screen far in front.

She took out her mobile and put on her headphones. If she had to listen to music, she should at least be able to listen to her choice. But it was just not her day. The battery on her mobile was dangerously low, so she put it back in her bag helplessly.

Her seat mate took out a bottle of water and drank from it. He looked at her and offered her some. She almost reached out, but then shook her head. No. The last thing she wanted was to get out of the bus at some odd hour to go to the bathroom. He took out a packet of Lays next, popped one in his mouth and looked at her again. She was tempted, but then again she would feel thirsty and it would be the same problem. So she smiled again. No.

“Going to Chennai?” he asked.

No you moron,Timbuktu, she wanted to reply. But this was the kind stranger who gave up the window seat for her.

She nodded.

“I’m Krishna”, he said, “I’m a project manager with InfoTech Systems. I had to come home on an emergency here yesterday and absolutely have to be back in office tomorrow. Client visit. There were no tickets anywhere.”

Join the club, she thought.

“Yeah, same here”, she replied, sounding polite.

There was a nanosecond of silence between them, and then he tried to resume the conversation.

“Your good name..?” he asked, a bit hesitant, a bit friendly.

She hated it when people said “good name” Like she had a bad name that she kept a secret from everyone.

“Geetha”, she said, trying to hide her irritation.

“And …working where?” The question was hanging in the air, expecting to be answered before it was asked.

“A startup’ she said, not giving any name.

A fictitious name and a fictitious company. Ten years alone in the big bad city had made her wary. She had some ready made names that came out spontaneously when asked by strangers.

He tapped his fingers absentmindedly on his thighs, thinking of what to ask next to keep the conversation going.

“Married?” he asked suddenly.

Ba**ard, she thought to herself. He asks my name and next this. Don’t we Indians have any sense of privacy? Being an IT professional he should have at least been taught  not to ask such personal questions. But then, those rules were for the Western clients. Not to fellow Desis.

“No”, she answered, through clenched lips, not looking back at him.

He glanced at her bare neck, “I thought so”.

A satisfied, smug “I thought so”

She winced.

A few years back she used to answer “No” to that question with her nose in the air, dripping with attitude. She projected herself as an independent, career oriented woman who just couldn’t be tied down with a man and messy family responsibilities.

But of late, it was becoming a question she dreaded to hear. She was thirty four. A Spinster. The very word conjured up images of hook nosed, bitter, cruel old women with hairy moles who worked as wardens in women’s hostels and mentally tortured the pretty young girls there.

There were subordinates at work who said that she was a demanding boss because she was a frustrated old maid. In a way, she thought, it was true.

She wouldn’t have been sitting in the office till 9 pm if she had a husband and children to go back home to. She had once overheard a bitchy junior whom she had reprimanded for shoddy work saying to the others around the coffee machine, “Her problem is, she needs a good f**k”.

They had all laughed in agreement. “And on regular basis”, someone added bitchily. She wished the earth would open up and swallow her.

She wondered why love just didn’t happen to her. She lacked nothing. She had a good education, great personality; she could even be termed beautiful. She did not have the well preserved look that most unmarried women above a certain age try to maintain. She had it all naturally, great skin, a great figure, long lustrous hair and the most beautiful eyes that sparkled when she was happy.

“You should have been a dancer” one of her admirers had said to her once. Long, long ago.

When she was twenty four she had five colleagues in love with her at the same time. She was full of life and full of dreams then. None of the five men even closely came up to her high expectations. She had the perfect man chalked out by the time she was sixteen. The idea of perfection had evolved over the years, changing to suit her varying tastes and attitude. But the man himself had remained elusive.

“I know he’s out there somewhere, just beyond my reach” she sang to herself. But not once did she even think of settling for anyone lesser. She didn’t want to compromise on the wrong man. She knew with some strange certainty that her soul mate was somewhere out there searching for her as desperately as she was searching for him.

Slowly the suitors got tired of waiting for a “positive answer” from her and went on to marry the girls their parents chose. The one who wrote to her in blood, a twenty eight year old with the maturity of a sixteen year old, and swore that he will live the rest of his life with her in his heart was the one who produced twins within 9 months of marriage.

She had smiled sarcastically when he came up to her seat to give sweets. He had looked away embarrassed. So much for undying love and romance. But not once did she regret not marrying any one of them.

By the time she was twenty eight she had developed the reputation of a hard, cold, career oriented woman with a bloated ego. Men were intimidated by her. Some admired her, but no one ever dared to come closer into the invisible ring of fire she had created around herself. It was not some conscious decision on her part. It just happened.

By the time she was thirty, not only were all the “eligible” men  settled into blissful matrimony, even her female friends were knee deep in school admissions and mom-in-law problems.

Loneliness hit her suddenly, like a bucket of cold water in winter. It penetrated her skin and crept into every cell of her body. It became and integral part of her. Her DNA sample could have revealed it. It became a point of no return and there seemed to be no way out now.

When she moved on to the next company, better job, higher package, she walked into the huge blue building with a hesitant bit of renewed hope hanging on to her. Maybe her prince was waiting for her there. Waiting for her all these years patiently among the two thousand people in that building? But, here too, she tested and defied all the laws of probability. Two years, two thousand plus people. No prince.

