It seemed like the driver of the bus in which I was travelling back from work one day was determined to beat the rush hour traffic. I was so engrossed in reading a novel that I hardly realized that the speed of the vehicle had almost reached that of light. 

When seated in the bus, I have this weird habit of leaving my footwear down and resting my feet on the metal bar fixed (at a very low level) underneath  the seat before me. This sort of works as a “comfort zone” for my feet. While others boarding the bus only look to see around if there is a vacant seat, I additionally ensure the presence of this “footrest”. Sadly enough, not every bus provides the “facility”, you see. :-D

It is not everyday things work wilfully against you and this particular day was just not destined to be so. Minutes later, as the place I was supposed to get down was nearing, I took my feet off my favorite footrest only to find that the footwear was no longer in the place where i left it.  Like one of those heroines playing “obsessed-by-love” village girl roles in the south indian cinema, I started making circular movements with my toes on the base in search of the footwear. Alas! It had already gone missing !!! Quite understandable. What else could these poor drivers think of, other than applying hard brakes, when some(thing)body crosses their path while driving in jet speed !!

The moment the hard fact that one of those brakes could have displaced the footwear a bit forward or backward hit me, to the bewilderment of the person sitting next to me, I bent myself down to trace it. Unfortunate, but the search result was only a 404.

My co-passenger must have really pitied me. She voluntarily lent me a helping hand in my “operation footwear hunt”. I could not help but get convinced that her eyesight was incomparably better than mine when she announced ”Hey I can see it there”. The place she was pointing at was approximately four seats ahead of where we were. Oh man, these drivers and their skill levels, I thought.

I wholeheartedly thanked the lady, went all the way up to where my footwear had reached and requested the person who was peacefully sitting there to assist me in pulling it out. What an embarassment in life! Though their faces did not explicitly show it, many of the other passengers for sure had fun watching me run around in search of the damned footwear.

Moral of the story I learnt ? Restricting myself to looking for just a vacant seat. :-)

Advertisement