It was yet another busy Monday morning ..  After a thorough hardship I had managed to squeeze myself into one of those jam-packed city buses that was trying to beat the rush hour traffic on a typical Bangalore road full of potholes.  The driver looked damn serious and duteous .. poor fellow, he probably did not have an option but to get used to getting caught in such axiomatic traps in life ! More than for his actual work, it is his endurance I would say is what he should be paid for. The conductor was rather a cool-headed guy, one of whose duties, apart from shouting at people, included running up and down to render tickets. As is common with anyone who goes to work after a lazy weekend, every passenger seemed fighting so hard to stay brisk and awake.

As it approached the next major signal, the bus slowed down and came to a complete halt. There was pin drop silence … and that’s exactly when it all happened. Suddenly from nowhere heard the cries of a cat .. “meow meow” and it went on for a while. Had a real kitty been riding on the vehicle all the while for free ? (There was however no guarantee that the creature would disembark all alive from such an overfilled bus – that’s a different story altogether!) The passengers turned their heads around to see where the sound was coming from .. They (inclusive of the “serious-n-duteous” driver that is) grew more and more curious as seconds clicked by. 

A lady in her early 40s seated in the third row, totally ignorant of what was happening around her, nonchalantly took out her mobile and started speaking .. and there ended the “meow meow” cries.  Aaaahhh ! Ok, that was a mobile ringtone ?!! Like me, to most of the people on board, the ringtone must have sounded pretty unusual. The moment it became obvious, everyone including the driver ended up grinning and a handful laughing out loud. Apparently, the lady at once realized the whole thing; it must have made her feel humiliated I guess .. she ended her otherwise long conversation sooner, stuffed the mobile into her already-bulging handbag, and turned her head away from the crowd.  But trust me, I am truly in praise of the person who ‘invented’ the ringtone and the one who programmed it – man, it all sounded sooo real!! :)

It was perhaps a moment of embarrassment for a co-passenger, but the incident indeed triggered a lot of smiles and transformed a strenuous Monday morning into a rather pleasant one for most of us in the bus.

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