Of course, there were no eligible “boys” that her parents could find for her too. Even in the wedding that day she saw the frustration in her mother’s eyes as she scanned the hall for some ray of hope. But all the 35+ men were harried husbands looking after leaky nosed brats while their wives pranced around in designer silks and gold jewellery. No “boys” in sight for her ageing daughter.

The Loneliness had become a way of life for her these days. She reached office at ten in the morning, stayed till eight, sometimes nine. Drove back to the empty three bedroom flat that she had purchased five years back. Three bedrooms, one single bed.

Sometimes, she sat out in her balcony on Saturday afternoons watching couples in the park below. Holding hands, walking, talking, laughing, and looking into each other’s eyes. Mothers with small children learning to walk. Families taking an afternoon off from TV and computer games. A liquid ache would rush through her body like molten steel and settle cold and heavy over her heart. She would swallow hot tears and close the balcony door and get back to reruns of some movie to numb her senses.

Every month in magazines she read “101 tricks to please your man”, “55 ways to achieve multiple orgasms”, “How to talk dirty in bed”, “Things your man wishes you know”. She had all the theoretical knowledge. It was the practical classes that eluded her.

Not that she ever wanted to experiment with a one night stand.

Somehow she had always wanted to keep herself intact for that mystery prince. There were a few moments of temptation in parties to get into bed with some drunken , willing “friend”. But, like the Bollywood heroines of the nineties, she wanted her “virginity to be the gift to her husband”. Common sense had prevailed and her friendships and hymen were intact for the time being.

Kanchana, her friend had told her once, “It is like being born blind. As long as you don’t know what it feels like you are not missing anything. But once you have done it, you will keep wanting more and more.”  She had smiled sadly, sympathy in her voice bitchiness in her mind, “Your day will come”.

Where, When, How. She had no idea.

And now, Krishna, Project manager, InfoTech Systems was sitting next to her, smug with the knowledge that she was Not Married.

A sudden draft of cold wind hit her through a crack in the window. She got up to take the shawl from her bag. He got up instead and took the bag down for her. She removed the shawl from the bursting bag and wrapped it around herself, pulling it close to her body like armour against the cold wind, and against the probing questions that lay ahead. She got up again to put the bag back, had second thoughts and then sat down. She let the bag remain on her lap; she could use it as a pillow since there was no proper backrest anyway. The bag flowed out of her lap and a part of it rested on her neighbour’s lap.  “No problem,” he signaled waving his hand, “Let it be there” She forced a smile, again. Thank you.

She leaned on the window and watched the full moon travel along with the bus, over the endless stretch of betel nut trees, trying to think of the Japanese clients she would have to face in a video conference the next day. But she couldn’t concentrate on those thoughts. His question kept replaying itself in her mind instead. That matter of fact way he had said “I thought so” had ruffled something inside her. Like it was written on her forehead. Married women wore sindoor; unmarried women wore it written on their foreheads with red hot branding irons. The chances of her prince riding in on his white horse, brandishing his sword, sweeping her off her feet suddenly seemed as far off as the very fantasy.

The blue lights had been switched on in the bus. The volume of the music had been lowered, but not completely switched off. The driver needed it to stay awake. The same songs kept playing on shuffle, but even the fast numbers began to sound like lullabies. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

A few minutes later she woke up from her doze with a start. Something cold had touched her bare midriff. A rat? Highly possible in the State transport bus. She quickly moved her shawl and looked.

Oh…Oh. It was not a rat. It was something worse. It was the surreptiously moving fingers of the decent IT professional sitting next to her. She cringed with disgust. Project manager, head load worker or auto driver. A man was a @!#$% man.  That clean, respectable appearance was deceptive. She looked with wonder at the way he had his eyes innocently closed pretending to sleep, arms crossed, while his fingers probed into her skin, moving furiously. What pleasure did men get in those five second fondles, she could never fathom.

She looked around helplessly; all the passengers were fast asleep. Even if she woke anyone up, would they be willing to trade their seat for this uncomfortable one?

Helpless tears welled up in her eyes. She wiped them away with her shawl.

It was going to be a long night.

She stared blankly at the screen in front. The blurred figures seemed to be moving to the movement of the bus now. The songs kept playing.

“Sei, ethavathu sei…solathathai sei…koodathathai sei” “Do anything, just anything…do what you have not said you would do…do what you are not supposed to…but please do something” a husky voice sang softly from the speakers above. The tempo in the song got fiercer and the voice got huskier. The bus began to pick up speed on the empty highway.

Suddenly, totally uninvited, totally unexpected a thought crossed her mind. She didn’t allow herself to think any further. The thought did not need any analysis.

She looked at the figure sitting beside her, pretending to be asleep. She held her breath and looked around the bus again. She slowly inched a bit closer to him. He immediately opened his eyes and turned to her, startled. Awoken from his pretended slumber. She looked straight at him, her coal black eyes burning into his. He couldn’t understand what the look meant. He tried to look away. Was it fear? Was it arrogance? Was it anger? Or was it just a pleading frustration?

She put her head on his shoulder and looked straight ahead. He looked around, eyes darting like a frightened rabbit. She moved a bit closer. His body stiffened for a moment, and then relaxed. They both let out a deep breath. In sync.

His fingers found their way again into the soft depths of her midriff. This time eagerly welcomed. She closed her eyes and let herself sink into an entirely new sensation. This may be the closest she could ever get.

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